2 page essay

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HONOR OR LIFE?

History, like life, is full of violence, as you surely know. To take the question of violence and pose it to you as a question – which I think is better than studying the history of long lost wars – I present to you this particular question, which remains a subjective question, that is, one that you can genuinely answer for yourself: Is there anything worth killing or dying for? Usually that which is called honor is placed above the value of life – but the point of this lesson is to ask you to wonder about that, and to have a conversation with this notion. A conversation with notions and questions such as this can be had through literature. Literature that presents eternally human scenarios. I give to you to read this week a fable from ancient Rome, the fable of Lucretia. Is it real, is it a myth, ancient history doesn’t discriminate between the two, and maybe for that very reason it is more timeless that anything that modern, scientific exactitude can create. The story of Lucretia is recounted by the Roman historian Livy in the first century BC (10 BC, to be exact). Lucretia is said to have lived five hundred years before Livy’s time – in the 500s BC – when Rome was ruled by kings, before it became a republic. Livy’s story centers around the king’s son, Sextus Tarquinius, and Lucretia, who is the wife of Sextus’ friend Collatinus. I am sorry about all the names, but what would life be like without strange names? Read the story, and ask yourself what you think about Lucretia’s decisions. Her question is the title of this lesson.

THE HISTORY OF ROME Livy, c. 10 BC. Translation by Benjamin Oliver Foster.

LUCRETIA In 509 BC, the son of the King of Rome, Sextus Tarquinius, heard from his friends about the virtuous matron Lucretia. One day when the young men were drinking at the house of Sextus Tarquinius, after supper they fell to talking about their wives, and each man fell to praising his wife to excess. Finally Collatinus declared that there was no need to argue; they might all be sure that no one was more worthy than his Lucretia. “Young and vigorous as we are, why don’t we get on our horses and go and see for ourselves what our wives are doing? And we will base our judgment on whatever we see them doing when their husbands arrive unannounced.” Encouraged by the wine, “Yes, let’s go!” they all cried, and they went on horseback to the city. Darkness was beginning to fall when they arrived and entered the house of Collatinus. There, they found Lucretia behaving quite differently from the daughters-in-law of the King, whom they had found with their friends before a grand feast, preparing to have a night of fun. Lucretia, even though it was night, was still working on her spinning, with her servants, in the middle of her house. They were all impressed by Lucretia’s chaste honor. When her husband and the Tarquins arrived, she received them, and her husband, the winner, was obliged to invite the king’s sons in. It was then that Sextus Tarquinius was seized by the desire to violate Lucretia’s chastity, seduced both by her beauty and by her exemplary virtue. Finally, after a night of youthful games, they returned to the camp.

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Several days passed. Sextus Tarquinius returned to the house of Collatinus, with one of his companions. He was well received and given the hospitality of the house, and maddened with love, he waited until he was sure everyone else was asleep. Then he took up his sword and went to Lucretia's bedroom, and placing his sword against her left breast, he said, “Quiet, Lucretia; I am Sextus Tarquinius, and I have a sword in my hand. If you speak, you will die.” Awakening from sleep, the poor woman realized that she was without help and very close to death. Sextus Tarquinius declared his love for her, begging and threatening her alternately, and attacked her soul in every way. Finally, before her steadfastness, which was not affected by the fear of death even after his intimidation, he added another menace. “When I have killed you, I will put next to you the body of a nude servant, and everyone will say that you were killed during a dishonorable act of adultery.” With this menace, Sextus Tarquinius triumphed over her virtue, and when he had raped her he left having taken away her honor. Lucretia, overcome with sorrow and shame, sent messengers both to her husband and her father, asking them each to come “at once, with a good friend, because a very terrible thing had happened.” Spurius Lucretius, her father, came with Publius Valerius, and Collatinus came with Lucius Junius Brutus; they had just returned to Rome when they met Lucretia’s messenger. They found Lucretia in her chamber, overpowered by grief. When she saw them she began to cry. “How are you?” her husband asked. “Very bad,” she replied, “how can anything go well for a woman who has lost her honor? There are the marks of another man in your bed, Collatinus. My body is greatly soiled, though my heart is still pure, as my death will prove. But give me your right hand in faith that you will not allow the guilty to escape. It was Sextus Tarquinius who returned our hospitality with enmity last night. With his sword in his hand, he came to take his pleasure for my unhappiness, but it will also be his sorrow if you are real men.” They promised her that they would pursue him, and they tried to appease her sorrow, saying that it was the soul that did wrong, and not the body, and because she had had no bad intention, she did no wrong. “It is your responsibility to see that he gets what he deserves,” she said, “I will absolve myself of blame, and I will not free myself from punishment. No woman shall use Lucretia as her example in dishonor.” Then she took up a knife which she had hidden beneath her robe, and plunged it into her heart, collapsing from her wound; she died there amid the cries of her husband and father. Brutus, leaving them in their grief, took the knife from Lucretia’s wound, and holding it all covered with blood up in the air, cried, “By this blood, which was so pure before the crime of the prince, I swear before you, O gods, to chase the King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, with his criminal wife and all their offspring, by fire, iron, and all the methods I have at my disposal, and never to tolerate Kings in Rome evermore, whether of that family or any other.” Poor Lucretia, was she a victim not only of Sextus Tarquinius but also of her loyalty to her society’s dominant ideas about women? Or was she not poor at all, but in fact quite strong for her ability to value her symbolic existence (her honor) over her physical life? The question is open.

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The Death of Lucretia. Eduardo Rosales, 1871. Madrid, Prado. Here you see a realistic depiction of the death of Lucretia by the Spanish artist Rosales, exactly as it is described in the fable by Livy. That is Brutus holding up the dagger, swearing an oath of vengeance for Lucretia. Note that Sextus Tarquinius’ rape of Lucretia is also a political allegory for the abuse of power by a monarch – Sextus, you will recall, was the Roman king’s son, hence a prince, hence a member of the monarchical family. After Brutus expels Tarquinius family from Rome, the Romans established a republic based on the principles of checks-and-balances and the division of powers between different branches of government so as to avoid one member of government from having too much power. American state institutions were modeled very much after the Roman republican institutions that were established in 509 BC after the last monarchical family (the Tarquinius) were chased from Rome following the rape and death of Lucretia.

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Lucretia. Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1528. Stockholm, National Museum. This is a symbolic, not realistic, representation of Lucretia by the German artist Cranach the Elder. She is inside death, the black room, with the wisps of a ghost flowing from her arms – far from the life that is visible far away outside the window, where the vibrant colors of green and blue are visible. Lucretia died happy – such seems to be the Cranach’s point, whereas in Rosales’ painting Lucretia death appears more tragically, more painfully. How do you compare these two paintings? This week’s lesson is short because it is that time in the semester where there is no point in driving ourselves more crazy than we already are. Please write only one page for your essay response to this week’s lesson. Dimitri Papandreu November 4, 2020