These books were kept in a specially built temple and could be used only in times of the greatest danger to Rome. The king finally bought three books at a price for which he was offered nine books. Tarquinius refused to buy again, and Sibylla destroyed another three and repeated the same price. Tarquinius replied that the price for the books was too high, then Sibylla destroyed three of them and demanded the rest of the same price. Legend has it that Sibyl herself offered the king nine books, saying that whoever interprets their text correctly will know the future. Tarquinius purchased from Sibyl of Kume the so-called Sibylline Books. In addition, they were not paid for the work. The citizens of Rome were forced to work on construction sites, which aroused great opposition, as they considered it an occupation below their dignity. He built a great Etruscan-style temple on the Capitoline Hill, which became the model for all later Roman temples it was placed on a platform and decorated with painted terracotta decorations a triad of deities was worshipped there: Jupiter (the statue was made by the famous Etruscan sculptor Wulka), Minerva and Juno. The drawing comes from The Comic History of Rome, by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett.Īfter the fighting ended, Tarquinius focused on the expansion of Rome. Tarquinius Superbus declares himself king. At the beginning of his reign, Tarquinius formed an alliance with Octavius Mamilius, the dictator in Tusculum, to whom he gave his daughter’s hand. Recent decisions have shown that the new king has broken with tradition and good practice. Tarquinius tried the most important court cases without advisers. Tarquinius did not agree to the burial of Servius and curtailed his powers without consulting the Senate. He imprisoned, expelled or murdered those who might threaten his authority. Unlike the gentle and just king of the previous king, Lucius was a ruthless tyrant. Servius Tullius, who tried to oppose the usurper, was killed by his men. One day he sat on the royal throne and ordered the Senate to be convened. Lucius, relying on the senators who owed their position to Tarquinius the Old, began to incite the Romans against the ruler. According to the records, the power-hungry Tulia directly urged her husband to overthrow and even kill her father. Lucius believed that by reason of his origin he deserved the throne and he hated his father-in-law. He was succeeded by Servius Tullius, whose daughter Tulia married Lucius Tarquinius, son (or grandson) of Tarquinius the Old. The first ruler of this family was Tarquinius the Old, the fifth Roman king. Perhaps they also had Greek blood in their veins – Livy writes that Tarquinius the Proud’s grandfather came from Corinth.
Thus an understanding of the compositional elements of the Etruscan artisan enables not just a simple identification of the participants in any given frieze, but an interpretation of the actual sequence of events.The Tarquins were an Etruscan family originating from the city of Tarquinia. Hence these three urns show the death of Lucretia in an Etruscan version which implies the successful escape of Sextus. That is, the moment selected for these urns focuses on revenge stopped just before it could be exacted and implies, as a study of other urns with securely identified subjects shows, that the pursued always avoids retribution. He used certain kinds of relationships to signify specific kinds of actions, such as the stopped revenge. He had a specific vocabulary which was understood by the Etruscan purchaser.
These three urns demonstrate how the Etruscan artisan worked. On the extreme left sits a wealthy matron, probably Lucretia's mother, in mourning with a statue of a goddess of chastity behind her. Between Sextus and the central group stands Venus. A servant or two stands behind Lucretia who has committed suicide on the right, while in the center her husband, Collatinus, and Lucius Junius Brutus restrain her father, Lucretius, from immediate pursuit of Sextus Tarquinius fleeing off to the left. This article studies one small group of urns which were previously identified as the death of Theano from Euripides’ Melanippe Desmotis and which are here interpreted as the only extant classical representations of the death of Lucretia. During the Hellenistic period the Etruscans depicted not only Greek myths on their funerary urns but also Etruscan-Roman legends.
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