Читать книгу Roman Women - Alfred Brittain - Страница 5

"... to the dreadful dead of dark midnight,

With shining falchion in my chamber came

A creeping creature with a flaming light,

And softly cried, 'Awake, thou Roman dame,

And entertain my love; else lasting shame

On thee and thine this night I will inflict,

If thou my love's desire do contradict.'"

His threat was to murder both the lady and one of her male slaves, and to place them so that it would appear that he had killed them to avenge the honor of Collatinus. Thus we may see how poor Lucretia could truly plead:

"Mine enemy was strong, my poor self weak,

And far the weaker with so strong a fear;

My bloody judge forbad my tongue to speak;

No rightful plea might plead for justice there;

His scarlet lust came evidence to swear

That my poor beauty had purloin'd his eyes,

And when the judge is rob'd, the prisoner dies."

The next day, she sent messengers to call her husband and her father. They hastened to her at once, the former bringing with him Brutus, who was to be the leader in liberating Rome from the infamous race of Tarquin. When Lucretia had told her story, she made her relatives first swear that the criminal should not go unpunished. To this they savagely pledged themselves; but they tried to console her with the fact that, her mind being pure, she had incurred no guilt. Lucretia replied; "It remains for you to see to what is due to Tarquin. As for me, though I acquit myself of guilt, from punishment I do not discharge myself; nor shall any Roman woman survive her dishonor in pleading the example of Lucretia." Thus saying, she drew a knife which she had concealed in her garments, and plunged it into her heart.

Brutus, while they were all overcome with grief, gently drew the weapon from the wound; and holding it up, dripping as it was with Lucretia's life blood, he cried: "By this blood, most pure before the pollution of royal villainy, I swear, and I call you, O gods, to witness my oath, that I shall pursue Lucius Tarquin the Proud, his wicked wife, and all their race, with fire and sword, and all other means in my power; nor shall I ever suffer them or any other to reign at Rome." In this oath Collatinus and the others joined. They carried the dead body of Lucretia to Rome, and succeeded in giving the populace the last incentive necessary to drive out the already hated Tarquins. Thus the misfortunes of noble Lucretia brought vengeance upon the wickedness of Tullia; for the historian says that "she fled from her house, both men and women cursing her wherever she went and invoking on her the Furies, the avengers of parents."

What portion of these stories of the women of legendary Rome may be accepted as fact, and what must be relegated to the realm of fiction, it is not within the capacity of research to ascertain. Probably we shall not be far wrong if we consider these legends as moralizings founded on facts. Tullia represented to the Romans all the viciousness against which women were warned; in Lucretia, there were accumulated all the virtues to which a woman was taught to aspire. They were pictorial moral discourses; and, just as the moral character of a modern age might be discovered from the sermons of the period, so these legends represent what was lowest and highest in the ethical conceptions of earliest Rome.