Reinventing Lucretia: Rape, Suicide and Redemption from Classical Antiquity to the Medieval Era

Abstract

This article examines the rape and suicide of the archetypal Roman matron Lucretia and the representation and appropriation of her story in literature from Augustan Rome, Late Antiquity and the medieval period. Rape and suicide have always been highly evocative, topical and controversial actions for scrutinising the relationship between gender and history, and it is no accident that Rome's first high-profile victim was later drawn upon by writers from 2,000 years of European history to explore issues such as appropriate (and inappropriate) female behaviour, sexuality, guilt, redemption, and the ethics of voluntary death. This article offers a diachronic perspective on the long afterlife of a single Roman myth and the potency of that myth as a privileged and effective point of reference for exploring femininity, rape and suicide in European history.

Introduction

On a dark night in 510 bc, the noble, virtuous Lucretia, Roman matron and dutiful wife, was brutally raped by Sextus Tarquinius, the son of the last king of Rome. As the sun rose the next day, Lucretia gathered her family about her and, after recounting her horrific experience the previous night, stabbed herself through the heart to end the pain. Little did she know that her deed would set in motion an uprising that would drive the kings out of the city forever and establish Republican government in Rome for hundreds of years to come.

This is just one version of what happened to Lucretia. The tale of her rape and her subsequent noble suicide—and its effect on the world of men and politics—has been recounted numerous times in a variety of genres across the past 2000 years, from the canonical version in the histories of the Roman historian Livy, to Benjamin Britten’s 1946 opera, The Rape of Lucretia. Yet, Lucretia’s story is not just representative of the sins committed by one man and the suffering felt by his female victim. These various narratives continually exploit, appropriate and reformulate the tale in reflection of the cultural and intellectual climate of their times.

This article analyses the (re)invention of Lucretia’s tale in works of different genres from three different periods: Livy’s history of Rome and Ovid’s elegiac Fasti written under the first Roman emperor Augustus (late first century bc/early first century ad); various writings of Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine from Late Antiquity (third to fifth centuries ad); Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women alongside the works of John Gower and Christine de Pizan from the medieval period (late fourteenth to early fifteenth century). Their versions of the myth reflect its developments and evolution over the centuries. From pagan to Christian accounts, these authors’ perspectives reflect the potency of rape and suicide as symbolic actions from antiquity to modernity: The violated female and her subsequent brave decision to take her own life has remained a compelling and evocative motif across the ages, her rape and subsequent suicide told and retold in a self-perpetuating narrative of outrage, revenge and redemption.

Each account is analysed within its wider social, historical and literary context. Three key aspects of the story are scrutinised: the representation of the main events and figures of the story and how this relates to contemporary concerns about the position of women and gender roles and boundaries (for example, Livy’s engagement with current concerns about sexuality); the relationship of the rape and suicide of Lucretia to wider historical events (for example, Augustine’s utilisation of the tale to broach the recent rape of Christian women); and the appropriateness of Lucretia’s decision to commit suicide and how the different writers have understood this decision (for example, Christine de Pizan’s Lucretia kills herself to demonstrate the horrors of the violation she has suffered). These different elements of the myth are brought together to show how each author reshaped the story in order to reflect on the pressing political, historical, social and ethical issues of their day. Ultimately, this article aims to demonstrate the ways in which writers and thinkers, in different time periods, found in the story of the rape and suicide of Lucretia a tale that could be exploited to suit their own literary goals.

Recent studies of sexual violence explore topics such as the motivations of rapists, the prevalence of domestic violence, sexual harassment and how late twentieth century/early twenty-first century society has reacted to raped women (for example, evaluating the responses of hospital workers and members of the police force to victims).¹ Researchers studying historical accounts of rape are not able to consider all of these questions² and must formulate their own theoretical framework in order to tackle the subject. This can be achieved in several different ways. To quote one example, the chapters in the 2001 volume edited by Elizabeth Robertson and Christine Rose examining portrayals of rape in Medieval and Early Modern literature take as their starting point two main ideas that they view as central to an exploration of the topic in the time period covered: that ‘stories of sexual violence against women serve as foundational myths of Western culture’ and that rape stories can be revealing about the relationships between men and women and the perception of women as ‘subjects’ in a specific society [77, p. 1]. Robertson and Rose acknowledge that there is no established method by which historical rape narratives are approached and emphasise at the start of their volume, that ‘feminist analyses of rape have only just begun’ [77, p. 1].³

Modern scholars examining Lucretia’s story in different historical and literary settings have developed their own approaches to the myth [41]. Stephanie Jed explores the rape of Lucretia in the Declamatio Lucretiae of the Italian Coluccio Salutati. She focuses on the emphasis Salutati places on the violent and repressive aspects of the story, connecting this emphasis to Salutati’s humanistic agenda in this work. Melissa Matthes’ study of Lucretia’s rape as portrayed in the writings of Machiavelli and Rousseau concentrates on the story in relation to political thought, but nevertheless takes a similar stance to that of Robertson and Rose described above: ‘founding stories’, specifically those of republics, are often linked to the sexual violation of women [77, p. 3].

This article builds upon these theories, exploring the different manifestations of the tale of Lucretia as detailed above. In this endeavour, it also refers to the earlier work of Marilyn Skinner, who has argued that any study of women in (classical) sources must accept the basic premises of feminist theory, that ‘patriarchy….has served as the central organising principle of Western European society for over three thousand years; that from antiquity onwards the European cultural record has systematically devalued the achievements and interests of females; that gender and sexuality are social constructs, designed…to reinforce the privileges of dominant groups; that knowledge about women, whether contemporary or historical, has both a political and a personal dimension’ [81, p. 3]. If we accept Skinner’s theories, analyses of literature written hundreds of years before the concept of ‘feminism’ was even formulated can still reveal much about gender paradigms, expected behaviour of women and what transpired if they transgressed the boundaries traditionally laid out for them. These versions of Lucretia’s story can also shed new light upon socially constructed attitudes towards both sexes and how the educated elite utilised this within their works of the literature.

