The Rape of Lucrece draws on the story described in both Ovid's Fasti and Livy's History of Rome. Both authors were writing a few centuries after the events occurred, and their histories are not accepted as strictly accurate, partly because Roman records were destroyed by the Gauls in 390 BC, and the histories prior to that have been mixed with legends.
The Roman king was Lucius Tarquinius, or Tarquin. Because of his arrogance and his tyranny, he is also known as Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud). Lucius Tarquinius had killed his brother-in-law and father to become king of Rome. His son, Sextus Tarquinius, heir to the throne, is the rapist of the story. At the beginning of the poem the Roman army is waging war on a tribe known as the Volscians, who had claimed territory south of Rome. The Romans are laying siege to Ardea, a Volscian city 20 miles south of Rome.
In 509 BC, Sextus Tarquinius, son of the king of Rome, raped Lucretia (Lucrece), wife of Collatinus, one of the king's aristocratic retainers. As a result, Lucrece committed suicide. Her body was paraded in the Roman Forum by the king's nephew. This incited a full-scale revolt against the Tarquins led by Lucius Junius Brutus, the banishment of the royal family, and the founding of the Roman Republic.
