Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
king of Rome from 535 to 509 BC
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (died 495 BC) was the legendary seventh and final king of Rome, reigning 25 years until the popular uprising that led to the establishment of the Roman Republic. He is commonly known as Tarquin the Proud, from his cognomen Superbus (Latin for "proud, arrogant, lofty").
Ancient accounts of the regal period mingle history and legend. Tarquin was said to have been either the son or grandson of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome, and to have gained the throne through the murders of both his wife and his elder brother, followed by the assassination of his predecessor, Servius Tullius. His reign has been described as a tyranny that justified the abolition of the monarchy.
Background
The most ancient sources, such as that of Quintus Fabius Pictor, assert Tarquin was the son of Tarquinius Priscus, but modern historians believe that to be impossible under the traditional chronology, indicating either he was Priscus' grandson or that the traditional chronology itself is unsound.
His mother supposedly was Tanaquil. Tanaquil had engineered her husband's succession to the Roman kingdom on the death of Ancus Marcius. When the sons of Marcius subsequently arranged the elder Tarquin's assassination in 579 BC, Tanaquil placed Servius Tullius on the throne, in preference to her own sons or grandsons.
According to an Etruscan tradition, the hero Macstarna, usually equated with Servius Tullius, defeated and killed a Roman named Gnaeus Tarquinius, and rescued the brothers Caelius and Aulus Vibenna from captivity.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Lucius Tarquinius Superbus” as king of Rome from 535 to 509 BC. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as king of Rome from 535 to 509 BC. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q193047. VIAF identifies the subject as 349149106003368490378. The Library of Congress control number is n85240323. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Lucius Tarquinius Superbus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.