Lucretia in Classical Antiquity: Livy and Ovid

The account of Lucretia given in the first book of Livy’s history, written around 27–5 bc, represents the earliest extended account of the myth to survive today. Right from the very beginning, Livy marks Lucretia out as possessing exceptional characteristics. In the contest between her husband Collatinus and Tarquinius to decide who has the best wife, she ‘surpasses’ all the other men’s wives (1.57.7).⁴ Lucretia is then viewed in the very heart of her house where a proper wife should be, working her wool with her maids even though it is late at night (1.57.9). The connection of wool working to female virtue was a very traditional ideal in Rome [65, p. 222]. Later, Livy makes it clear that it is not just Lucretia’s appearance that provokes Tarquinius’ desire for her, but her chastity as well (1.57.11). Tarquinius initially fails to secure Lucretia’s submission to the rape by the threat of a sword: Even death is not enough to induce her to yield (1.58.2–1.58.4).

However, Lucretia is forced to surrender to Tarquinius when he threatens to kill her along with a slave, as though he had found them committing adultery (1.58.4). To Livy, it was important that he emphasised it was only because of this dreadful prospect of being caught with a slave specifically that Lucretia justifiably submitted to the rape: her resolute chastity (‘obstinata pudicitia’) cannot recover from this (1.58.5).⁵ Langlands notes that it is her fear of ‘what people might think’ that finally overcomes Lucretia and not a fear of death or the physical force of being raped. Lucretia is forced to yield and Tarquinius rapes her: She sacrifices her ‘pudicitia’ in order not to damage her ‘fama’. In some respects, it could be argued that Tarquinius has gained her consent by forcing her into making an impossible decision [52, pp. 90–91].

After the rape, Lucretia acts quickly and calmly. She tells her family that although she has been raped, only her body has been violated, and her death will be testimony to her ‘innocent’ soul. Lucretia also implores her family to punish Tarquinius (1.58.7–1.58.8). She also feels that she needs to punish herself so that in the future, no unchaste woman will ever live using her as an example (1.58.10). After she has committed suicide, Lucius Junius Brutus takes Lucretia’s bloody knife (1.59.1) and makes a speech in the Forum, detailing her ‘abominable dishonour’(‘stupro infando’, 1.59.8) and manages to persuade the people to abolish the monarchy and exile the current royals (1.59.10–12). Lucretia’s body is used as a symbol of the wickedness of the kings, as the rape she has suffered marks a moment of great political change: Beard notes that rape is repeatedly used as a marker of such events in the state’s past [6, p. 2].⁶. Livy makes it clear that her suicide played a pivotal role in precipitating the foundation of a new form of government [24, p. 180], and he was also keen to stress Brutus’ central part in this, too. However, there is no mention of Lucretia’s heroic deeds at her ‘funeral’.⁷ She then disappears from the narrative altogether. The silent, and in the end unnoticed, body of Lucretia represents the role that women were to play in the Republic.

Livy’s representation of Lucretia’s rape and suicide embodies a complex interplay of male and female tropes.⁸ It is difficult to offer a gendered reading of Lucretia’s behaviour because it destabilises traditional gender roles and characteristics. Lucretia uses a method, the dagger, usually associated by the Romans with male suicides, and the display of her body was arguably as politically resonant as the display of Julius Caesar’s corpse was in 44 bc.⁹ In addition, Lucretia’s suicide represents a ‘moral triumph’ over the male characters in her story. She is not only superior to Tarquinius, but even to the foolish Collatinus, who is arguably partly responsible for her rape because of his bet with Tarquinius.¹⁰ Thus, Livy presents to his readers characters in deviant gender roles, as the men display traits, such as rash behaviour, more suited to women in a Roman’s eyes. This is furthered when Lucretia has revealed her suicidal intentions: The men talk of personal and private feelings, whereas Lucretia is determined to die because of the benefit it will give to society as a whole.¹¹

On the other hand, Livy wants to make a specific point about female chastity here, and he is careful to construct her suicide with some femininity. For example, he highlights the fact that she wins the competition of feminine virtues (‘muliebris certaminis’, 1.57.9), she demonstrates ‘resolute chastity’ in the face of Tarquinius’ threats (1.58.5), and she does not want her tale to be used as an excuse by any future unchaste woman (1.58.10). There is also an element of eroticism in the suicide scene, as the dagger entering Lucretia’s body imitates Tarquinius’ penetration of her body.¹² The rape itself can be read very much as a male action, an event where Lucretia is silent (until afterwards) and we are not privy to her thoughts but see her instead as simply a subject of violation [44, p. 182].¹³ Lucretia has to perform violence on herself to ‘cancel out’ the violence done to her by another [21, p. 25]; the knife ‘eradicates unchastity and kills any anomaly in female sexuality’ [44, p. 173]. The dagger was an appropriate means with which to do this because of its phallic shape.

Thus, it is clear that, although Lucretia can act as bravely as a Roman male in her death, she nevertheless retains much of the feminine qualities that are so essential to Livy’s characterisation of her. Another point highlighting this is that her death takes place in her home. She may commit a seemingly male act, but this is within the confines of a very female context, a domestic setting. She does not die on a battlefield or in a public, political place.¹⁴ Eidinow explicitly links Livy’s account of women such as Lucretia with contemporary concerns about uncontrolled female sexuality and its threat to the state [25, p. 102], and Langlands suggests that Livy wanted to get his readers thinking about certain aspects of their sexual ethics [52, p. 121]. This argument can be furthered to include the way Livy presents certain men, such as Tarquinius, acting ‘out of control’. Langlands also lists the various symbolic and pedagogical functions of Lucretia’s tale, which, in whatever form it appears, ‘is designed to illustrate some kind of moral value or ideological statement’ [52, p. 81]. With Livy’s narrative, we can relate Lucretia’s story to the moral restoration that was taking place under Augustus, which climaxed in his legislation of 18 bc with his law on adultery particularly affecting women more than men [26, p. 290].¹⁵ The concerns in this period with regulating sexuality, especially that of women, are demonstrated in this part of Livy’s history with his emphasis on Lucretia’s absolute submission to her ‘pudicitia’.¹⁶ Therefore, Livy’s presentation of Lucretia’s suicide—the earliest account surviving to us—is already a highly sophisticated one, imbued with a complex set of ramifications for contemporary morality, gender and politics.

