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Tarquin and Lucretia (Rape of Lucretia)
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Tears harden lust, though marble wear with raining./ . . . Her pity-pleading eyes are sadly fix’d/In the remorseless wrinkles of his face . . .
She conjures him by high almighty Jove/ . . . By her untimely tears, her husband's love,/By holy human law, and common troth,/By heaven and earth and all the power of both,/That to his borrow’d bed he make retire,/And stoop to honor, not to foul desire.1(p17)
Lucretia was a legendary heroine of ancient Rome, the quintessence of virtue, the beautiful wife of the nobleman Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus.2 In a lull in the war at Ardea in 509 BCE, the young noblemen passed their idle time together at dinners and in drinking bouts. When the subject of their wives came up, every man enthusiastically praised his own, and as their rivalry grew, Collatinus proposed that they mount horses and see the disposition of the wives for themselves, believing that the best test is what meets . . . [Full Text of this Article]
James C. Harris, MD
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES
The Suicide of Lucretia
Harris
Arch Gen Psychiatry 2008;65:374-375.
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