Tullia the younger

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Tullia the Younger was the younger daughter of the legendary sixth Roman king Servius Tullius , who supposedly lived from 578 to 534 BC. Ruled. She is said to have brought about the overthrow of her father.

For our knowledge of historical Tullia - if it ever existed - of the surviving sources, the first book of Livy 's historical work Ab urbe condita and the fourth book of Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus are of particular importance. Here are the most detailed representations of the end of Servius Tullius that still exist. However, the tradition about this time, which was long before the beginning of Roman historiography, is mostly based on legends.

Accordingly, the younger Tullia, who is portrayed as spirited, ambitious and domineering, is said to have been one of the most demonic female figures of the Roman royal era . She was the wife of Ar (r) us Tarquinius , a son or grandson of the fifth Roman king Lucius Tarquinius Priscus . When her husband made no move to seize power despite her attempts to persuade her, she sought a connection to her husband's brother, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus , who was married to her righteous, older sister of the same name . She instigated her proud brother-in-law to get their respective spouses out of the way, whereupon her sister and her husband Ar (r) fell victim to this murder plot.

Tullia drives her team over the body of her father. Drawing by Ernst Hildebrand , before 1888

After the double spousal murder, Tullia married her brother-in-law and induced him to carry out a coup so that they could take over rule themselves. Tarquinius Superbus took action quickly and, after an argument, pushed Servius Tullius down the stairs of the curia. At Tullia's instigation, Tarquinius Superbus sent out henchmen who caught up with and killed the fugitive, old king below the Esquiline at the intersection of vicus Cyprius and clivus Urbius . When Tullia, who had hurried to the forum in her carriage to be the first to greet Tarquinius Superbus as the new king, was on her way home again, the driver of her car saw her father's body lying on the way. Since he then hesitated to continue, Tullia ran the team over her dead father. So she arrived home covered in blood. That is why the place where this crime occurred was called vicus sceleratus (= "crime alley").

The main features of this tale about Tullia's alleged outrage were already available before the time of the first Roman historian, Quintus Fabius Pictor . In the course of the further depictions of Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Tullia no longer appears; according to Livy, when Tarquinius Superbus 509 BC Was overthrown by Lucius Junius Brutus , escaped from Rome .

Tullia's iniquity is also mentioned by other ancient authors, including Ovid and Valerius Maximus . In modern times, the subject was dealt with literarily by the English writer William Painter (1566), musically in the opera Tullia superba by the Italian composer Giovanni Domenico Freschi (libretto by Antonio Medolago, 1678) and in the fine arts, among others, in paintings by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ( around 1718; lost today), Michel-François Dandré-Bardon (1735), Jean Bardin (1765) and Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch (1783).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Livy 1, 46-48; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 4, 28-39; next to it Florus 1, 7, 2f .; Zonaras 7, 9; among others
  2. ↑ Livy 1:42, 1 and 1, 46, 4f .; Dionysios 4, 6f.
  3. ^ Livy 1:46, 1-9; 1, 47, 3; Dionysios 4, 28, 5-30, 1; 4, 79, 1; Cassius Dio , fragment 11, 1; Zonaras 7, 9.
  4. ↑ Livy 1:48, 6; Varro , De lingua Latina 5, 159.
  5. ↑ Livy 1:48, 7; Dionysios 4, 39, 4f.
  6. ^ Wilhelm Hoffmann : Tullius 18). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume VII A, 1, Stuttgart 1939, column 817.
  7. ^ Livy 1:59, 12.
  8. ↑ Ovid, Fasti 6, 587ff.
  9. ↑ Valerius Maximus 9:11, 1.
  10. ↑ Tullia . In: Eric M. Moormann, Wilfried Uitterhoeve: Lexicon of ancient figures. With their continued life in art, poetry and music (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 468). Kröner, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-520-46801-8 , pp. 603f.
personal data
SURNAME Tullia the younger
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Daughter of the Roman king Servius Tullius
DATE OF BIRTH 6th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 6th century BC Chr.