Brutus

Brutus, LUCIUS JUNIUS, in the legendary history of early Rome, the hero who overturned the monarchical and established the republican form of government. The son of a rich Roman, on whose death Tarquin the Proud seized the property and put an elder brother to death, he himself only escaped the same fate by feigning idiocy, whence the name Brutus ('stupid'). When the popular indignation was roused at the brutal outrage upon Lucretia, he placed himself at the head of the people, and drove the royal family from Rome. He was then elected one of the two first consuls (509 B.C.). With stern justice he sentenced to death his own two sons, detected in a conspiracy to restore the monarchy; and at last fell in mortal combat repelling an attack led on by one of the sons of Tarquin.