Читать книгу Ancient Rome: The Lives of Great Men - Mary Agnes Hamilton - Страница 7

They tried to soothe her grief, laying the blame, not on the unwilling victim, but on the perpetrator of the offence. ‘It is the mind,’ they said, ‘not the body that sins. Where there is no intention, there is no fault,’ ‘It is for you,’ she replied, ‘to consider the punishment that is his due; I acquit myself of guilt, but I do not free myself from the penalty; no woman who lives after her honour is lost shall appeal to the example of Lucretia,’ Then she took a knife which she had hidden under her dress, plunged it into her heart, and dropping down soon expired. Her husband and father made the solemn invocation of the dead.

While the others were occupied in mourning, Brutus drew the knife from the wound, held it still reeking before him, and exclaimed, ‘I swear by this blood, pure and undefiled before the prince’s outrage, and I call you, gods, to witness, that I will punish Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, his impious wife, and all his children with fire and sword to the utmost of my power, and that I will not allow them or any other to rule in Rome.’ After this, he handed the knife to Collatinus, next to Lucretius and Valerius, all amazed at Brutus and perplexed to account for his new spirit of authority. They took the oath as he directed and, changing wholly from grief to anger, they obeyed his summons to follow him and make an immediate end of the royal power.

The body of Lucretia was brought from her house and carried to the Forum, the people thronging round, as was natural, in wonder at this strange and cruel sight, and loud in condemning the crime of Tarquinius. They were deeply moved by the father’s sorrow, and still more by the words of Brutus, who rebuked their tears and idle laments, urging them to act like men and Romans by taking up arms against the common enemy.

Livy, i. 58. 9-59. 4.