Lucretia  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
Revision as of 19:28, 6 December 2008
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

← Previous diff
Revision as of 19:37, 6 December 2008
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

Next diff →
Line 1: Line 1:
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-:''[[Lucrezia Borgia]], , [[The rape of Lucrece]], [[The suicide of Lucrece]]''+:''[[Lucrezia Borgia]], [[The rape of Lucrece]], [[The suicide of Lucrece]]''
'''Lucretia''' is a legendary figure in the history of the [[Roman Republic]]. '''Lucretia''' is a legendary figure in the history of the [[Roman Republic]].

Revision as of 19:37, 6 December 2008

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Lucrezia Borgia, The rape of Lucrece, The suicide of Lucrece

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") who ruled from 535 BC to 510 BC, 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.

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, 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.

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.

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.



Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Lucretia" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools