After her sorrowful story, “she drew the dagger she was keeping concealed under her robes, and plunging it into her breast, with a single stroke pierced her heart” and quickly died in her father’s arms. Then, “in response to his hasty and urgent summons, the most prominent men had come to his house as she desired, she began at the beginning and told them all that had happened” (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book IV, 66, Thayer). She greeted him and demanded he summon all those he could. Lucretia travels to Rome to meet her father, carrying a dagger hidden under her cloak. In the morning, Sextus returned to his camp in Ardea to continue his military efforts (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book IV, 66, Thayer). Tarquin and Lucretia, Hubert Gerhard, 1690 This is because the idea of being portrayed to all those that knew her as being an unchaste woman was a fate worse than sexual abuse and death. By succumbing to his advances, Lucretia acts sexually moral. Lucretia, being a chaste and sexually moral woman as represented by the symbolic meaning of wool-weaving she partakes in, allowed Sextus to make his advances. In ancient Rome, “wool-working the archetype of ideal feminine behaviours held by all Romans as a symbol of their devotion to sexual virtues such as chastity and modesty” (Jeppesen-Wigelsworth, 2010, pg.8). He then vowed to, “kill and then slay one of slaves, and having laid both bodies together, will state that had caught misbehaving with the slave and punished to avenge the dishonour of kinsman so that death will be attended with shame and reproach and body will be deprived both of burial and every other customary rite” (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book IV, 65, Thayer). Sextus found Lucretia to not be moved to act by either fear of death or the declaration of his love. With no immediate source of aid, Lucretia was forced to listen to the strange proposition of Sextus as, ‘he said, “if you will consent to gratify me, I will make you my wife, and with me you shall reign, for the present, over the city my father has given me, and, after his death, over the Romans, the Latins, the Tyrrhenians, and all the other nations he rules for I know that I shall succeed to my father’s kingdom, as is right, since I am his eldest son”‘ (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book IV, 65, Thayer). He woke her, “he told her his name and bade her be silent and remain in the room, threatening to kill her if she attempted either to escape or to cry out” (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book IV, 64, Thayer). Careful not to awake her slaves who slept by her door, he entered her room with his sword in his hand. While lodging at Lucretia’s home, Sextus woke late in the night and went to the room where he knew Lucretia slept. Sextus saw Lucretia as excelling above all the Roman women in beauty and in virtue and decided he would seduce her (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book IV, 64, Thayer). Lucretia was the wife of Collatinus (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities Book IV, Thayer, 64). In Collatia he stayed at the house of Tarquinius’ cousin – Lucius Tarquinius, surnamed Collatinus. The story of Lucretia begins with Sextus, the eldest son of Tarquinius, who was sent by his father to a city called Collatia to perform military services. Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Account in Roman Antiquities Book IV The account of her rape differs within each story. Despite this belief, her existence is written about by Livy in Ab Urbe Condita Libri and by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in Roman Antiquities Book IV, suggesting her story has merit despite the possibility of it being exaggerated.

To many modern historians, Lucretia was a mythological figure (Joshel, 2008, pg. For centuries, Lucretia’s rape would be the topic of numerous poems, artworks, and operas.

Her rape would mark the beginning of the Roman Republic, forever affecting Rome itself and all its people. In antiquity, the rape of Lucretia is one of the most significant occurrences of violence against women.

Sextus and collatinus tarquinius