Ovid wrote his Fasti (an elegiac treatment of the Roman religious calendar) in the early first century ad. His writings are renowned for their subversive nature. Ovid’s account of the myth in book 2 of the Fasti follows Livy closely in terms of the sequence of events. We witness Lucretia weaving with her maids by a ‘dim’ (‘exiguum’) light (2.743):¹⁷ Ovid presents Lucretia as a good, thrifty housewife. However, here, we meet the first fundamental change in Ovid’s characterisation of Lucretia from Livy’s version. Lucretia speaks directly to her maids, whereas Livy’s Lucretia had remained silent until after the rape. Her voice is described as ‘soft’ (‘tenuis’ 2.744): a feature appropriate to an elegiac heroine.¹⁸ Wyke suggests that because Lucretia has been transferred from a work of history to a work of elegy, Ovid must depict more of Lucretia in her home, carrying out domestic tasks and showing concern for her absent husband [93, pp. 89–90]. Indeed, Lucretia is portrayed as being very anxious about her husband being away at war (2.747–2.754).

Again, Tarquinius is seized with desire for Lucretia. Ovid proceeds to heighten our sympathies for Lucretia by saying that she is ‘unaware’ (‘inscia’) and ‘wretched’ (‘infelix’) (2.789–2.790), and he even compares her to a lamb when Tarquinius (the wolf) has come to her with a sword (2.799–2.800). Commenting on Ovid’s description of the Sabine women in his Ars Amatoria as a lamb fleeing wolves, Hemker notes that ‘these comparisons overtly challenge the validity of the men’s actions by emphasising the helplessness of those hunted by an overwhelming violent predator’ [39, p. 45].¹⁹ Indeed, this traditional image of cruelty vs. powerlessness was also deployed by Ovid elsewhere, for example, in his portrayal of Philomela in the Metamorphoses. Rapists, on the other hand, are commonly portrayed as wolves or eagles [76, p. 163, 166].²⁰ Thus, this reveals much about how Ovid wanted his readers to perceive the event, highlighting Lucretia’s role as defenceless victim and Tarquinius’ as ruthless predator.²¹

Then, we are actually given Lucretia’s thought process as a series of questions and answers shows the chaotic state of her mind (2.801–2.803). As noted above, this expression of her experiences at this point was lacking in Livy’s version. Again, it is apparent that in his rape scenes, Ovid often stopped to dwell on the responses of his rape victims, as he did so for the Sabines in the Ars Amatoria, the violated virgins in the early books of the Metamorphoses and Rhea Silvia in the Amores [2, pp. 210–211; 39, p. 45]. However, like Livy’s Lucretia, she eventually yields in order to protect her reputation as she will not have this destroyed by Tarquinius implicating her in an act of adultery with a slave (2.810).

Lucretia summons her father and husband to her. Her tears are poetically described as running like a ‘perpetual stream’ (2.820). She struggles to tell her family that she has been raped, lacking the firm conviction in her speech that we see in Livy (2.823); her silence here also stands in sharp relief to her earlier behaviour at the start of the narrative where she talked to her maids.²² Once Lucretia has eventually told her male relatives about the rape, they say that they forgive her role in it (2.829). However, Lucretia denies their forgiveness (2.830). Ovid portrays her suicide graphically, using the polysyllabic ‘sanguinulenta’ (2.832) to attest to the bloodiness and violent nature of the scene. This unusual adjective, ‘rare in poetry other than Ovid’,²³ is utilised by Ovid to stress the physical bleeding-out of Lucretia as she falls.²⁴ As Lucretia’s body is carried out into public, Ovid describes her as an ‘animi matrona virilis’, ‘a matron of manly courage’, a great compliment to her (2.847). Ovid ends the narrative with only two short lines on the abolishment of the monarchy (2.851–2.852).

There is much at stake here in terms of traditional gender roles and reversals. Ovid transferred the call for the royals’ punishment from Lucretia in Livy’s version to Brutus in his own (2.837–2.844).²⁵ Thus, the role of Lucretia’s suicide conforms to Roman ideals about femininity in that she does not discuss matters that were not for Roman women to discuss. But yet again, there is also a reversal of gender roles as Lucretia dies modestly and with decorum, while her father and husband heedlessly throw themselves on her body (2.835–2.836). She shows greater resolve in being unable to forgive herself as opposed to they who seem to readily forgive her. Furthermore, Ovid’s ‘animi matrona virilis’ is surely an indication that in her final act she transcended the weakness of her sex. She may be delicate and feminine before this, but her suffering has led her to an action in which she ‘displays the resolution of a man’ [54, p. 117].

There is clearly an absence in Ovid’s version of the highly politicised elements of Livy’s narrative. Ovid does not develop Brutus’ character as fully. Brutus is not present when she tells her family about the rape, nor at Lucretia’s actual suicide, but suddenly ‘appears’ in the narrative again afterwards, with no explanation from Ovid apart from ‘Brutus adest’ (2.837). Furthermore, after Brutus swears over her dead body to punish the royal family, Ovid remarks that Lucretia ‘moved her lifeless eyes and seemed with the stirring of her hair to give assent to his speech’ (2.845–2.846). Ovid therefore distorts Lucretia’s fervent desire to punish the king as presented in Livy. The hyperbole prevalent here indicates Ovid’s subversive take on the moral paradigm pushed forward by Livy²⁶: such a distinctive characterisation was typical of Ovidian elegy, a genre very different to that of Livy’s history. Furthermore, there is not the same moralistic tone in Ovid’s account. There is no mention by Ovid of Lucretia killing herself so that future promiscuous women cannot use her case as an example to hide their own wicked behaviour. Erotic elements are more prominent here, with Ovid creating a picture of a woman very much like those in his Heroides [29, pp. 213–14]²⁷: Her elegiac lament is comparable to some of those women in that work who bemoan their absent husbands or lovers, and when the men spy on her at the start of the narrative, she is working her wool by her bed (2.742).

