Let every man regard as the surest test what meets his eyes when the woman’s husband enters unexpected.” They were heated with wine. “Come! If the vigour of youth is in us let us mount our horses and see for ourselves the disposition of our wives. Every man fell to praising his own wife with enthusiasm, and, as their rivalry grew hot, Collatinus said that there was no need to talk about it, for it was in their power to know, in a few hours’ time, how far the rest were excelled by his own Lucretia. It chanced, as they were drinking in the quarters of Sextus Tarquinius, where Tarquinius Collatinus, son of Egerius, was also a guest, that the subject of wives came up. Here in their permanent camp, as is usual with a war not sharp but long drawn out, furlough was rather freely granted, more freely however to the leaders than to the soldiers the young princes for their part passed their idle hours together at dinners and drinking bouts. Having failed in this, the Romans invested the place with intrenchments, and began to beleaguer the enemy. An attempt was made to capture Ardea by assault. This very fact was the cause of the war, since the Roman king was eager not only to enrich himself, impoverished as he was by the splendour of his public works, but also to appease with booty the feeling of the common people who, besides the enmity they bore the monarch for other acts of pride, were especially resentful that the king should have kept them employed so long as artisans and doing the work of slaves. He entered Lucretia's room while she lay naked in her bed and started to wash her belly with water, which woke her up.Ardea belonged to the Rutuli, who were a nation of commanding wealth, for that place and period. In the alternative story, he returned from camp a few days later with one companion to take Collatinus up on his invitation to visit and was lodged in a guest bedroom. She awakened, he identified himself and offered her two choices: she could submit to his sexual advances and become his wife and future queen, or he would kill her and one of her slaves and placing the bodies together claim he had caught her having adulterous sex ( in flagrante delicto). The party awarded her the palm of victory and Lucius invited them to visit, but for the time being they returned to camp.Īt night Sextus entered her bedroom by stealth, quietly going around the slaves who were sleeping at her door. In a variant of the story, Sextus and Lucius, at a wine party on furlough, were debating the virtues of wives when Lucius volunteered to settle the debate by their all riding to his home to see what Lucretia was doing. Lucius' wife, Lucretia, daughter of Spurius Lucretius, prefect of Rome, "a man of distinction", made sure that the king's son was treated as became his rank, although her husband was away at the siege. Sextus was received with great hospitality at the governor's mansion, home of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, son of the king's nephew, Egerius Tarquinius Collatinus, former governor of Collatia and first of the Tarquinii Collatini. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, last king of Rome, being engaged in the siege of Ardea, sent his son, Sextus Tarquinius, on a military errand to Collatia. The rape has been a major theme in European art and literature. 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 incident kindled the flames of dissatisfaction over the tyrannical methods of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. According to the story, told mainly by the Roman historian Livy and the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (who lived in Rome at the time of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus), 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. Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. 1500-1501, Sandro Botticelli, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston In this detail of the center of the painting, the citizens with drawn swords are swearing the overthrow of the monarchy. Death of Lucretia, an artistic and symbolic rendition of the event by Sandro Botticelli.
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