23 Facts About Servius Tullius

Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty.

Servius Tullius was a popular king, and one of Rome's most significant benefactors.

Servius Tullius had military successes against Veii and the Etruscans, and expanded the city to include the Quirinal, Viminal and Esquiline hills.

Servius Tullius is traditionally credited with the institution of the Compitalia festivals, the building of temples to Fortuna and Diana and, less plausibly, the invention of Rome's first true coinage.

Servius Tullius was the sixth, and his successor Tarquinius Superbus was the last.

Servius Tullius was given to Tanaquil, wife of king Tarquinius, and though slave, was treated with the respect due her former status.

In Plutarch, Servius Tullius reluctantly consented to the kingship at the death-bed insistence of Tanaquil.

Early in his reign, Servius Tullius warred against Veii and the Etruscans.

Servius Tullius is said to have shown valour in the campaign, and to have routed a great army of the enemy.

Servius Tullius's success helped him to cement his position at Rome.

Rome's military and territorial expansion and consequent changes in its population would have made franchise regulation and reform an ongoing necessity, and their wholesale attribution to Servius Tullius "cannot be taken at face value".

Roman tradition held that Servius Tullius formed a comitia centuriata of commoners to displace the comitia curiata as Rome's central legislative body.

Servius Tullius himself is said to have taken a new residence, on the Esquiline.

Dionysius claims that Servius Tullius paid such debts "from his own purse", and forbade voluntary and compulsory debt bondage.

Servius Tullius is credited with the construction of Diana's temple on the Aventine Hill, to mark the foundation of the so-called Latin League; His servile birth-mythos, his populist leanings and his reorganisation of the vici appear to justify the Roman belief that he founded or reformed the Compitalia festivals, or allowed for the first time their attendance and service by non-citizens and slaves.

In Livy's history, Servius Tullius had two daughters, Tullia the Elder and Tullia the Younger.

Servius Tullius arranged their marriage to the two sons of his predecessor, Lucius Tarquinius and Arruns Tarquinius.

When Servius Tullius arrived at the senate-house to defend his position, Tarquinius threw him down the steps and Servius was murdered in the street by Tarquin's men.

Servius Tullius's murder is parricide, the worst of all crimes.

Servius Tullius's ancestry is an accident of fate, and his character and virtues are entirely Roman.

When Servius Tullius expanded Rome's influence and boundaries, and reorganised its citizenship and armies, his "new Rome" was still centered on the Comitium, the Casa Romuli or "hut" of Romulus.

Servius Tullius became a second Romulus, a benefactor to his people, part human, part divine; but his slave origins remain without parallel, and make him all the more remarkable: for Cornell, this is "the most important single fact about him".

Claudius was certain that Macstarna was simply another name for Servius Tullius, who started his career as an Etruscan ally of the Vibenna brothers and helped them settle Rome's Caelian Hill.