Ovid has ‘modernised’ Lucretia’s story, in which the past does not straightforwardly provide a model for good behaviour, as in Livy, but shows instead that the same immoralities that took place in Ovid’s own day were also current then [29, p. 217]. On the other hand, it could be argued that in Ovid’s portrayal of Lucretia’s physical beauty he is emphasising the virtue of the women of Lucretia’s day, as he attributes to her highly idealised physical characteristics, such as her pale colour (2.763) and demonstrates that she does not use cosmetics (2.772). In this way Ovid, like Livy, can be viewed as instructing the women of his own day on how to conduct themselves. Conversely, this could be Ovid parodying traditional morals and ideals by exaggerating Lucretia’s ‘simplicitas’ to an even greater extent than Livy.

The reasons for the differences between Livy and Ovid’s accounts must lie in the genre of their works, history vs. elegy, and their aims in representing Lucretia’s story. By recalling the rape in an account rife with elements more at home in erotic elegy, Ovid undermines Livy’s version where the rape is politically and historically symbolic [29, pp. 212, 216]. Moreover, if Ovid’s more eroticised, elegiac version in part reinvents a Lucretia on a par with his women in the Heroides, this makes his comment on her ‘manly’ death a little confusing. But this is the point: An act of suicide by a female was ambiguous. However, it is also clear that both authors portray Lucretia’s death as commendable in many ways. Yet, the differences apparent between the two versions, even written at roughly the same time, do indicate that Lucretia’s rape and suicide was a controversial subject and open to multiple retellings.²⁸

Lucretia in Late Antiquity: Tertullian, Jerome and Augustine

There were other mentions of the rape and suicide of Lucretia across the subsequent three hundred years,²⁹ but our next substantial account comes from Tertullian of Carthage. Tertullian, along with the other two writers discussed in this section, was a Christian, and Christianity was now rapidly spreading throughout the Roman empire, becoming the official religion in the fourth century. Tertullian discusses Lucretia in his work Ad Martyres (written early third century ad), a work directed towards those of both sexes who found themselves imprisoned by the Romans in recent persecutions [23, p. 43]. He wants to not only comfort but also motivate his addressees, to encourage them to embrace martyrdom. Tertullian gives many examples of past figures of both sexes who have died for lesser reasons than those for which they will die, in the cause of God. Lucretia’s appearance comes in this series of examples. He describes her as ‘having suffered the force of violation, [she] drove a knife into herself in view of her relatives, so that she might acquire glory (‘gloria’) for her chastity’ (Ad Martyres, 4.4) [85].³⁰

So what is Tertullian doing with Lucretia and the other pagan figures? The inclusion of exemplary figures not only gave weight to his arguments but also gave his intended audience something to think about. Tertullian exploited such heroic examples from Rome’s past so that the Christian prisoners would take heart and try and emulate the deeds of these noble figures. He might not have intended any disparagement of these pagan examples. And more than this, as Christians had the ‘support of faith’, surely they could achieve a higher nobility and a superiority over these pagans in their dignified deaths?³¹ Barnes argues that Tertullian presents the pagans as having false ideals, whereas he is telling the Christians that they can do better and suffer for a true cause, the cause of God, to achieve heavenly glory [4, p. 227]. Amundsen suggests that rather than condemning the pagans directly, Tertullian shows by his sarcasm what he really thinks of them [1, p. 149, n. 41].

In light of this, Tertullian’s chosen description of Lucretia and the reasons for her death need some explanation. At first glance, Tertullian seems to be praising her brave deed. However, he implies that the motive behind her suicide was to achieve ‘gloria’ for her chastity, and so for herself. This glory-seeking does seem to stand in contrast to the motivations of the Christians, which Tertullian points out are God-inspired. Lucretia and the other pagans are inferior to Tertullian’s Christian addressees, who live and die in a superior way to their predecessors.³² Therefore, perhaps, we are seeing some early signs of disparagement towards Lucretia’s celebrated suicide. On the other hand, the positioning of Lucretia as first of the pagan exempla suggests an alternative reading. She is the one the Christians are told about first; therefore, this could mean that she is the most important of all Tertullian’s examples and one he was keen for them to be aware of, and perhaps also, emulate. Moreover, Tertullian put a high price on chastity. He encouraged modesty in women and suggested that they should remain at home so as not to let themselves be liable to fall into sin.³³ Therefore, the classical accounts of Lucretia as a modest, stay-at-home woman, and her suicide committed to prove her chastity, would certainly fit this bill.

Lucretia also appears in two other works by Tertullian: De Exhortatione Castitatis [14, 86] and De Monogamia (17.3) [87]. Tertullian’s descriptions of Lucretia are virtually identical in both texts. In both, he describes how Lucretia ‘washed away her polluted flesh with her own blood’ after being violated. Lucretia’s role here is primarily as a model of pudicitia—Tertullian used pagan figures in these works to provide models for contemporary Christian women [15, p. 170]. He could prompt his Christian audience to consider appropriate female behaviour and, in particular, endorse his view that sexual activity should only take place within a marriage and that outside of this it was to be seen as utterly inappropriate and un-Christian like. There does not seem to be a hint here of any kind of derogatory treatment of her. In fact, one theory put forward has identified Tertullian as a rhetorician of shame who used the examples of others to shame what he viewed as his lax Christian audience into greater chastity [14, pp. 224–225]. Of course, there is an element here of ‘whatever they can do, we can do better’, but it seems clear that Lucretia is presented by Tertullian as an exemplary figure. ³⁴

The next major author to mention Lucretia is Jerome. His work Adversus Jovinianum (written ad ca. 393) comprises the longest polemical treatise of his career. It was a direct response to the writings of Jovinian that formed a critique of ascetic practices. Jerome was shocked about Jovinian’s claims that those who remained sexually abstinent were not superior to those who married and enjoyed a normal sexual relationship and spent the whole of the first book rebutting this claim. He ended the book by giving notable examples of pagan females celebrated for their chastity, and it is here where Lucretia, among others, appears. In fact, this work did not go down as well as Jerome expected: Many were appalled by the frequent use of violent and crude language, and by Jerome taking such a derogatory view of marriage.³⁵

