Sextus Tarquinius
Sextus Tarquinius was a Roman prince, the third and youngest son of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (Tarquin the Proud). He is primarily known for his rape of Lucretia, daughter of Spurius Lucretius Tricipitinus, wife of Collatinus.
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[edit] Rape of Lucretia
Tarquinius was besieging Ardea, a city of the Rutulians. The place could not be taken by force, and the Roman army lay encamped beneath the walls. Here as the king's sons, and their cousin, Tarquinius Collatinus, the son of Egerius, were feasting together, a dispute arose about the virtue of their wives. As nothing was doing in the field, they mounted their horses to visit their homes by surprise. They first went to Rome, where they surprised the king's daughters at a splendid banquet. They then hastened to Collatia, and there, though it was late in the night, they found Lucretia, the wife of Collatinus, spinning amid her handmaids. The beauty and virtue of Lucretia had fired the evil passions of Sextus. A few days he returned to Collatia, where he was hospitably received by Lucretia as her husband's kinsman. In the dead of night he entered the chamber with a drawn sword ; by threatening to lay a slave with his throat cut beside her, whom he would pretend to have killed in order to avenge her husband's honour, he forced her to yield to his wishes.
Soon after, Lucretia sent a message to her father and her husband, telling them everything, then killed herself. The revolt which followed, led by her husband's friend Lucius Junius Brutus, brought to an end the kingship of Tarquin the Proud and brought about the beginning of the Roman Republic, Brutus becoming the first consul together with Collatinus. Sextus Tarquinius fled to Gabii, to seek to make himself king, but he was killed in revenge for his past actions.[1]
[edit] Cultural references
[edit] Art
Lucretia and Tarquinius have been the subject of many paintings, including those by great artists such as Titian, Cranach, Dürer and Tintoretto.[2]
[edit] Literature
The story of Lucretia's rape is the subject of William Shakespeare's great poem The Rape of Lucrece, a work as long as many full-length plays, taking about two hours to recite or perform. It has sometimes been dramatized and performed in a Reader's Theatre format. Lucretia's rape is also the subject of Benjamin Britten's 1946 opera The Rape of Lucretia.
Tarquinius is also referred to in Shakespeare's Cymbeline, Act II Scene 2. Iachimo, having slipped into the sleeping Imogen's bedchamber, speaks:
[...] Our Tarquin thus
Did softly press the rushes, ere he waken'd
The chastity he wounded [...]
Sextus Tarquinius was referenced by William Shakespeare in the play Macbeth. In Act 2 Scene 1 Macbeth says in a soliloquy; 'With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design moves like a ghost'
[edit] Notes
- ^ Livy, Ab urbe condita, 1.60
- ^ "Tintoretto's Lucretia and Tarquinius" Life 28(23): (5 June 1950) page 73
[edit] References
Livy Ab urbe condita (From the Founding of the City) 1.53, 58
