Boccaccio composed it at Certaldo in 1361-62 and revised it in various stages to the end of his life in 1375. It is the first collection of women's biographies ever written.
#OBLIVION COLLATINUS FREE#
It is Sextus Tarquinius, who, coming as an enemy instead of a guest forced from me last night by brutal violence a pleasure fatal to me, and, if you are men, fatal to him.’ They all successively pledged their word, and tried to console the distracted woman, by turning the guilt from the victim of the outrage to the perpetrator, and urging that it is the mind that sins not the body, and where there has been no consent there is no guilt ‘It is for you,’ she said, ‘to see that he gets his deserts: although I acquit myself of the sin, I do not free myself from the penalty no unchaste woman shall henceforth live and plead Lucretia’s example.’īoccaccio's On Famous Women (De claris mulieribus) is a remarkable work that contains the lives of one hundred and six women in myth and history, ranging from Eve to Boccaccio's contemporary, Queen Giovanna I of Naples. But pledge me your solemn word that the adulterer shall not go unpunished. But it is only the body that has been violated the soul is pure death shall bear witness to that. As they entered, she burst into tears, and to her husband's inquiry whether all was well, replied, ‘No! what can be well with a woman when her honour is lost? The marks of a stranger, Collatinus, are in your bed. They found Lucretia sitting in her room prostrate with grief.