Lucretia is described in similar terms to Tertullian’s description of her in his two works on chastity: ‘unwilling to survive her violated chastity’, Lucretia ‘erased the stain on her body with her blood’ (1.46):³⁶ the idea of blood as a cleanser of the body shows a clear link with Tertullian’s presentation of Lucretia in the works discussed above. Jerome seems to have only praise for Lucretia; she acted as she saw fit after being raped. Given the context of his work, it would be strange if he had selected examples he did not approve of if he was so keen to promote his ideal on chastity. On the contrary, he regarded the exemplary moral values that Lucretia had endorsed hundreds of years earlier as still relevant to female behaviour in his own day. Jerome was a great advocate of asceticism, the practice of a modest and frugal lifestyle that renounced luxuries, which had become a major feature of Christian thought and life by this point.³⁷ Therefore, his inclusion of Lucretia in his writings should be seen as indicative that he considered her an appropriate model for chaste and modest behaviour and that he interpreted her suicide as appropriate action to take after rape.

Thus far, despite the fact that we are now dealing with Christian writers discussing a pagan female, we have not really observed any clear disparagement of Lucretia. However, with the writings of Augustine this was all to change. He gives us the first surviving account to really put any sort of significantly negative spin on Lucretia’s suicide, in the context of his masterpiece De Civitate Dei Contra Paganos (written ad 413–426). The work was a response to the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410 and the criticisms afterwards from pagans that this disaster was final proof of the pagan gods’ displeasure that their religion had been deserted for Christianity.³⁸ Book 1 of this work dealt with many moral and ethical issues that came about in the wake of the city’s fall, and Augustine’s apologetic tone in his defence of his religion is obvious.³⁹ For Augustine, Lucretia provided a useful and appropriate way of addressing many of these issues, especially rape and suicide.⁴⁰

Augustine brings Lucretia into the narrative by saying, ‘they certainly will bring out Lucretia with great praises for her chastity’ (1.19).⁴¹ Right from the start, Augustine suggests with his use of ‘they’ that he is not part of the group who praise Lucretia (as indicated by the use of the third person plural of efferent in this sentence). Augustine wonders why Lucretia felt she had to punish herself when it was Tarquinius who raped her and she had done nothing unchaste (1.19). After asking a mock Roman tribunal why, she therefore had to die if she was innocent, he then suggests the possibility that Lucretia killed herself because, although attacked by Tarquinius, she had ‘consented’ to having sex with him. Lucretia may have wickedly been aware of what was happening and her own desire may have caused her to consent despite the violent nature of her attacker. Consequently, she felt the need to punish herself and death was deemed the only way to atone for her sin (1.19).

In Augustine’s mind, Lucretia must be guilty one way or the other: Either she consented to the rape, and thus killed herself out of guilt, or she did not consent but committed suicide because she was too greedy for praise to remain alive. This latter point can be linked to Tertullian’s point that she killed herself in order to achieve ‘glory for her chastity’.⁴² To remain alive and be thought of as an adulterous was not an option⁴³: It was not enough to simply be chaste, but Lucretia also believed that she needed to appear chaste to others. The distinction made between mind and body in Christian thought would have informed Augustine’s arguments here⁴⁴: A person committed to the Christian faith could suffer any bodily suffering and emerge with an even stronger mind and conviction in the existence of God by doing so. Augustine was very much concerned with the ‘fallen will’ and sexual desire,⁴⁵ and to a thinker like him, strength of mind triumphed over the physicality of the body. As a result, Lucretia’s rationale for suicide was not fully comprehensible to him.

Augustine’s treatment of Lucretia was subversive and radical, but this was the point: She was no longer simply being used as a suffering victim or as a model of chastity, but to provoke reactions from his readers.⁴⁶ To his pagan audience, Augustine was belittling and questioning the actions of one of their heroic female figureheads, as part of his rebuttal of their claims to superiority over the Christians. To his Christian audience, he was bringing in a pagan example to broach the debate on the suitability of those women who had or had not chosen suicide to avoid rape in very recent events.⁴⁷

During the section that discusses Lucretia, Augustine claims that Christian women who had suffered similar experiences to her chose not to kill themselves, as they had not sinned in their own minds, and did not want to add the crime of ‘self-murder’ to that of rape (1.19): This again links to Christian thought on the mind vs. body. These points refer to the behaviour of women during the recent sack of Rome. Augustine claims that none did commit suicide, but his comment (at 1.17) that sympathy and pardon should be given to those who chose suicide over rape would suggest otherwise. Therefore, we can conclude that during the sack of Rome, some women either considered or actually did commit suicide; Augustine does not really condone this but he urges understanding for those that did.⁴⁸

Augustine’s general views on suicide were not that dissimilar to other Christian writers. Droge and Tabor have demonstrated that there is no overt denunciation of suicide in the Old Testament [22, pp. 53–63]; Amundsen has pointed out that the New Testament neither condemns nor encourages the act [1, p. 80]. The ways in which the individual Church Fathers approached the topic usually depended on their own personal interpretation of the Biblical material, as well as their own experiences and general outlook on life and their faith.⁴⁹ However, Augustine’s near-contemporaries Ambrose and Jerome were unequivocal in their acceptance of the threat of rape as the only motive for suicide open to Christian females.⁵⁰ Therefore, his interpretation of Lucretia’s suicide can be seen as a direct reaction and challenge to viewpoints such as theirs on the issue.⁵¹ Suicide was not to be tolerated, even after rape, unless there was some sanction from God for it.

