Lucretia  

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Do not confuse with Lucrezia Borgia, see also Lucretia (disambiguation) and suicide in art

Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. According to the story, told mainly by two Roman historians, Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, her rape by the king's son and consequent suicide were the immediate cause of the revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established the Roman Republic. The incident kindled the flames of dissatisfaction over the tyrannical methods of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. As a result, the prominent families instituted a republic, drove the extensive Tarquin family from Rome, and successfully defended the republic against attempted Etruscan and Latin intervention. The rape has been a major theme in European art and literature.

The beginning of the republic is marked by the first appearance of the two consuls elected on a yearly basis. The Romans recorded events by consular year, keeping an official list in various forms called the fasti, utilized by Roman historians. The list and its events are authentic as far as can be known although debatable problems with many parts of it do exist. This list proves, as far as can be proved, that there was a Roman republic, that it began at the beginning of the fasti, and that it supplanted a monarchy. One of the first two consuls is Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, husband of Lucretia. All the numerous sources on the beginning of the republic reiterate these basic events. Lucretia and the monarchy cannot therefore be total myth or an elaborate literary hoax to deceive and entertain the Roman people about an early history that can't be known. The evidence points to the historical existence of a woman named Lucretia and a historical incident playing a critical part in the real downfall of a real monarchy. Many of the specific details are debatable. Later uses of the legend, however, are typically totally mythical, being of artistic rather than historical merit.

As the events of the story move rapidly, the date of the incident is probably the same year as the first of the fasti. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a major source, sets this year "at the beginning of the sixty-eighth Olympiad ... Isagoras being the annual archon at Athens;" that is, 508/507 BC (the ancient calendars split years over modern ones). Lucretia therefore died in 508 BC. The other historical sources tend to support this date, but the year is debatable within a range of about five years.

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.

Contents

In the arts

The Story of Lucretia (Botticelli), Tarquin and Lucretia (1515 painting)

Painting

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. Lucas Cranach the Elder painted five versions of her death.

=List of paintings

Literature

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.

Printmaking

See also




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.

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