The painting above depicts Lucretia Tarquinia holding the hand of her husband, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. Leering covetously at Lucretia in the background is Sextus Tarquinius, the son of Rome’s last king, Tarquin the Proud. The defilement of Lucretia by Sextus—The Rape of Lucretia—culminated in her suicide and a popular revolt that brought about the end of the Roman Monarchy and establishment of the Roman Republic in 509 BC, some 244 years after the founding of Rome by Romulus, its first king. The Republic’s first pair of elected consuls were Lucretia’s widower husband Collatinus and his close friend, Lucius Junus Brutus. 

Brutus’s first action as co-consul, with Collatinus’s approval, was to have all Romans speak an oath asserting that Rome would never be ruled by a king again. But an oath was not enough to ease their fear of a tyrannical monarchy returning to power. Many became anxious that Collatinus, who bore the Tarquin name, might become a threat to their newfound liberty. “We’ve barely rid ourselves of the last Tarquin and now we have another,” people worried. “Tyranny is in their blood.” That Collatinus had become consul in a free and fair election was all but forgotten.

Their fear spread like pestilence, as fear is wont to do. Soon all of Rome was infected by it. Brutus assembled the people and spoke to them. He began by repeating the oath against kings, the sacredness of which, he urged, must be vigilantly guarded. But to the incredulity of Collatinus, whose suffering at the hands of his kin surpassed that of any man in the assembly, Brutus warned that Romans would never feel secure in their liberty with a member of the former royal family as consul, no matter how loyal he had been to Rome. He then called on Collatinus to appease the people of Rome by abdicating his office and ridding them of the Tarquin name once and for all. 

Collatinus at first resisted the city’s hysteria, even as other prominent nobles began to pressure him to leave—including no less a figure than Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, the father of his deceased wife Lucretia! Collatinus began to fear that clinging to his consulship might result in forced expulsion from Rome and confiscation of his property. In the face of even his former father-in-law’s opposition, Collatinus acceded to their demands and voluntarily exiled himself to Lavinium, retaining his possessions, if not his pride. Publius Valerius was swiftly elected by the people to serve as consul suffectus (replacement consul) alongside Brutus.

The inordinate fear of losing their liberty to the return of a king would shape the Roman Republic for centuries to come, causing many a consul to suffer the same fate as Collatinus. But lose their liberty they would, in 27 BC, when the nephew of Julius Caesar became not a king ruling over Rome, but a king of kings, an emperor ruling many nations. Tyranny, that most stubborn of weeds, would again take root in Rome.

Making the worst fear of the nascent Roman Republic come true, 482 years later.