Augustine later (at 1.26) mentions more general cases of women in the past who have committed suicide to avoid rape during times of persecution. He seems cautious about giving a judgement on these women and accounts for their motivations by suggesting that they had some sort of ‘divine command’ (‘divinitus iussae’). Augustine is not trying to make excuses for these women, but trying to make sense of their actions by offering the only ‘loophole’ he sees in suicide being acceptable. ⁵² It is difficult to assess his perception of these women. He may have felt some disapproval of their actions due to the fact that they were now venerated as martyrs: he comments that he does not want to judge them ‘rashly’ (‘temere’, 1.26). This takes us back to the motivations behind Lucretia’s suicide. She had been lauded for many years after her death, and Augustine saw this as the incentive for her suicide. This is related to his views on martyrdom. Earlier in Augustine’s career, he had been less concerned with this phenomenon.⁵³ Brown has even argued that Augustine viewed martyrdom as the ‘highest peak of human heroism’ [9, p. 397]. However, other writings reflect more adverse attitudes towards martyrs. He believed that they should not be celebrated too ostentatiously.⁵⁴ In particular, he targeted the Donatist martyrs, claiming that many were criminals, false martyrs and embraced suffering and death too readily.⁵⁵ Bels has argued that Augustine regarded these martyrs as motivated by pride and fanaticism [7, p. 157]. This can be linked to how he portrays Lucretia—she, whose greed for praise was ‘too great’.

Modern commentators often miss the point of Augustine’s work when they make claims such as, ‘Augustine is obviously sympathetic toward her [Lucretia]’ [30, p. 97, n.8].⁵⁶ Lucretia’s behaviour did not sit well with his attitudes towards pride and the act of rape influenced by his religion. If Lucretia had an innocent mind, suicide was unnecessary. He could find a possible loophole for those women who killed themselves to avoid rape or who did so when guided by God, but to him, suicide after violation and with no divine sanction was pointless and sinful,⁵⁷ a point he needed to make clear in light of the defence of this made by Ambrose and Jerome. Lucretia was a pertinent example to exploit because as a result of recent events, Augustine was discussing a very real situation in which women had been raped, as opposed to Jerome who was debating the topic hypothetically. It is important to be aware of the catastrophic consequences of the sack of Rome, both in terms of the real threats faced by women and the criticisms faced by the wider Christian community. There could also be an element here of him taking the Romans’ oldest heroine and throwing her back in their faces: Pagans had criticised the Christians for the sack of Rome, and so Augustine responded by challenging the very foundations on which Lucretia’s morals and chastity had been established.

Lucretia in the Medieval Period: Chaucer, Gower and Christine de Pizan

Augustine posed confrontational questions about female chastity, suicide and compliance in rape. How were the writers of the medieval era to respond to his views on Lucretia, as well as those of the earlier sources?⁵⁸ Lucretia was one of many pagan figures discussed in the medieval period, as many writers of the age were fascinated with classical stories and figures [62, p. 1; 17, p. 419].⁵⁹ Lucretia is given her own ‘legend’ in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women (written ca. 1386).⁶⁰ The ‘legend’ part of the title relates to the medieval term for a work concerned with the lives of saints, and yet Chaucer discusses not Christian martyrs but ten heroines from classical mythology and history. Chaucer explains in his Preface that the Legend was written to atone for the grave offence he caused women in his Troilus and Criseyde, where the female figure betrays her male lover. The Prologue to the Legend takes the form of a dream vision, where the narrator is told in a dream that he must write stories about good women. However, the inherent irony in the Legend poem results in a complex picture of female behaviour. It is likely that Chaucer enjoyed readers from both sexes of the upper classes, as well as appealing to the literate middle classes. The expectations of his elite audience would have been centred on issues related to current ideas concerning chivalry and courtly games. Verses were written on the subjects of love, seduction and the chivalric male, and there were even literary circles and societies. Chaucer had to write poetry that considered these topics in order to fully engage his readers.⁶¹

Chaucer begins his account by describing Lucretia as a ‘verray wif’ and ‘verray trewe’ (1684–1686).⁶² She is viewed in a by-now familiar scene, working wool with her maids (1719–1722). The tears she sheds for her absent husband ‘embelished hire wifly chastite’ (1737). When it comes to the rape scene, we are again privy to her thoughts as, like Ovid,⁶³ Chaucer guides us through the anxieties of her mind, and he also keeps the lamb/wolf simile (1798). After Tarquinius’ threat to frame her for adultery with a servant, Chaucer inserts a new incident into the narrative: his Lucretia ‘swoons’ and as a result ‘she feleth no thing, neyther foul ne fayr’ (1815–1818). Following Ovid, Chaucer’s Lucretia struggles to tell her family what has happened the next day (1833–1836). She feels ‘gylt’ and ‘blame’, and above all is keen for her husband not to be given a ‘foule name’ (1844–1845). She will not accept the fact that they attach no blame to her and stabs herself (1852–1855). Brutus then appears to expose Tarquinius’ deed and expel the kings from Rome (1862–1870). Chaucer ends with a final comment about Lucretia’s ‘true’ manner in love (1874).

Critiques of the Legend range from taking ‘at face value its stated subject of defending women’ to judging it as an ‘unmerciful satire on women’ [69, p. 6]. One approach, however, is to recognise that there is an inherent ambiguity in Chaucer’s representation of his women, an ambiguity he deliberately explores and exploits, which means that neither of these two extremes does justice to Chaucer’s approach. It is clear that Chaucer goes some way towards a successful defence of women. This is no more apparent than in the Lucretia legend itself. Indeed, the fact that Chaucer had little to ‘alter’ in her story, unlike the events he had to gloss over in, for example, Dido and Medea’s lives [47, p. 104; 36, pp. 27–29], would suggest that he presents his reader with a truly faithful and chaste female. Furthermore, many have seen his ‘invention’ of Lucretia’s swoon as a direct indication of such a reading, as this absolves her of any consent to or guilt from the rape in response to such questions raised by Augustine.⁶⁴

Moreover, Chaucer also creates in Tarquinius a true villain, which further highlights the innocence and virtue of Lucretia. He says that the kings were exiled due to their ‘horible doinges’ (1681). Tarquinius is described as ‘arrogant’ (1745) and is compared to a thief when he breaks into the house to rape Lucretia (1781): Unlike the accounts of Livy and Ovid, he is not a welcome guest. Chaucer also points to the failings of Collatinus as a husband when he guides Tarquinius into his house by a secret entrance (1715–1718). The one place Lucretia is supposed to be safe is violated by the oversight of the one man she is supposed to be able to trust.⁶⁵ In this sense Collatinus, as well as Tarquinius, transgresses expected male behaviour.

