Tarquinius (tar-kwin'e-us), Lucius Priscus. The fifth king of Rome. According to the legends, succeeded Ancus Martius, 616, and died 578 B.C. Tarquinius Lucius Superbus was a grandson of the preceding. Tarquinius had married one of the daughters of Servius Tullius, but her sister, whose ambition resembled his own, by a series of horrid crimes, secured him as her husband, and urged him to the murder of her father to secure the throne in 534 B.C. Tarquinius reigned as a tyrant, but in the end it was the rape of Lucretia by his son, Sextus, which overthrew at once both him and the kingly rule in Rome. The date of the Regifuge or expulsion of the Tarquins was said to be 510 B.C.

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