Founding of the Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was traditionally founded in 509 BCE, following the overthrow of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last of Rome's seven legendary kings, in a revolt led by the nobleman Lucius Junius Brutus after the rape of the noblewoman Lucretia by the king's son. In place of monarchy, Roman tradition holds that the city's aristocracy established a republican government headed by two annually elected consuls who shared executive power and could check one another's authority, along with a Senate of aristocratic elders that advised on policy, a structure meant to prevent any single individual from again holding permanent power. Modern historians treat much of the detailed narrative surrounding the republic's founding, including the Lucretia story, as later Roman legend embellishing a real political transition whose precise course is not independently documented, though the traditional date is widely used as a conventional marker. The republican system endured, with gradual expansion of political rights to Rome's non-aristocratic plebeian class over the following centuries, until the civil wars of the first century BCE ended it in favor of one-man rule under Augustus.