Lucretia- Roman FigureMortal"Exemplar of Roman Virtue"
Also known as: Lucretia Collatina and Lucretia Tricipitina
Titles & Epithets
Symbols
Description
Spinning wool among her maids while other officers' wives feasted — that was how the soldiers found Lucretia when they rode to test their wives' virtue. Her chastity won the wager but caught the eye of Sextus Tarquinius, and what followed brought down the Roman monarchy.
Mythology & Lore
The Wager
During the siege of Ardea in 509 BCE, the young Roman officers fell to drinking and boasting about the virtue of their wives. Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Lucretia's husband, proposed they settle the question by riding home unannounced to see what their wives were actually doing. The officers of the royal house found their wives feasting and entertaining in their husbands' absence. But when the party reached Collatia, they found Lucretia sitting among her maids, spinning wool by lamplight.
Collatinus won the wager, and the soldiers returned to camp. But the evening had done its damage. Sextus Tarquinius, eldest son of King Tarquinius Superbus, had seen Lucretia's beauty and her virtue. Both inflamed him.
The Rape
Days later, Sextus returned to Collatia alone. Lucretia, bound by the obligations of Roman hospitality, received her husband's kinsman and gave him a guest chamber. That night he came to her room with a drawn sword. When Lucretia refused to submit even under threat of death, Sextus found the one threat she could not endure: he would kill her alongside a naked slave and claim he had caught them in adultery together. For a Roman noblewoman, posthumous disgrace was worse than the act itself. Lucretia yielded.
The Oath
The next morning, Lucretia summoned her father Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus and her husband Collatinus, asking each to bring a trusted witness. Collatinus brought Lucius Junius Brutus. Before the assembled men, Lucretia described what Sextus had done and extracted their oath to avenge her. Then she said that while the body had been violated, the mind was guiltless, and no unchaste woman would ever cite Lucretia as her precedent. She drew a dagger concealed in her robes and stabbed herself in the heart.
The Revolution
Brutus pulled the bloody dagger from Lucretia's body and swore over it to drive the Tarquin dynasty from Rome. He carried her body into the forum at Collatia, where the sight of the dead noblewoman roused the townspeople to fury. From Collatia the uprising spread to Rome itself. Brutus, who had long feigned stupidity to survive under the tyrannical king, revealed himself as a leader of formidable conviction. The monarchy fell. The Roman people expelled the royal family and elected Brutus and Collatinus as the first consuls of the Republic.