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Article: Castigating Livy: the rape of Lucretia and 'The Old Arcadia.'
- Article from:
- Renaissance Quarterly
- Article date:
- June 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 The Renaissance Society of America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sometime between the fall of 1576 and early 1577, Philip Sidney and Gabriel Harvey worked through the first three books of Livy's History of Rome, "scrutinizing them," according to Harvey's marginal note, "so far as we could from all points of view, applying a political analysis."(1) The pivotal episode of these early books narrates the founding of the Roman republic (1.58.1-2.5.8). This story, I want to argue, provides the intertextual scaffolding for the final books of The Old Arcadia, which Sidney completed sometime in 1580. While Sidney makes Bloomian hay of Livy's account, the structural similarities between the two works seem evident enough.
Both stories begin ...