Among his guests was Tarquinius Collatinus, one of his distant kinsmen. One day, Sextus invited his friends for supper and drinks at his house. Sextus Tarquinius was the son of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome who was engaged in the siege of Ardea at the time. “Tarquinius and Lucretia” by Titian (1490-1576) The Death a Ancient Roman Wife Lucretia’s name and her story were so popular that the Paduan philosopher and literary critic Sperone Speroni wrote, “There is no one so stupid that he has not heard of her.” Indeed, from the extensive portrayals of her at the time, there was simply no escaping her. Among many others, mentions of her were also made by Dante in his Inferno, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women and John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. However, he was not the only one fascinated by Lucretia.
Shakespeare mentions her in his plays such as Titus Andronicus, As You Like It and Twelfth Night, made allusions of her in Macbeth, and draws extensively on Ovid’s treatment of her story in his poem The Rape of Lucrece (1594). However, in 16th century Europe, the opposite happened: There was no other ancient name that fuels an artist’s imagination like “Lucretia”. We see her in many classical paintings as a beautiful yet tragic figure, looking up helplessly towards a figure of a Roman soldier standing over her.
We would often see her images and, perhaps just as often, forget her name.
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