Although her body has been sullied, she says, her mind is innocent. After his triumphant departure, she summons her husband and father, and explains what has happened. In order to avoid bringing such disgrace upon her husband and family, Lucretia agrees to have sex with him. Finally he threatens her with disgrace: if she refuses him again, he will kill a male slave and place him in the bed next to her corpse, to imply that he has caught her in adulterous sex with a slave. Declaring his passion for Lucretia, he tries to persuade her to have sex with him with entreaties and threats, but she refuses him, unafraid of death. Some days later he returns to her house in Collatia as a guest, while Collatinus is away, and enters her bedroom at night, with a drawn sword. 2 At the combination of her beauty and her manifest virtue, Sextus Tarquinius (in Livy’s version, the king’s son) is inflamed with lust for Lucretia, and with desire to violate her. All the other wives are found partying, but the wife of Collatinus, Lucretia, is found quietly wool-working with her servants (an occupation associated in ancient Rome with wifely virtue). Collatinus suggests they resolve the matter by visiting the homes of each man in turn to take their wives by surprise. Bored and drinking together one evening, they begin to argue about whose wife is the most virtuous. 509 bce, when a group of leading Roman men are laying siege to the nearby city of Ardea. The canonical version, and most vivid account, is that of Livy Histories Book 1.57–60. Written during the eventual fall of the republic and Augustus’ rise to power, these retellings of the myth reflect values and concerns of their era, including anxieties about the control of women’s sexuality, and about monarchy, the abuse of power, and the ideals of the Roman republic. Considering herself ruined by this sexual act, Lucretia killed herself, first calling on family and friends to avenge her their subsequent vengeance not only drove the royal family out of Rome but put an end to the institution of monarchy itself.Īlthough the episode is set in the 6th century bce, our most extensive early ancient accounts were written in the 1st centuries bce and ce by Livy, Ovid, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Augustan authors for whom Lucretia’s fate was a distant legend. By forcing her to have sex with him in her own home, Sextus acted with a disregard for the bodies and dignities of other people that is characteristic of tyrants in the ancient imagination, and his assault on her is seen as symbolic of the wider oppression of the Roman people by their rulers. Lucretia herself was a loyal wife and virtuous woman, but she was drawn into the political story when she attracted the lustful attentions of one of the royal princes, Sextus Tarquinius. Lucretia is one of the most famous of the exemplary heroes of early Roman history, and her story is at the heart of the foundation myth which the ancient Romans told about how in 509 bce they expelled their rulers the Tarquinii, freed the Roman people from tyranny, and established their republican system of elected consuls. Lucretia and the Founding of the Roman Republic It has been used to explore a wide range of political and moral ideas, including the ethical ramifications of both rape and suicide. Since antiquity, the story has been reworked and reinterpreted many times, in scholarship, political thought and philosophy, and literature and arts. Although the episode is set in the 6th century bce, our most extensive early ancient accounts were written in the 1st centuries bce and ce by Livy, Ovid, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Augustan authors for whom Lucretia’s fate was a distant legend. This is the core of one of Rome’s more powerful and enduring foundation legends. The avengers of Lucretia’s rape are thus champions of liberty, freeing Rome from tyranny. Her death and the vengeance it inspired marked a turning point in Roman history in 509 bce, when Lucius Junius Brutus led the expulsion from Rome of the tyrannical Tarquinii, putting an end to monarchical rule, and founding the Roman republic Brutus and Lucretia’s father Collatinus were elected the first pair of consuls. Lucretia, the virtuous wife of Collatinus, was raped by a royal prince, Sextus Tarquinius, and killed herself after reporting the crime to her father and husband.
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