The Roman attitude towards women and rape was such that rape was a property crime against the husband or paterfamilias. The story of Lucretia (who stabbed herself rather than allow her name to go through posterity tainted) epitomizes the shame felt by Roman victims.
Lucretia had been such a model of Roman feminine virtue that she inflamed the lust of Sextus Tarquin, the son of the king, Tarquinius Superbus, to the point that he arranged to accost her in private. When she resisted his pleas, he threatened to place her naked, dead body beside that of a male slave in the same state so that it would look like adultery. The threat worked and Lucretia permitted the violation.
Following the rape, Lucretia told her male relatives, elicited a promise for revenge, and stabbed herself. Shortly after the rape of Lucretia, the Romans rebelled against their king, the last Roman king was overthrown, and the Roman Republic began. Because of this sequence of events you might claim the rape triggered a revolution and, perhaps, the first republic. [If you're looking for a Roman history paper topic, researching and arguing about these claims might prove fruitful.]
Livy in Book I.57-60 of his Ab urbe condita and Dionysius of Halicarnassus in Book IV of his Roman Antiquities describe the dramatic unfolding of events.
Here is Livy's version of the death scene shown in the Botticelli painting:
"Lucretia, overwhelmed with grief at such a frightful outrage, sent a messenger to her father at Rome and to her husband at Ardea, asking them to come to her, each accompanied by one faithful friend; it was necessary to act, and to act promptly; a horrible thing had happened. Spurius Lucretius came with Publius Valerius, the son of Volesus; Collatinus with Lucius Junius Brutus, with whom he happened to be returning to Rome when he was met by his wife's messenger. They found Lucretia sitting in her room prostrate with grief. 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. But it is only the body that has been violated, the soul is pure; death shall bear witness to that. But pledge me your solemn word that the adulterer shall not go unpunished. It is Sextus Tarquin, 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." She had a knife concealed in her dress which she plunged into her heart, and fell dying on the floor. Her father and husband raised the death-cry."
Livy I.58
In the version of Dionysius, Lucretia's father (Lucretius) summons the witnesses and then dispatches a Sabine named Publius Valerius to tell Lucretia's husband, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, who was not present at the death scene:
67 When, in response to his hasty and urgent summons, the most prominent men had come to his house as she desired, she began at the beginning and told them all that had happened. Then, after embracing her father and addressing many entreaties both to him and to all present and praying to the gods and other divinities to grant her a speedy departure from life, she drew the dagger she was keeping concealed under her robes, and plunging it into her breast, with a single stroke pierced her heart. 2 Upon this the women beat their breasts and filled the house with their shrieks and lamentations, but her father, enfolding her body in his arms, embraced it, and calling her by name again and again, ministered to her, as though she might recover from her wound, until in his arms, gasping and breathing out her life, she expired. This dreadful scene struck the Romans who were present with so much horror and compassion that they all cried out with one voice that they would rather die a thousand deaths in defence of their p481liberty than suffer such outrages to be committed by the tyrants. 3 There was among them a certain man, named Publius Valerius, a descendant of one of those Sabines who came to Rome with Tatius, and a man of action and prudence. This man was sent by them to the camp both to acquaint the husband of Lucretia with what had happened and with his aid to bring about a revolt of the army from the tyrants. 4
Dionysisius of Halicarnassus
