done her._
This, then, is our position, and it seems sufficiently lucid. We
maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul admits no
consent to the iniquity, but remains inviolably chaste, the sin is
not hers, but his who violates her. But do they against whom we have
to defend not only the souls, but the sacred bodies too of these
outraged Christian captives,--do they, perhaps, dare to dispute
our position? But all know how loudly they extol the purity of
Lucretia, that noble matron of ancient Rome. When King Tarquin's son
had violated her body, she made known the wickedness of this young
profligate to her husband Collatinus, and to Brutus her kinsman,
men of high rank and full of courage, and bound them by an oath to
avenge it. Then, heart-sick, and unable to bear the shame, she put an
end to her life. What shall we call her? An adulteress, or chaste?
There is no question which she was. Not more happily than truly did
a declaimer say of this sad occurrence: "Here was a marvel: there
were two, and only one committed adultery." Most forcibly and truly
spoken. For this declaimer, seeing in the union of the two bodies
the foul lust of the one, and the chaste will of the other, and
giving heed not to the contact of the bodily members, but to the wide
diversity of their souls, says: "There were two, but the adultery was
committed only by one."
But how is it, that she who was no partner to the crime bears the
heavier punishment of the two? For the adulterer was only banished
along with his father; she suffered the extreme penalty. If that was
not impurity by which she was unwillingly ravished, then this is not
justice by which she, being chaste, is punished. To you I appeal,
ye laws and judges of Rome. Even after the perpetration of great
enormities, you do not suffer the criminal to be slain untried. If,
then, one were to bring to your bar this case, and were to prove
to you that a woman not only untried, but chaste and innocent,
had been killed, would you not visit the murderer with punishment
proportionably severe? This crime was committed by Lucretia; that
Lucretia so celebrated and lauded slew the innocent, chaste, outraged
Lucretia. Pronounce sentence. But if you cannot, because there does
not compear any one whom you can punish, why do you extol with such
unmeasured laudation her who slew an innocent and chaste woman?
Assuredly you will find it impossible to defend her before the judges
of the realms below, if they be such as your poets are fond of
representing them; for she is among those
"Who guiltless sent themselves to doom,
And all for loathing of the day,
In madness threw their lives away."
And if she with the others wishes to return,
"Fate bars the way: around their keep
The slow unlovely waters creep,
And bind with ninefold chain."[73]
Or perhaps she is not there, because she slew herself conscious of
guilt, not of innocence? She herself alone knows her reason; but what
if she was betrayed by the pleasure of the act, and gave some consent
to Sextus, though so violently abusing her, and then was so affected
with remorse, that she thought death alone could expiate her sin?
Even though this were the case, she ought still to have held her hand
from suicide, if she could with her false gods have accomplished a
fruitful repentance. However, if such were the state of the case,
and if it were false that there were two, but one only committed
adultery; if the truth were that both were involved in it, one by
open assault, the other by secret consent, then she did not kill an
innocent woman; and therefore her erudite defenders may maintain that
she is not among that class of the dwellers below "who guiltless sent
themselves to doom." But this case of Lucretia is in such a dilemma,
that if you extenuate the homicide, you confirm the adultery: if you
acquit her of adultery, you make the charge of homicide heavier;
and there is no way out of the dilemma, when one asks, If she was
adulterous, why praise her? if chaste, why slay her?
Nevertheless, for our purpose of refuting those who are unable to
comprehend what true sanctity is, and who therefore insult over our
outraged Christian women, it is enough that in the instance of this
noble Roman matron it was said in her praise, "There were two, but
the adultery was the crime of only one." For Lucretia was confidently
believed to be superior to the contamination of any consenting
thought to the adultery. And accordingly, since she killed herself
for being subjected to an outrage in which she had no guilty part,
it is obvious that this act of hers was prompted not by the love of
purity, but by the overwhelming burden of her shame. She was ashamed
that so foul a crime had been perpetrated upon her, though without
her abetting; and this matron, with the Roman love of glory in her
veins, was seized with a proud dread that, if she continued to live,
it would be supposed she willingly did not resent the wrong that had
been done her. She could not exhibit to men her conscience, but she
judged that her self-inflicted punishment would testify her state
of mind; and she burned with shame at the thought that her patient
endurance of the foul affront that another had done her, should be
construed into complicity with him. Not such was the decision of
the Christian women who suffered as she did, and yet survive. They
declined to avenge upon themselves the guilt of others, and so add
crimes of their own to those crimes in which they had no share. For
this they would have done had their shame driven them to homicide, as
the lust of their enemies had driven them to adultery. Within their
own souls, in the witness of their own conscience, they enjoy the
glory of chastity. In the sight of God, too, they are esteemed pure,
and this contents them; they ask no more: it suffices them to have
opportunity of doing good, and they decline to evade the distress of
human suspicion, lest they thereby deviate from the divine law.