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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 landed slew the innocent, chaste, outraged Lucretia.
Pronounce sentence. But if you cannot, because there does not appear
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."
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.
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