Lucretia
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Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic.
According to Livy's version of the establishment of the Republic, the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (superbus, "the proud") had a violent son, Sextus Tarquinius, who raped a Roman noblewoman named Lucretia. Lucretia compelled her family to take action by gathering the men, telling them what happened, and killing herself. Lucius Junius Brutus incited the people of Rome against the royal family by displaying her body. They were impelled to avenge her, and Brutus led an uprising that drove the Tarquins out of Rome to take refuge in Etruria. The result was the replacement of the monarchy with the new Roman republic. Among the avengers were her husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, who was a nephew of Tarquinius Priscus and one of the first consuls of Rome, along with Brutus.
St. Augustine made use of the figure of Lucretia in The City of God to defend the honor of Christian women who had been raped in the sack of Rome and had not committed suicide.
[edit] Lucretia in the arts
The suicide of Lucretia has been an enduring subject for visual artists, including Titian, Rembrandt, Dürer, Raphael, Botticelli, Breu, Moreelse, and others.
The story of Lucretia has been told in The Rape of Lucrece, a 1594 poem by William Shakespeare (who also mentioned her in Titus Andronicus); The Rape of Lucrece, a 1607 play by Thomas Heywood; Le Viol de Lucrèce, a play by André Obey; and The Rape of Lucretia, a 1941 opera by Benjamin Britten.
- Two ladies fair, but most unfortunate
- Have in their ruins rais'd declining Rome,
- Lucretia and Virginia, both renowned
- For chastity
- (Titus Andronicus)
Episode 6, "Queen of Heaven", of the BBC miniseries I, Claudius opens with a scene where a Roman noblewoman, Lollia (played by Isabel Dean), recounts to her friends how she participated in the perverse orgies orchestrated by the emperor Tiberius so that he would not try to include her daughter in them. Even though she has saved her daughter, Lollia is so ashamed of how Tiberius' lust has tainted her that she stabs herself in front of her assembled guests. This scene - fictionalised from Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars [citation needed] - may have meant to allude to the legend of Lucretia, as a powerful indictment of the emperor and perhaps also as a cry for a return to republicanism.
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