Lucretia - Lucretia in the arts

Roman heroine, the wife of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus who, according to legend, was raped by Sextus, the son of Tarquinius Superbus. She incited her father and husband to take an oath of vengeance against the Tarquins, then committed suicide by plunging a knife into her heart. The incident led to the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, and the tale has formed the basis of several works, notably Shakespeare's Rape of Lucrece and the opera The Rape of Lucretia by Benjamin Britten.

According to Livy's version of the establishment of the Republic, the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (superbus, "the proud") had a violent son, Sextus Tarquinius, who raped a Roman noblewoman named Lucretia.

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.

Lucretia in the arts

The suicide of Lucretia has been an enduring subject for visual artists, including Titian, Rembrandt, Dürer, Raphael, Botticelli, Breu, Moreelse, and others.

The story of Lucretia has been told in The Rape of Lucrece, a 1594 poem by William Shakespeare (who also mentioned her in Titus Andronicus);

Two ladies fair, but most unfortunate Have in their ruins rais'd declining Rome, Lucretia and Virginia, both renowned For chastity (Titus Andronicus)

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. This scene - fictionalised from Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars - may have 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.