The Rape of Lucretia: Unrecorded pocket-size edition.

[Women] / [Rome]. Lucretia Romana Historia Essemplare, Nella quale si contiene come ella essendo stata violata da Sesto Tarquino; E poi fece un solenne convito al Padre, Marito, Fratello, & altri; & alla loro presenza publicò questo tradimento, dandosi morte per non vivere in questo dishonore. In Bologna per Antonio Pisarri, s.n. [c. 1660-78]. 12mo [14.8 x 8.3 cm], [12] ff., with woodcut on title page. Bound in later blue block-printed wrappers, which are well preserved. Uncut, only very minor toning.
 
 
Unrecorded 17th-century ‘pocket’ edition of this anonymously composed Italian poem on the Rape of Lucretia. Its 89 stanzas of ottava rima provide, as the title page tells us, an “exemplary history, in which it is described how she was raped by Sextus Tarquin, and then held a solemn banquet for her father, husband, brother, and others, and in their presence she made known this betrayal, committing suicide so as not to live in this dishonor.”
 
The undated volume was printed in Bologna by Antonio Pisarri, whose dated imprints range from about 1660 until his death in 1678.
 
In the 19th century, Giuseppe Pitrè attributed this poem to a certain Foriano Pico, an attribution taken from the title page of an undated (but c. 1710s-20s) Naples edition printed by Nicolò Monaco (“Composta e data in luce da Foriano Pico”) (Pitrè, pp. 252-3).
 
The story/history of Lucretia was treated in antiquity most notable by Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Cassius Dio, who stressed both Lucretia’s exemplary virtue and her role as the catalyst that transformed Rome from a monarchy to a republic. Augustine, Christine de Pizan, Boccacio, Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate and Shakespeare are among the many writers who revisited the tale.
 
 
This edition is not located by OCLC, KVK, or OPAC/SBN/ICCU. The poem is known in a handful of undated (but late 17th- and 18th-century) editions, each of which is very rare.
 
*Giuseppe Pitrè, Studi di poesia popolare, pp. 252-3.