“Woe! lightly to part with one’s soul as the sea with its foam!
Woe to Tarpeia, Tarpeia, daughter of Rome!”
(1884).
Tarquin, a name of terror in Roman nurseries.
The nurse, to still her child, will tell my story,
And fright her crying babe with Tarquin’s name.
Shakespeare, Rape of Lucrece (1594).
Tarquin (The Fall of). The well-known Roman story of Sextus Tarquinius and Lucretia has been dramatized by various persons, as: N. Lee (1679); John Howard Payne, Brutus, or The Fall of Tarquin (1820)--this is the tragedy in which Edmund Kean appeared with his son, Charles, at Glasgow, the father taking “Brutus” and the son “Titus.” Arnault produced a tragedy in French, entitled Lucrèce, in 1792; and Ponsard, in 1843. Alfieri has a tragedy called Brutus, on the same subject. It also forms indirectly the subject of one of the lays of Lord Macaulay, called The Battle of the Lake Regillus (1842), a battle undertaken by the Sabines for the restoration of Tarquin, but in which the king and his two sons were left dead upon the field.
Tarquinia, wife of Titus, son of Brutus. Titus is one of the conspirators whose object is to bring back the Tarquins to Rome, and the sin against the state is palliated by his connection with the proscribed family. The unhappy son is condemned to death by his own father, and beheaded in his presence.--John Howard Payne, Brutus, a tragedy (1818).
Tarquinius (Sextus), having violated Lucretia, wife of Tarquinius Collatīnus, caused an insurrection in Rome, whereby the magistracy of kings was changed for that of consuls.