<P> However, Tarquin's reign is remembered for his use of violence and intimidation to control Rome, and his disrespect of Roman custom and the Roman Senate . </P> <P> Tensions came to a head when the king's son, Sextus Tarquinius, raped Lucretia, wife and daughter to powerful Roman nobles . Lucretia told her relatives about the attack, and committed suicide to avoid the dishonour of the episode . Four men, led by Lucius Junius Brutus, and including Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Publius Valerius Poplicola, and Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus incited a revolution that deposed and expelled Tarquinius and his family from Rome in 509 BC . </P> <P> Tarquin was viewed so negatively that the word for king, rex, held a negative connotation in Latin language until the fall of the Roman Empire . </P> <P> Brutus and Collatinus became Rome's first consuls, marking the beginning of the Roman Republic . This new government would survive for the next 500 years until the rise of Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus, and would cover a period during which Rome's authority and area of control extended to cover great areas of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East . </P>

Rome was ruled by a kingship until the 6th century bc when it became a