A Roman woman of rank, especially in the archaic period, remained within domestic boundaries: she wove, managed the household, and raised children. Her name disappeared behind that of her father's gens.
But Tanaquil came from Tarquinia: she was Etruscan, and this changed everything.
According to the account given by Livy, Tanaquil belonged to the highest aristocracy of Tarquinia. She had married Lucumo, son of Demaratus of Corinth, a Greek who had fled his homeland during political upheavals and settled in Etruria. Lucumo had inherited considerable wealth, but remained always the son of a refugee. The Etruscans marginalized him for his foreign origins.
It was Tanaquil who could not tolerate this disgrace and convinced her husband to seek his fortune elsewhere. Rome seemed perfect to her: a city of new people, where one became noble quickly and based on merit. For an ambitious man like Lucumo, Rome represented the opportunity that Tarquinia denied him.
So they gathered their possessions and departed.
The Prodigy of the Eagle
By chance, a strong wind had arisen on the Janiculum. There, as he sat in his carriage with his wife, an eagle with wings softly outspread swooped down and took his cap, then flew above the carriage with a loud cry, and as if sent by divine agency, placed it neatly back upon his head. Then it soared away.
Tanaquil, said to be skilled, as Etruscan women generally were, in interpreting heavenly signs, is reported to have received the omen with joy.
She embraced her husband and urged him to hope for lofty and great things. That bird, she said, had come as a messenger from that region of the sky and from that god. It had made its auspice around the highest part of the man. It had lifted the symbol of human dignity from his head, only to return it as a divine gift.
Lucumo, who called himself Lucius Tarquinius Priscus in Rome, indeed became the fifth king of Rome.
The Prodigy of Fire
Livy speaks again of Tanaquil on the occasion of a second prodigious event:
At that time, a prodigy occurred in the royal palace, marvellous both to see and in its outcome. They say that the head of a sleeping boy, whose name was Servius Tullius, caught fire in the sight of many.
A great outcry arose at the wonder of such a thing, and the king and queen were awakened.
When one of the attendants brought water to extinguish the flames, he was stopped by the queen, who calmed the commotion and forbade anyone to touch the boy until he woke up on his own.
Soon, both the fire and the sleep vanished together.
Tanaquil then took her husband aside and said:
Do you see this boy (…) whom we are raising in such humble condition? You may be sure that one day he will be a light to our uncertain fortunes and a protection to our troubled royal house. Let us therefore nurture, with all our care, this source of great honor both public and private.
From that moment, Servius was treated like a son, educated for power and prepared for succession.
Tanaquil had orchestrated this prodigy too: she stopped the panic, managed the scene and transformed an inexplicable event into a dynastic investment.
After making one king, Tanaquil was creating another.
Tanaquil, portrayed in 1519 by Domenico Beccafumi. The inscription she gestures toward reads: “With my foresight, I created two kings: first my husband, then my servant.”
When Tarquinius was assassinated, struck down by two shepherds hired by the sons of Ancus Marcius, the previous king, Tanaquil took charge of every detail of the transition.
The palace was closed on her orders. Eyewitnesses disappeared. She procured what was needed to stitch the wound, as if there were still hope.
Then she called Servius, showed him her husband's nearly lifeless body and said:
The kingdom is yours, Servius, if you are a man. It does not belong to those who committed a vile crime using the hands of others.
Rise up and follow the gods as your guides. They once foretold that this head would be illustrious, when it was surrounded by divine fire.
Let that heavenly flame awaken you now. Rise and truly awaken.
We too have ruled, though we were foreigners. Think about who you are, not where you were born.
If your own plans are numbed by this sudden turn, then follow mine.
When the crowd's uproar became unbearable, Tanaquil appeared at the window overlooking the Via Nova and spoke to the people. The king had been struck treacherously, she said, but the blade had not penetrated deeply. Soon they would be able to see him again.
In the meantime, they should obey Servius Tullius.
Tanaquil “adloquitur populum”, Livy writes. She addresses the people. Not the servants, not the court: the Roman populus. This was not a domestic conversation, but a public act of authority. Her voice fills the gap left by a dying king.
For several days, Servius governed pretending to be a temporary substitute, while consolidating power. Only afterward was Tarquinius's death announced, when the succession could no longer be contested.
According to the tradition, Servius Tullius ruled for more than forty years. And no one remembered anymore whether he was the son of a slave or a noble: even origins can be rewritten, if someone knows how.
Cracks in the Narrative
What does Livy tell us about Tanaquil?
She is a woman of noble origins, proud and resolute, who, being an Etruscan, knows the haruspicial arts and, above all, knows how to turn them to her advantage.
She, who can recognize royal qualities even in a child raised as a servant, will raise him to become her husband's successor.
In the heated moments of regicide, she will be the one not to lose her composure and to plan the investiture (which was not hereditary) of Servius Tullius through a clever stratagem.
Servius (…) was the first to reign without the people's command, but with the senators' consent.
Livy's judgment of Tanaquil emerges indirectly, through the words of others. When Tullia, daughter of Servius Tullius, incites her husband Tarquinius to usurp the throne, she complains bitterly:
With these and other reproaches, she goaded the young man on. Nor could she find peace herself, seeing that Tanaquil, a foreign woman, had been able to act with such boldness of spirit that she gave the kingship first to her husband and then to her son-in-law, while she, born of royal blood, had no influence in giving or taking away the crown.
Livy is recounting Tullia's wickedness, but inadvertently reveals Tanaquil's political effectiveness. Even a king's daughter acknowledges her inability to achieve what the Etruscan foreigner had accomplished through schemes and strategy.
Several decades later, Pliny the Elder remembered her differently:
Marcus Varro reports that the wool on the distaff and spindle of Tanaquil, who was also called Gaia Caecilia, had lasted in the temple of Sancus, and that she had woven the wavy royal toga kept in the temple of Fortuna, which had been worn by Servius Tullius.
From this originated the custom that a decorated distaff and a spindle with thread would accompany virgin brides.
She was the first to weave the tunica recta, the straight tunic worn with the toga pura by both young men coming of age and newly married women.
Over time, the powerful figure of Tanaquil was filtered through safer virtues.
Pliny and Varro do not speak of her voice or her role in managing royal succession. They remember her hands: spinning wool, weaving garments, setting bridal customs.
The queen who once spoke to the people became Gaia Caecilia, patroness of order, of looms, of weddings.
There is no contradiction, perhaps - but something went silent.
Bibliography
Livy, Ab Urbe condita, Book I.
Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, Book VIII.
I didn't know about Tanaquil, what a remarkable woman!