Michael Kochin          Katherine Philippakis
Political Science       Political Science
Tel Aviv University     Arizona State University

In the tale of Lucretia the rule of men over women, the management of appearances, and the founding of republics are all intertwined.  In the Roman version, the public realm depends on a private realm in which women are and ought to be confined and where women's chastity should be preserved.  Tarquin's violation of private chastity undermines the orders of the kingship and allows Brutus to realize his republican ambitions.  Just as the Roman Republic is founded on the rape of Lucretia, Augustine's City of God is founded on a recasting of that myth:  Augustine condemns Lucretia as a suicide in order to replace the opinions of men with the wills of both men and women as the stuff of governance.  In Mandragola, Machiavelli turns the Roman tragedy and the Augustinian morality play into a comedy:  Lucrezia triumphs over Messer Nicia and Callimaco via the skillful management of appearances, possessed as she is of the head that can govern a kingdom.  For Machiavelli the management of appearances replaces the rule of opinion as the principle of conduct-- republican virtue is only apparently restored but in reality subverted, since the will to govern appearances triumphs over conventional shame and natural desire.  Samuel Richardson founds a sexually egalitarian commonwealth in the "Republic of Letters" by presenting the rape of his Lucretia, Clarissa, as a tragedy of the conflict between the aristocratic primacy of the family, the Christian (and Machiavellian) primacy of will, and the republican primacy of opinion.  We will show that the modern republic, in which both men and women are citizens, rests on a Richardsonian reconciliation of will and desire.