MACHIAVELLI AND THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA

The rape and suicide of Lucretia is one of the most prominent motifs in early Roman historiography. A prelude to the revolution that overthrew the Tarquins and transformed Rome into a republic, the episode was narrated and examined by Roman historians, medieval philosophers and Renaissance humanists. Unlike his Roman and Renaissance sources, Machiavelli downplays the rape and suicide, denying the causal role in the revolution that his predecessors had routinely attributed to it. This dismissal of Lucretia's rape and suicide is surprising both in view of the importance Machiavelli accords to public spectacles of violence in founding political institutions and because the case of Lucretia appears to corroborate his persistent warning to princes to abstain from sexually assaulting their subject women. This article examines the reasons behind Machiavelli's sceptical attitude towards Lucretia and argues that the refusal to extol Lucretia as a republican hero stems from his rejection of a central ethical premise and rhetorical trope of republicanism: the idea that sexual virtue is a synecdoche for political virtue.