Tarpeian Rock, Rome. The Tarpeian Rock is a steep cliff of the southern summit of the Capitoline Hill, overlooking the Roman Forum in Ancient Rome.
It was used during the Roman Republic as an execution site. Murderers, traitors, perjurors, and larcenous slaves, if convicted by the quaestores parricidii, were flung from the cliff to their deaths.
The cliff was about 25 meters high. According to early Roman histories, when the Sabine ruler Titus Tatius attacked Rome after the Rape of the Sabines, the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius, governor of the citadel on the Capitoline Hill, betrayed the Romans by opening the city gates for Titus Tatius in return for what the Sabines bore on their arms.
In Book 1 of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, the Sabines having been accepted into the citadel, killed her, having been overwhelmed by weapons, and scuta congesta, meaning, heaped up shields. The Sabines crushed her to death with their shields, and her body was buried in the rock that now bears her name.
Regardless of whether or not Tarpeia was buried in the rock itself, it is significant that the rock was named for her deceit. About 500 BC, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh legendary king of Rome, levelled the top of the rock, removing the shrines built by the Sabines, and built the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the intermontium, the area between the two summits of the hill. The rock itself
It was used during the Roman Republic as an execution site. Murderers, traitors, perjurors, and larcenous slaves, if convicted by the quaestores parricidii, were flung from the cliff to their deaths.
The cliff was about 25 meters high. According to early Roman histories, when the Sabine ruler Titus Tatius attacked Rome after the Rape of the Sabines, the Vestal Virgin Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius, governor of the citadel on the Capitoline Hill, betrayed the Romans by opening the city gates for Titus Tatius in return for what the Sabines bore on their arms.
In Book 1 of Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, the Sabines having been accepted into the citadel, killed her, having been overwhelmed by weapons, and scuta congesta, meaning, heaped up shields. The Sabines crushed her to death with their shields, and her body was buried in the rock that now bears her name.
Regardless of whether or not Tarpeia was buried in the rock itself, it is significant that the rock was named for her deceit. About 500 BC, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh legendary king of Rome, levelled the top of the rock, removing the shrines built by the Sabines, and built the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the intermontium, the area between the two summits of the hill. The rock itself
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