Lucretia

Lucretia is a figure of Roman legend, not of documented history. Livy tells her story at the end of Book 1 of his history of Rome. She is the wife of Collatinus, and her death is the turning point of Rome's story of how the kings fell. Romans reckoned that fall at 509 BCE, and Livy says the monarchy had lasted 244 years from the founding of the City (Ab Urbe Condita 1.60). That founding began with Romulus, told in the founding of Rome.

The story opens in the camp outside Ardea, which the Romans under King Tarquinius Superbus were besieging. Virgil gives the same city to Turnus in the Aeneid (Aeneid 7.341-434). At a wine party the king's son Sextus Tarquin and other young men fell to boasting about their wives. Collatinus, son of Egerius, said he could prove in a few hours that his Lucretia was best (Ab Urbe Condita 1.57).

They rode to Rome, where the king's daughters-in-law were feasting late, and on to Collatia. There they found Lucretia at her wool-work in the hall, with her maids around her. Livy gives her the prize for wifely virtue. Sextus Tarquin was struck by her beauty and her chaste bearing, and he formed a plan against her (Ab Urbe Condita 1.57).

A few days later Sextus returned to Collatia with one companion and was received as a guest. That night he came to her room with a drawn sword, and threatened to kill her if she cried out. When death did not move her, he threatened to lay a slave's body beside hers and say he had caught them together. Fear of that disgrace overcame her resistance, and he raped her (Ab Urbe Condita 1.58).

Lucretia sent to her father Spurius Lucretius in Rome and to her husband at Ardea. Each was to bring one trusted friend. Her father came with Publius Valerius, and Collatinus came with Lucius Junius Brutus. She told them what Sextus had done and asked for their word that he would be punished. They said the guilt lay with the man and not with her, since where there was no consent there was no guilt (Ab Urbe Condita 1.58).

She did not accept this. She said she acquitted herself of the sin but would not free herself of the penalty, and that no unchaste woman should ever plead Lucretia's example. She drew a knife hidden in her dress and stabbed herself in the heart, and died on the floor (Ab Urbe Condita 1.58).

Brutus drew the knife from the wound. Holding it up, he swore by her blood to drive out Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, his wife and their children, and to let no one reign in Rome. He passed the knife to Collatinus, Lucretius and Valerius, who swore the same (Ab Urbe Condita 1.59).

They carried her body to the Forum. Brutus, then holding the office of Tribune of the Celeres, called an assembly and spoke of the king's tyranny as well as the crime. The people voted to strip Tarquin of power and banish the whole family. Brutus took a force of volunteers to the camp at Ardea to win over the army, and Tarquin arrived at Rome to find the gates shut (Ab Urbe Condita 1.59; Ab Urbe Condita 1.60).

Tarquin went into exile among the Etruscans at Caere, with two of his sons. Livy says Sextus went to Gabii and was killed there in revenge for old feuds. The first consuls, chosen in the assembly of centuries, were Brutus and Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, her husband (Ab Urbe Condita 1.60).

Livy is the fullest and most read account, but he is not alone. Ovid tells the story in Book 2 of the Fasti as the origin of the Regifugium, the Flight of the King, on 24 February. His Lucretia is spinning wool when the men arrive, and Sextus makes the same threat about a slave. Ovid ends with the people assembled by Brutus, Tarquin and his family banished, and a consul governing for a year. He calls the day the last of kingly rule (Fasti 2.685-852).

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek writing in Rome, tells it more expansively and changes several details. Sextus offers her marriage and a share in the kingdom if she agrees, and death and disgrace if she refuses (Roman Antiquities 4.65). She then drives to her father's house in Rome, asks him to gather kinsmen, tells them, and kills herself with a dagger she brought under her robes (Roman Antiquities 4.66; Roman Antiquities 4.67). In this version Brutus swears only after Valerius reports her death to him (Roman Antiquities 4.70-4.71).

Valerius Maximus made her an exemplar. He calls her the leader of Roman chastity, a woman with a man's spirit, and says her death gave the Roman people cause to exchange consular for regal rule (Facta et Dicta Memorabilia 6.1.1). This is the reading that shaped later art and literature. She becomes a model of virtue, and the political revolution is read as a consequence of her suicide.

The sources disagree on where and how she is found, but not on the outline. Each has her attacked, her family told, her death by her own hand and Brutus turning it into a revolt. None dates the event in years before Christ, since that scheme is modern. The date of 509 BCE is the Roman traditional reckoning of the Republic's first year.

William Shakespeare retold her story as the narrative poem The Rape of Lucrece, entered in the Stationers' Register in May 1594 and published that year. It draws on Ovid's Fasti and on Livy's account in Book 1. The poem is a retelling in English verse, and its title uses the form Lucrece.

Sandro Botticelli painted The Story of Lucretia in Florence around 1500, a panel now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The museum describes it as tempera and oil on panel, and it shows the story in three episodes across one panel.