Tanaquil

Etruscan aristocrat; wife of King Tarquin the First of Rome

• Born: fl. mid- to late seventh century b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Tarquinii, Etruria (now Tarquinia, Italy) and Rome

Tanaquil, an Etruscan aristocrat, participated in the making of two Roman kings.

Early Life

Virtually nothing is known of Tanaquil (TAN-ah-kwihl) before she married Lucumo, a half-Etruscan and half-Greek man from Corinth, renamed Lucius Tarquinius Priscus and known in history as Tarquin the First, the first Etruscan king of the Romans. The accounts of her in literature, however, allow one to suppose that she had an aristocratic upbringing and education that, coupled with her own characteristics, apparently shaped a decisive but generous woman with quick intelligence and ambition.

The main ancient source for Tanaquil’s life and exploits is the Roman historian Livy’s account of the early history of Rome, Ab urbe condita libri (c. 26 b.c.e.-15 c.e.; The History of Rome, 1600), and he credits Tanaquil with influence in six distinct events: her and her husband’s abandonment of her native town Tarquinia for Rome; the interpretation of an omen on their arrival at Rome; the interpretation of an omen concerning their boy slave, Servius Tullius; action taken regarding the mother of Servius; in placing Servius Tullius, now her son-in-law, on the throne at the death of Tarquin; and the actions of her granddaughter, the younger Tullia, who was determined to emulate Tanaquil’s successes.

Life’s Work

Tanaquil enters Livy’s narrative in his discussion of Lucumo. Livy reports that Lucumo was perceived by his fellow Tarquinians as an alien (his father was Corinthian) and therefore despised. He realized that despite his inherited wealth he would never be able to rise to a high position in Tarquinia. His wealth added to his pride, as did his marriage to Tanaquil, a young woman who Livy says “was not of a sort to put up with humbler circumstances in her married life than those she had been previously accustomed to.” He says she also could not tolerate the indignity of her husband’s position, as she wanted him to be highly regarded and, having suppressed her affection for her native town, decided that they should go to Rome, where opportunities for advancement—even for foreigners—abounded. Lucumo readily agreed, and they left for Rome.

On their arrival, while they were sitting in their carriage, an eagle descended gently on them and snatched Lucumo’s hat. The eagle rose with great commotion and then swooped down again and replaced the hat before disappearing into the blue. Tanaquil, Livy reports, joyfully hugged her husband and interpreted the omen to mean that “no fortune was too high to hope for,” because the bird had come as a messenger from the gods, gone to Lucumo’s “highest part,” taken the hat (or crown, as she now declared) to heaven, and restored it with divine approval. Livy remarks that Tanaquil, like most Etruscans, was well skilled in reading celestial signs.

Throughout Livy’s description of Lucumo—now Lucius Tarquinius Priscus—and his martial and civic successes in Rome, Tanaquil remained in the background until a strange event happened in the palace. As a young boy, named Servius Tullius, who was being raised in the royal palace as a slave, slept, his head burst into flames. The commotion brought both Tanaquil and Tarquin to the scene, but Tanaquil took charge of the situation. She forbade anyone from putting the flames out and instead insisted that the boy not be disturbed until he woke naturally. When he awoke a few minutes later, the flame went out. In secret, she discussed the matter with Tarquin, claiming that the flame portended that “he will one day prove a light in our darkness, a prop to our house in the day of its affliction.” She therefore took him under her wing, providing him with a prince’s education and treating him as a prince as well. His nature proved to be royal, and Tarquin betrothed him to his daughter. Livy suggests that Servius and his mother were never slaves but instead had been captured and brought to Rome, where Tanaquil, “as a tribute to her rank,” did not enslave them but allowed them to live freely in the palace and became close friends with the mother and loved the boy.

When Tarquin was murdered by an ax wound to the head, Tanaquil immediately took precautions to ensure her safety and reputation, fearing again that she would become a “creature of contempt in the eyes of those who hated her.” She ordered the palace gates to be closed, prepared salves for the wound to make people believe the king still lived, and called for Servius. She bid him to rise to his destiny and then went to an upper room of the palace. From the window, she urged the crowd below to be calm and patient, as the king had suffered only a surface wound and would soon recover. In the meantime, she bade them to give their loyalty to Servius. From this beginning, he gradually secured his place on the throne.

Tarquin had two sons (or grandsons), Lucius Tarquinius and Aruns. They had married Servius’s two daughters, both called Tullia. The younger Tullia was unhappily married to the mild-mannered Aruns; he lacked ambition and fire. Tullia instead burned for Lucius Tarquinius and approached him with a murderous scheme. Soon thereafter they were both widowed and, without King Servius’s approval, married each other. Tullia, tortured by the thought of Tanaquil’s success with kingmaking, determined to emulate her, reasoning that if Tanaquil, a foreigner, had had enough influence to twice confer the crown, then she, of royal blood, must also be of some influence in the making of kings. She spurred her husband to action, causing her father’s death and seeing her husband take the throne as Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, or Tarquin the Proud, the last of the kings of Rome.

Significance

Much of what is known about the Etruscans comes from material remains and written accounts of them in non-Etruscan literature; no Etruscan literature survives. The classical writers Aristotle, Theopompus (a fourth century b.c.e. historian from Chios), and Livy report events inaccurately or with their own biases. To the Greeks and the Romans, the Etruscans were an unusual people who lived in luxury and enjoyed a prosperity that made them wanton and self-indulgent. Etruscan women, according to classical writers, participated in the decadence of their society, and their prerogatives and habits piqued the curiosity of non-Etruscan writers. Much of the material remains tends to corroborate the written evidence that presents the upper-class Etruscan women of the Archaic period (seventh to fifth century b.c.e.) as having a freedom and autonomy that was atypical in the ancient Greek and Roman world.