Rose’s reading of this rape tale in Chaucer is that this example, along with the story of Philomela, are the two instances where Chaucer aims to portray the violated women as sympathetically as possible [78, p. 36]. However, elsewhere in her paper Rose also argues that Chaucer’s rape narratives can be viewed as a device by which he emphasises not the victim and her plight but focuses instead on ‘a male seizing of power’ and a ‘disempowering of the victim (or her possessor)’ [78, p. 30]. The action in the lead up to the rape is certainly seen from Tarquinius’ point of view. Rose is unsure whether this should be read as Chaucer contributing to the misogynistic traditions of his era, or whether by utilising such representations of rape and the figures involved, he attempts to expose that misogyny [78, p. 32]. Does his ‘why have you done offense to chivalry?…alas! that you have done a villain’s deed!’ (1822–1824), directed at Tarquinius, represent him condemning Tarquinius’ breaking of the chivalry code (a code relating to virtues, honour and courtly love that medieval knights were supposed to follow),⁶⁶ or do these lines represent one male almost playfully talking to another about his latest sexual exploits?⁶⁷ The term ‘villain’ would suggest that Chaucer is not sympathetic to Tarquinius' actions,⁶⁸ and yet despite the praise Chaucer heaps on Lucretia, she is still very much a figure whose story is directed by male characters. Does her ‘swoon’ make her too (unfeasibly so) passive a bystander in her violation?⁶⁹

Chaucer does not add to the debate on the justification of her suicide. Frank calls it ‘heroic’, but ultimately a ‘gesture of submission’ [30, p. 97]. Yet, Chaucer seems to suggest that it was a noble deed in light of the cultural context of her time. He highlights the fact that in Lucretia’s day, her actions were not out of the ordinary as Roman women were expected to protect their good name: ‘these Roman wives so dearly loved their name during that time’ (1812–1813). Unlike Augustine, he attempts to understand her motivation for suicide within the social and cultural setting of her own time. At the end, he also remarks that the Romans celebrated her as a ‘seynt’ and that ‘her day (was) held in sanctity by Roman law’ (1871–1872). The language used here relates her to the saints suggested by the ‘Legend’ title. Moreover, the time in which Chaucer was living and writing was only the very beginning of representations of classical suicidal figures. As such, he approaches her tale with some caution: keen to portray her suicide favourably in the context of her own day, but holding back from outright admiration of the act as something everyone should be doing, and distancing himself from Lucretia with his ‘at thilke tyme’ (1812).⁷⁰

Chaucer did not have an overtly moral purpose to his work. Indeed, he was more concerned with ‘truth-to-life’ [62, p. 6]. In this sense then, Chaucer freed Lucretia from the moral dilemmas brought to her tale by Augustine, going some way towards reinstating her as a tragic victim of male aggression. He endeavours to recognise that according to the social and moral ethics of her day, Lucretia had little choice but to commit suicide. However, he too exploited the Lucretia tale for his own literary purposes. He had to write to please and entertain his wealthy patrons and wider, predominantly male, audience [38, p. 22; 69, p. 325]. His spin on the Lucretia narrative is complex and his telling of the story represents to some extent an ambiguous perspective on those complicit in acts of sexual violence.⁷¹

Chaucer’s contemporary, John Gower, utilised the Lucretia tale in his work, Confessio Amantis, towards a very different purpose. The moralistic angle not that prominent in Chaucer’s Legend was paramount in Gower’s account.⁷² The Confessio was aimed at instruction in the art of correct living. In Book 7, where Lucretia appears, Gower’s aims were didactic, specifically addressing the duties of Princes [68, p. 477]. As a result, he is more concerned with Tarquinius’ character than with Lucretia’s, as he points to the consequences of a licentious ruler [40, p. 265]. Yet, there are still some interesting conclusions to be made from his portrayal of Lucretia. Gower inserts Chaucer’s swoon into his tale (7.4986–7.4987).⁷³ However, Hillman argues that Gower’s swoon is much more natural and straightforward, compared to Chaucer who makes too much of Lucretia’s passiveness. Gower is prepared to let Lucretia’s innocence speak for itself and does not overstate her plight [[40], 267]. He thus gives a more clear-cut picture of Lucretia, and given that Gower also places much focus on Tarquinius’ sins,⁷⁴ this uncomplicated picture of Lucretia is all the more apparent.

Gower does not include the detail of Lucretia’s sanction of Brutus’ vow of vengeance present in Chaucer, through Ovid. However, Gower may have used Livy as a source, who did not incorporate this particular detail. Moreover, the events leading up to the Lucretia narrative concerning Tarquinius and his father certainly ally with similar events in Livy’s history. This possible connection with Livy, complemented by Gower’s moral aims, suggests a more politicised reading of Gower’s version. Finally, as Gower shifts the ‘moral burden from Lucretia to Tarquinius’ [40, p. 268], the focus is a male figure who is of dubious character, a male figure who acts wrongly, whereas the female is freed from all blame and lauded, and recognised for behaviour that was fully appropriate to her circumstances.

Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies (written early fifteenth century) allows us to explore a completely original angle on the Lucretia story, that from the viewpoint of a female writer. This work was designed as a defence of women against charges levelled at them by male authors, past and present. Her account of Lucretia’s tale is not lengthy, but nevertheless offers some interesting points, especially as she was a near-contemporary of Chaucer and Gower. Lucretia is introduced into her narrative as an example to be used against those who claim that ‘women want to be raped’.⁷⁵ De Pizan is ‘troubled and grieved’ that some men argue that this is true. Lucretia was the ‘noblest’ of Roman women and ‘supreme in her ‘chastity’. This version does not include the manly contest or Chaucer and Gower’s ‘swoon’. Lucretia submits to the rape simply out of fear of her bad reputation should she be framed for adultery with a servant; she would ‘rather die’ than offer her consent.

