Having terrified the woman in this manner, he offered her two alternatives, bidding her choose whichever she herself preferred-death with dishonour or life with happiness. When he paused at the woman’s bedside and she, hearing the noise, awakened and asked who it was, 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. Going, therefore, to bed after supper, he waited a great part of the night, and then, when he thought all were asleep, he got up and came to the room where he knew Lucretia slept, and without being discovered by her slaves, who lay asleep at the door, he went into the room sword in hand. This matron, who excelled all the Roman women in beauty as well as in virtue, Sextus tried to seduce he had already long entertained this desire, whenever he visited his kinsman, and he thought he now had a favourable opportunity. Now it happened that Collatinus was then at the camp, but his wife, who was a Roman woman, the daughter of Lucretius, a man of distinction, entertained him, as a kinsman of her husband, with great cordiality and friendliness. But, for my part, I am persuaded that he too was a grandson of Egerius, 2 inasmuch as he was of the same age as the sons of Tarquinius, as Fabius and the other historians have recorded for the chronology confirms me in this opinion. This man is said by Fabius to have been the son of Egerius, who, as I have shown earlier, 1 was the nephew of Tarquinius the first Roman king of that name, and having been appointed governor of Collatia, was not only himself called Collatinus from his living there, but also left the same surname to his posterity. At this time Sextus, the eldest son of Tarquinius, being sent by his father to a city called Collatia to perform certain military services, lodged at the house of his kinsman, Lucius Tarquinius, surnamed Collatinus. But as the Ardeates bravely defended themselves and the siege was proving a lengthy one, both the Romans who were in the camp, being fatigued by the length of the war, and those at Rome, who had become exhausted by the war taxes, were ready to revolt if any occasion offered for making a beginning. The truth was, however, that he had designs against this city on account of its wealth, since it was the most flourishing of all the cities in Italy. Tarquinius 3 was then laying seige to Ardea, alleging as his reason that it was receiving the Roman fugitives and assisting them in their endeavours to return home. The Loeb Classical Library publishes a two-volume edition of the critical essays the edition of Roman Antiquities is in seven volumes.īook IV LXIV. His work and that of Livy are our only continuous and detailed independent narratives of early Roman history.ĭionysius was author also of essays on literature covering rhetoric, Greek oratory, Thucydides, and how to imitate the best models in literature. Dionysius studied the best available literary sources (mainly annalistic and other historians) and possibly some public documents. Of the 20 books of Roman Antiquities (from the earliest times to 264 BCE) we have the first 9 complete most of 10 and 11 and later extracts and an epitome of the whole. But he wrote also to reconcile Greeks to Roman rule. Dionysius states that his objects in writing history were to please lovers of noble deeds and to repay the benefits he had enjoyed in Rome. His Roman Antiquities began to appear in 7 BCE. He taught rhetoric in Rome while studying the Latin language, collecting material for a history of Rome, and writing. Dionysius of Halicarnassus was born before 53 BCE and went to Italy before 29 BCE.
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