Wall paintings from tombs in Tarquinia and Cerveteri and other Etruscan cities depict scenes of luxurious feasts at which husbands and wives share equally in the festivities. Sarcophagi depict affectionate couples reclining together for eternity. Unlike Greek and Roman women, Etruscan women, as evidenced from funerary inscriptions and literature, had their own names, independent of their fathers’ or mothers’. Evidence for female literacy exists in the numerous inscribed mirrors. From what can be gathered from these ancient sources, Tanaquil was not unusual in her predilection to take an active role in the lives of those around her.

This apparent high status and visibility of Etruscan women helped lead J. J. Bachofen in the 1860’s to postulate his theory of matriarchy, a theory now well disproven, though still influential in Etruscology, and scholarly debate continues on the political role of Etruscan women. One side, best represented by the writings of L. Bonfante, concludes that Etruscan women did indeed enjoy a freedom and power unfamiliar to the rest of the ancient world and that the classical writers discuss the Etruscans in terms of “otherness” precisely to portray negative role models for contemporary Roman matrons. The other side, represented most eloquently by Iain McDougall, argues that social freedom does not necessarily imply political clout and looks instead to understand the historical account of Livy in its context. Focusing on the tendency of Livy to present ancient history in modern garb, these scholars conclude that Livy’s account reflects contemporary phenomena rather than those of an ancient, and nearly completely assimilated, society. Examples include the similarity of the behavior of Tanaquil at Tarquin’s death to that of Livia, wife of Augustus, at his death, or the similarity of the omens of Tarquin’s hat and Augustus’s bread as told by Suetonius, who records that when Augustus was having a picnic by the Appian Way, an eagle removed a piece of bread from his hands, soared in the air, and replaced it between his fingers.

For the story of Tanaquil in particular, it is also imperative to uncover the biases of Livy. D. S. Gochberg organizes these biases into five categories: Roman history for Livy is diagnostic, therapeutic, culturally imperialistic, militaristic, and—above all—moralistic. In his account of Tanaquil it is not explicit whether Livy considers her actions the result of ambition or of normal aristocratic sensibilities or whether he admires or finds fault with her (though he clearly finds fault with Tullia’s behavior, and one might conclude that because she bases her behavior on Tanaquil’s, Livy finds fault with both). The moralistic impetus that drives Livy’s work is that simplicity and modesty are preferable to greed and ambition and that the study of ancient history provides examples or situations to reject or repeat.

Because Livy is writing in an age of political unrest, his history is both escapist and self-protective. By writing history, he can either ignore or confront modern troubles while avoiding the possibility of offending politicians like the young Augustus. It remains a question of scholarly debate whether Tanaquil appears in Livy’s histories to provide a foil for Roman matrons like Lucretia or whether he uses Tanaquil in lieu of contemporary Roman women, who may be, in fact, his target.

The Tanaquil whom Livy presents clearly exhibits general traits of aristocracy: solidarity with other aristocrats, awareness of aristocratic privilege and the envy it may arouse in less fortunate people, and ambition that overrides natal family or national connections. At the same time, Livy highlights her Etruscan characteristics: her name, her independence, and her facility in interpreting omens.

Traditional Dates of the Early Kings of Rome and Their Wives

753-715

• Romulus (Alba Longa) + Hersilia (Sabine)

715-673

• Numa Pompilius (Sabine) + unnamed poet

673-642

• Tullus Hostilius (Latin)

642-617

• Ancus Marcus (Latin) + unnamed mother of two sons

616-579

• Lucius Tarquinius Priscus (Etruscan) + Tanaquil

579-535

• Servius Tullius (Etruscan) + daughter of Tanaquil

534-510

• Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (Etruscan) + Tullia

Note: Ethnicity appears in parentheses.

Bibliography

Bachofen, J. J. Das Mutterrect. 1861. Reprint. Basel, Switzerland: B. Schwabe, 1984. Bachofen proposed a theory of matriarchy and supported it for the Etruscans from the narrative of Livy. The theory of matriarchy has been disproven.

Bonfante, L. “Etruscan Couples and Their Aristocratic Society.” In Reflections of Women in Antiquity, edited by H. Foley. New York: Gordon and Breach Science, 1981. Discusses the differences between Etruscan and Roman women. Bonfante argues that the archaeological evidence for the independence and power of Etruscan women is supported by the accounts of the classical writers.

Bonfante, L., ed. Etruscan Life and Afterlife. A Handbook of Etruscan Studies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986. This is a collection of essays that discuss Etruscan history, politics, trade, art, architecture, coinage, language, daily life, and afterlife.

Heurgon, Jacques. Daily Life of the Etruscans. London: Phoenix, 2002. Heurgon is a proponent of the view that Etruscan woman played a role in civic life to which Roman matrons could never aspire.

Livy. The Early History of Rome. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Livy is the primary source for information on Tanaquil. Quotations in this article are taken from this translation.

McDougall, Iain. “Livy and Etruscan Women.” The Ancient History Bulletin 4, no. 2 (1990): 24-30. McDougall argues that the literary evidence for Tanaquil provided by Livy does not support the notion of the political power of Etruscan women.

Nulle, Stebelton H., ed. Classics of Western Thought: The Ancient World. 4th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988. Organizes Livy’s biases into five categories. To Gochberg, Roman history for Livy is diagnostic, therapeutic, culturally imperialistic, militaristic, and moralistic.

Ogilvie, R. M. A Commentary on Livy Books 1-5. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1965. Notes the tendency of Livy to present ancient history within the context of his own time.

Richardson, Emeline Hill. The Etruscans: Their Art and Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Richardson presents a comprehensive and accessible general overview of the Etruscan people and their customs, art, architecture, and religious beliefs.