Hebdomas quarta decima - Week XII - Brutus, his son and the lictors - David- Livy

Brutus Sons Lictors

Lucius Junius Brutus, one of the liberators of Rome from the rule of the kings and one of the first consuls of the new Republic (509 B.c.), was compelled by duty of his office to impose the. death penalty upon his sons, who were caught conspiring with agents of the Tarquinii to restore the Etruscan monarchy in Rome. Here is Livy's version of the story:
Sentence was pronounced, and punishment inflicted upon the traitors--apunishment the more conspicuous because the office of consul imposedupon a father the duty of exacting the penalty from his sons. Bound to thestake stood youths of the highest birth; the consul's sons drew all eyes uponthemselves. Men pitied them for their punishment not more than for thecrime by which they had deserved that punishment. To think that thoseyoung men, in that year of all others, when their country was liberated andher liberator their own father, and when the consulship had begun with theJungian family, would have brought themselves to betray all-the senate, the
plebs, and all the gods and men of Rome-to one who had formerly been atyrannical king and was then an enemy exile! The consuls advanced to their
tribunal and dispatched the lictors to execute the sentence. The culprits were
stripped, scourged with rods, and beheaded, while through it all men gazedat the expression on the father's face, where they might clearly read a father'sanguish, as he administered the nation's retribution.Livy, II:V.S-8.Extracts from the translation of B. 0. Foster

This tragic story gives us another example of conflict between two kinds of pietas. One dimension of pietas is loyalty. Here loyalty to the state (viewed differently by Brutus and his sons) conflicts with loyalty to family (father and sons). The painting below by Jaques-Louis David in 1789 was painted during the French Revolution when similar issues of loyalty and conflict were acute.

Note that Brutus sits on the far left in shadow. He is slightly leaning on a statue of the goddess Roma, who sits on a throne and is holding weapons fo war. He is somber and seeks support from the goddess.  The rest of the family is in bright light on the right.  A chair sits empty. It is Brutus' chair. A column underscores his separation from his family resulting from his choice to kill his sons as traitors of Rome. 

Lictors Bearing Bodies of his Sons to Brutus