King Lars Porsena (also spelled Porsenna) was the Etruscan monarch of Clusium (modern Chusi, Tuscany) during the transitional period in which Rome changed its government from a kingdom to a republic. At that turning point, traditionally dated to 509 BCE by the Romans, Lars Porsena and his army besieged Rome. Ancient Roman tradition held that the city of Rome, itself, withstood Porsena’s siege, but historians are not so sure—it is a popular historical theory that Porsena may have occupied Rome, dethroned the Roman monarchy, and served as the catalyst for the subsequent rise of the Roman Republic. Nevertheless, within or without the city, Lars Porsena occupied the Roman countryside and captured untold numbers of Romans during the opening phases of the invasion. Notably, there was a brave girl named Cloelia who was taken captive by Porsena’s forces. Held in an Etruscan camp near the Tiber, she became the leader of a group of captured women, and they plotted an escape as the war played out beyond the camp walls.
In terms of chronology, Cloelia remained a captive for key periods of Lars Porsena’s campaign. She was in captivity while Rome was besieged, and she remained imprisoned at the time when the Roman, Gaius Mucius Scaevola, attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Porsena. Cloelia also was unaware that Lars Porsena and the Romans subsequently began negotiating an end to the war. Isolated from these goings-on, Cloelia and her band of captive followers only focused on one thing—freedom. Livy (59 BCE-17 CE), a Roman historian, recorded the tale of her daring escape from the prison. He wrote:
“Cloelia, an unmarried girl, was one of the hostages, held, as it happened, in the Etruscan lines not far from the Tiber; one day, with a number of other girls who had consented to follow her, she eluded the guards, swam across the river under a hail of missiles, and brought her company safe to Rome, where they were all restored to their families. Porsena was furious, and sent to Rome to demand Cloelia’s return—adding that the loss of the other girls did not trouble him…and he made it clear that…he would regard the treaty as broken if she were not returned…” (Livy, History of Rome, 2.13.6-8).
Despite Porsena’s initial rage, his subsequent assessment of the escape and its mastermind lessened his anger. According to ancient Roman tradition, Lars Porsena actually came to be quite impressed with Cloelia’s leadership and bravery. Seeing her in a new light, Porsena decided to amend his earlier demands to the Romans. As told by the aforementioned historian, Livy:
“[S]oon, however, his anger gave way to admiration of her more than masculine courage…he would…if the Romans surrendered her, himself restore her safe and sound to her family. Both sides acted honourably: the Romans, as the terms of the treaty required, sent the hostage back, and Porsena not only protected the brave girl but praised her publicly, and marked his appreciation of her exploit by handing over to her discretion a certain number of other hostages, to be chosen by herself” (Livy, History of Rome, 2.13.8-9).
By Livy’s lifetime (c. 59 BCE-17 CE), the Romans had long identified a statue on the via Sacra (Sacred Way) as a memorial to Cloelia. The art piece, depicting a woman riding a horse, was said to have been commissioned and installed by grateful citizens of the early Republic. On this, Livy wrote, “the Romans paid tribute to Cloelia’s courage, unprecedented in a woman, by an equally unprecedented honour: a statue representing her on horseback was set up at the top of the Sacred Way” (Livy, History of Rome, 2.13.11). There were, of course, disagreements about when the ancient statue was created and who it depicted (names of goddesses and other historical women were also proposed), but the tale of Cloelia was the best-known and most popular explanation for the statue.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Cloelia escapes from the Etruscan camp, Bartolomeo Pinelli (19th century), [Public Domain] via the Rijksmuseum).
Sources:
- The History of Rome by Livy, translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt. New York: Penguin Classics, 2002.
- https://topostext.org/work/142#2.12.1
- The Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth and Religion, edited by Simon Price and Emily Kearns. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- https://www.britannica.com/place/Clusium
