According to early Roman histories, when the Sabine ruler Titus Tatius attacked Rome after the Rape of the Sabines, the Vestal VirginTarpeia, 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 survived the remodelling and was used for executions well into Sulla's time. However the execution of Simon bar Giora was as late as the time of Vespasian. There is a Latin phrase, Arx tarpeia Capitoli proxima, a warning that one's fall from grace can come swiftly. To be hurled off the Tarpeian Rock was, from a certain perspective, a fate worse than mere death, because it carried with it the stigma of shame. The standard method of execution in ancient Rome was by strangulation in the Tullianum. The rock was reserved for the most notorious traitors and as a place of unofficial, extra-legal executions such as the near-execution of then-Senator Gaius Marcius Coriolanus by a mob whipped into frenzy by a tribune of the plebs.
The Tarpeian Rock is briefly mentioned in Act Three Scene Three of Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus. In lines 87-90 Coriolanus warns,
"Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,/ Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger/ But with a grain a day; I would not buy/ Their mercy at the price of one fair word". In lines 99-104, Sicinius Velutus gives judgement: "we/ Even from this instant, banish him our city,/ In peril of precipitation/ From off the rock Tarpeian, never more/ To enter our Rome gates".
In Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, the jailer at the Circus Maximus remarks to Asterix and Obelix that, while they are getting a gourmet feast leading up to the day they are thrown to the lions, "Those who are thrown from the Tarpeian Rock are given solid, heavy food".
In Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, a character is murdered by another character by being thrown from the Tarpeian Rock.
In Canto IX of Purgatory of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, there is a reference to the Tarpeian Rock. When Metellusus yielded to Julius Caesar, the rock, close by, was said to creak when the door to the treasury was opened. The symbolic meaning is obvious as Caesar was criticized to rob the public treasury of Roman Republic.
In the HBO TV seriesRome, Julius Caesar refers to the site while trying to motivate his soldiers to march to Rome in opposition to the Senate.
In A Capitol Death by Lindsey Davis, three deaths involve falls from the Tarpeian Rock
