You don't have access to this content. Please try to log in with your institution. Sign In
In the year 509 BCE, according to traditional sources, Rome lost her king. The story, in the account recorded by the historian Livy, stated that the last king of the city, an Etruscan called Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud), was expelled from Rome after his son Sextus raped Lucretia, the wife of his cousin Collatinus. Another cousin, Junius Brutus, led the rebellion, and he and Collatinus became the first leaders—primus inter pares, or first among equals—of the new republic of Rome.