Just before she stabs herself, Lucretia cries, ‘from now on no woman will ever live shamed and disgraced by Lucretia’s example’. Quilligan has commented that she committed suicide, therefore, because she did not want other women to feel shame for her [72, p. 159]. However, this misses the connection with her similar last words in Livy,⁷⁶ and as it is possible most of her audience were only familiar with the more popular Ovidian version, they too might have missed it.⁷⁷ Yet, such a link would downplay the impact of these words, and instead insert De Pizan’s version into Livy’s politicised, male-dominated account. It is unlikely that De Pizan would have wanted to create such an effect, but to a modern reader the correlation between the two here is clear.

Wolfthal argues that De Pizan’s portrayals of rape in the City of Ladies show an ‘unambiguous condemnation’ of the act, highlighting its brutal and utterly immoral nature [94, p. 59]. De Pizan included these narratives for two reasons: one, because she ‘lived in a world in which rape was prevalent’, and two, because she wanted to insert herself into the literary tradition of representing stories of sexual violence [94, pp. 42–3; 95, p. 128]. Therefore, her complete denunciation of the attack in the account of Lucretia’s rape was in part a defence of contemporary victims who might have been accused of somehow ‘enjoying’ rape; it also represented a challenge to years of misogynistic attacks. Indeed De Pizan, in the context of her own day, can be described as something of a ‘feminist’ writer. She goes some way towards presenting her women as being individuals capable of acting outside of the traditional gender roles assigned to them.⁷⁸

De Pizan constructs the motivations for Lucretia’s suicide as being designed to show the full horror of rape [94, p. 64]. Her Lucretia is unable to free herself ‘from the torment’ and ‘from the pain’ of what she has suffered; her rapist is accused of perpetrating an ‘outrage’ on her. Like Chaucer, she can understand that Lucretia needed to commit suicide in order to conform to the social expectations of her day: She had to die to ‘show my innocence’.⁷⁹ De Pizan does add her own ‘invention’ to the tale: after Lucretia’s suicide and the expulsion of the kings, she says that ‘a law was enacted whereby a man would be executed for raping a woman, a law which is fitting, just, and holy’. This should be seen as an attempt by De Pizan to bring justice to all those women who have suffered rape in the past, as she fervently believed in strict punishments being meted out for rapists.⁸⁰ Her interpretation of Lucretia’s death challenges expected gender behaviour: It is the female here who can enact a law with her death, whereas the male is left powerless afterwards as he is executed for his crime. The fact also that she displaces the account of the events leading up to Lucretia’s rape, namely, the manly contest, to a later part of her book (at 2.64.2) indicates that she wanted the focus to be on female action earlier on (at 2.44.1).

De Pizan was not just responding to criticisms of her sex, but was also reaching out to those women who would be similarly judged if they were to suffer rape.⁸¹ She was attempting to clear them from any consent or enjoyment in rape of which they might have been accused by their male contemporaries. De Pizan was not a fully fledged ‘feminist’ in the modern sense of the term. She was not attempting to overthrow the patriarchal system of her day [75, p. xxx]. She utilised the tale for her own literary goals [69, pp. 18–19], in an attempt to provide a challenge to a centuries-old literary tradition steeped in misogyny. Her access to some of the greatest libraries of her day and work as a scribe meant that she was well-read in what her predecessors and contemporaries had to say about acts of sexual violence against women [94, p. 43]. She wanted to insert herself into this literary tradition in order to enhance her status as a professional writer, an ambition that indicates her feministic aspirations.

Conclusion

The accounts of Lucretia’s story did not end with the medieval period. Most notably, Shakespeare devoted a whole poem to her, The Rape of Lucrece, in 1594; a plethora of Renaissance artists—including such masters as Raphael, Titian, and Rembrandt—vividly imagined both her rape and suicide; and in the twentieth century Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia (1946) celebrated her tale. Why has this story endured for over 2000 years now? Why has Lucretia fired the imagination of so many writers, artists and thinkers over the ages? The answer is simple: Lucretia provided them with a pertinent and privileged model by which they could make an authoritative contribution to the moral and social debates of the time. But rape and suicide were also very real events that happened to real figures. Indeed, the issue of female suicide precipitated by rape was such a frequent occurrence that it was a major factor in the condemnation of suicide under Canon Law at the Council of Nimes in 1184 [95, p. 184]. In recent years, Al Qaeda’s recruitment of female suicide bombers precipitated by rape has hit the news headlines.⁸² Rape and suicide, then, were endemic components of European social history and it is no accident that writers and thinkers turned to one of Europe’s archetypal female suicides for inspiration and discussion.

This article has demonstrated that in each account, these writers appropriated the symbolism of Lucretia’s suicide and chastity for their own literary aims. The discursive ambivalence inherent in the acts of rape and suicide meant that Lucretia’s tale could be retold and reshaped over and over again. A specific approach to the portrayal of rapist and victim could reveal a writer’s exploration of expected gender roles and behaviour: Ovid’s Lucretia is represented at one time as a tragic heroine and at another praised for her ‘manly’ courage; the male characters in Livy demonstrate their amenableness to feminine emotions. The story could be utilised to broach wider historical events or social judgments: Livy’s telling links to the moral reforms taking place under Augustus, Tertullian told Lucretia’s tale in response to the increasing number of persecuted Christians in his day, and De Pizan related it in a defence of contemporary women who were accused of either enjoying or being complicit in their rapes. Finally, a writer’s interpretation of Lucretia's suicide reveals how she/he understood this act and thus broached the topic of the desirability of a female committing suicide after rape: This is most contentious in Augustine’s reading, as he judges Lucretia not by the morals of her own day, but by the Christian ethics of his own. Conversely, Chaucer goes some way towards reinstating Lucretia’s status as a tragic victim and recognised her act as conforming to the ethical standards of her day, a point highlighted more emphatically in De Pizan’s work where the focus is on the full horror of rape. Therefore, these retellings of Lucretia’s story engage readers in ongoing debates about sexuality, power, corruption, and the violation of women and the propriety of female suicide after this violation.