Similarities Between Tarquin The Proud And The Rape Of Lucretia

A narrative’s climax often tells as much about its author and their societal context as it does about the characters or individuals depicted therein. This could be said of many narratives, including both the Athenian tragedian Euripides’ Medea as well as Roman historian Livy’s Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia, the exceedingly divergent climaxes of which reflect not only the divergent goals of their authors in writing them, but also the differing societal contexts which shaped those goals and depictions. In these two narratives, each author depicts widely differing women forced into resolving their own internal and external conflicts which, however different, are both born out of the nature of their social visibility (or lack thereof)

and lack of social protections in that context.
In Medea, Euripides presents us with an Athenian society in which women’s virtues are largely ignored in favor of their forced invisibility.

In the presented passage from Medea, the titular character faces exile from Corinth over its ruler Creon’s fear of her anger towards her husband and her abilities as a sorceress. Having betrayed her home and country in her adventures with her philandering husband Jason, however, she is without a place to go. In a public accusal of her husband, Medea summarizes the nature of her, and many women’s, plight in their society clearly and succinctly, saying that, “Of all creatures that feel and think, we women are the unhappiest species” (Euripides 41). She goes on to state the chief causes of this unhappiness to the people of Corinth, depicting a life of domestic imprisonment for women as well as the dangers and lack of fulfillment inherent therein. She first notes the financial and bodily tributes paid to husbands by their wives, reminding the people of Corinth that, “we must pay a great dowry to a husband who will be a tyrant of our bodies” (Euripides 41) and, in doing so, highlights the self-sacrifice inherent to a woman’s marriage. She notes further that

should a woman enter into an unfavorable marriage with a bad man, as she has, then she cannot leave it, as “separations bring disgrace on the woman and it is not possible to renounce one’s husband” (Euripides 41). The possibility of an inescapable, unfavorable marriage all too present a threat for women in her society, Medea believes that, should such a union be entered into, that, “one is better dead” (Euripides 41), as “women have only one person to turn to” (Euripides 41)–their husband–should the union sour. For women in the Athenian society the play was written to critique, to be married was to be inherently confined and in a role of self-sacrifice, invisible to all of society but their immediate family. Should these familial ties sever, as Medea’s have, then a woman is left with nothing.
Medea’s life of social isolation and confinement stands in direct contrast with the inclusion and openness afforded Lucretia in Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia. While Medea, in spite of all she has done for Jason, remains socially constrained to a life of isolation and invisibility, Livy writes of a Roman society which, even in its beginnings, upheld the womanly virtues of its wives. We see this in how Collatinus, Lucretia’s husband, brags of her virtue to his peers, boasting of her “incomparable superiority” (Livy 57). Together, the men collectively decide to ride to Rome to observe and compare their wives in the women’s natural environments. The wives of the Etruscan princes are found at a luxurious dinner-party with their young friends. Lucretia, however, won the “contest in womanly virtue” (Livy 57) outright when the men happened upon her spinning by lamplight, surrounded by servants, rising only to bid her husband and newfound guests welcome. Unlike Medea, who had “only one person to turn to” (Euripides 41), Lucretia is included within her society’s social circles and, like the wives of the Etruscan princes, is able to more freely interact with men from outside the home. This openness, ultimately, proves to be a danger to her, as one of her husband’s peers, Sextus Tarquinus, the son of the Etruscan king, takes advantage of her hospitality to sexually assault her. Though different from Medea in the level of visibility she enjoys in her society, Lucretia is like Medea in that both lack the social protections at their respective levels of social visibility, driving each of them to the bloody, desperate, and exceedingly different climaxes which ultimately define their narratives.
In choosing Medea as his play’s protagonist, Euripides chose a woman isolated in the extreme to illustrate not only the inherent dissatisfaction felt by women in such a circumstance of invisibility and social isolation, but also to demonstrate the lack of social protections afforded these individuals. A foreign wife in a strange land wronged by the very man who might afford her the lion’s share of her social protection, Medea is also without family with whom she might “find refuge from the storms of misfortune” (Euripides 41). Misfortune finds her quickly in the absence of a family’s social protection, as she is exiled from Corinth for the threat its king Creon feels she poses in her anger towards her husband Jason and his daughter Glauce, for whom Jason seeks to cast Medea aside.
Though beloved by her husband, like Medea Lucretia lacks, in her highly visible role in early Roman society, a level of social protection which might have prevented her assault at the hands of Sextus Tarquinus, as her rape serves a role greater than that within the narrative.

As Livy wrote this narrative as an origin story for the Roman republic hundreds of years later, Lucretia’s rape acts not only within the context of the narrative as a call to action for the oppressed Romans, but also a warning against absolute monarchical power. In Livy’s narrative, the act of subjecting oneself to a monarch is akin to submitting to one’s own sexual assault. Though unprotected in a manner different from Medea, the danger posed to Lucretia and other Roman women by monarchical power leaves them in a similar lack of social protection which ultimately leads to the climaxes of their

narratives.
In Medea, Euripides presents his audience with an act of climactic vengeance born out the titular character’s desperation at a life of stripped of its social protections and constrained by a role of forced social invisibility, while in Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia Livy depicts a desperation-fueled climax born out of the lack of social protections available for its main female character, Lucretia, in the position of visibility afforded her in own society. The climax of Medea is undoubtedly the multiple murders she commits, which include Glauce, her husband’s chosen new bride; Glauce’s father Creon, king of Corinth; and her own children. Lucretia, on the other hand, turns inward and kills herself so as to preserve her integrity and motivate the men around her to avenge her assault and death at the hands of the Etruscan monarchy. However different the acts which mark the climax of each narrative, each is born out the dangers posed to each of its female protagonists by the lack of social protection in their differing degrees of visibility.
In both Medea and Tarquin the Proud and the Rape of Lucretia, we see female protagonists left without social protections in their differing levels of social visibility. While the violent result is different for each woman, with Medea turning violent against others and Lucretia turning a blade against herself, the unprotectedness of women lies at the heart of each climactic act, and, being at the center of two of Western civilization’s most important historical texts, at the heart of Western society.