Lucretia
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Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. Her husband was Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, and her brother was Lucius Junius Brutus. According to Roman mythology her rape and consequent suicide were the cause for the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of the Roman republic.
According to the version of Livy, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (superbus, "the proud") the last king of Rome, had a violent son, Sextus Tarquinius, who in 509 BC raped a Roman noblewoman named Lucretia.[1] Lucretia compelled her family to take action by gathering her kinsmen, telling them what happened, and then killing herself.[2]
Lucius Junius Brutus, her brother, 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 republic. Among the avengers was also her husband Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus. In the end Lucretia's brother and her husband became the first consuls of Rome.[3]
St. Augustine made use of the figure of Lucretia in The City of God to defend the honour of Christian women who had been raped in the sack of Rome and had not committed suicide.
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[edit] In the arts
The suicide of Lucretia has been an enduring subject for visual artists, including Titian, Rembrandt, Dürer, Raphael, Botticelli, Jörg Breu the Elder, Johannes Moreelse, Gentileschi, Damià Campeny and others.
The story of Lucretia has been told in The Legend of Good Women, a 1380s poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. William Shakespeare's long poem The Rape of Lucrece, was published in 1594. He also mentioned her in Titus Andronicus and As You Like It.
She is also mentioned in the play Appius and Virginia by John Webster and Thomas Heywood, which includes the following lines:
- Two ladies fair, but most unfortunate
- Have in their ruins rais'd declining Rome,
- Lucretia and Virginia, both renowned
- For chastity
Thomas Heywood's play The Rape of Lucrece dates from 1607. The subject also enjoyed a revival in the mid twentieth century; Le Viol de Lucrèce was a 1931 play by André Obey and The Rape of Lucretia, a 1946 opera by Benjamin Britten. Ernst Krenek set Emmet Lavery's libretto Tarquin (1940), a version in a contemporary setting.
Lucretia appears to Dante in the section of Limbo reserved to the nobles of Rome and other "virtuous pagans" in Canto IV of the Inferno.
Christine de Pizan used Lucretia just as St. Augustine of Hippo did in her City of Ladies, defending a womans sanctity.
In Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel Pamela, Mr. B. cites the story of Lucretia as a reason why Pamela ought not fear for her reputation, should he rape her. Pamela quickly sets him straight with a better reading of the story.
Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, a famous Latin American also mentions "Lucrecia" in her poem "Redondillas", a commentary on prostitution and who is to blame.
[edit] In popular culture
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 been 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.
"Lucretia" is the title of a song on the album Rust in Peace by American thrash-metal band Megadeth, written by singer Dave Mustaine. Additionally, two song titles on Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, an album by Blood, Sweat & Tears, refer to Lucretia: "Lucretia MacEvil" and "Lucretia's Reprise". Both songs were written by lead singer David Clayton-Thomas.
The Sisters of Mercy (a 1980's Gothic Rock band) did a song called "Lucretia, My Reflection" which was later covered by The Alkaline Trio, Project 86, Kreator and in Warrel Dane's 2008 solo album "Praises to the War Machine".
She is referred to in the song, "Subhuman" by Garbage (on their B-sides album) as a "smart girl."
She is also mentioned in the song, "Bare Grace Misery" by Nightwish.
Lucretia is mentioned in the song "The Cardinal Sin" off of the Dead Can Dance album Spleen and Ideal.
There is a character named Lucrecia whose story is very similar to the Roman Lucretia in the popular video game "Final Fantasy VII." In the game, Lucrecia becomes a scientific guinea pig when her husband ("Professor Hojo") tricks her into offering up her body for scientific experimentation, and she ends up giving birth to the antagonist, "Sephiroth." A man, Vincent Valentine, that truly loves her gets in the way of her husband and the plans for Sephiroth and is shot and mutilated by Hojo who cuts off his arm, attaching a mechanical one. Hojo uses him for experiments involving Mako and Jenova's cells. Lucrecia, grief-stricken, tries to save him. When she does, he proclaims himself a monster and locks himself in a coffin beneath the Shinra mansion. She later commits suicide by shutting herself away in a Mako cavern, because she feels that all the things that have happened to her son and to Vincent are her fault. Vincent is the only one who remembers her name. Like the Lucretia of Roman legend, she is "raped" and forgotten, not even her son acknowledges her.
"The Rape of Lucretia" is mentioned in the 1968 version of The Producers toward the beginning of the film.
The film Once Were Warriors echos elements of the Lucretia story: A young girl commits suicide, and her diary reveals that she was raped. Her father then attacks the rapist.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- The Rape of Lucretia, by Livy, Ab urbe condita libri I. 57 - 60.
[edit] External links
