To the editor:

An ancient tale–possibly apocryphal–recounts the story of Sextus Tarquinius, the son of a king, who forced himself on Lucretia, a virtuous Roman woman. Sextus threatened to kill both Lucretia and her servant if she resisted, and afterward Lucretia, overwhelmed by shame, took her own life. Change a few names and the story could feel torn from modern headlines, including revelations surrounding the Epstein files.

The story functions as a meme, a paradigm, a trope that appears repeatedly across mythology and religion: Leda and the swan, Medusa and Poseidon, Osiris and Heret, even in the Bible, where Lot offers his daughters to an enraged mob. In these stories, the men are rarely held to account. More often, it is the women who suffer punishment, exile, or death.

History offers little relief from this pattern. From ancient Rome through the feudal era, there existed the idea of jus primae noctis — the so-called “right of the first night”– whereby a lord was believed to have the right to violate an underling’s bride on her wedding night. Whether literal practice or myth, the idea reflects a grim reality: Powerful men have long assumed entitlement over women’s bodies, often without consequence.

The transatlantic slave trade made this entitlement explicit. Enslaved women were frequently sold or kept as sexual property. Sally Hemings is the most well-known example, but she was far from alone. Men celebrated as champions of liberty often exploited “comfort women” they legally owned. Child sexual exploitation– universally condemned in principle — has existed in clandestine form since antiquity, from Byzantine elites to modern power brokers. Hemings was acquired when she was very young, and her relationship with Thomas Jefferson began when she was only 14 and he was decades older.

As in the tale of Lucretia, the pattern endures: Powerful men abuse women and children; victims are dismissed, disbelieved, or silenced; and the knowledge that justice will never come can become unbearable. We all know this happens. Even conspiracy movements like QAnon draw power from a widely held intuition — that wealth and influence allow the guilty to escape accountability. Films like “Taken” may exaggerate details, and much of that movie beggars belief, but the idea that young women are trafficked for the pleasure of the rich … of Saudi oil tycoons, sheiks and CEOs … is not implausible to audiences because history has taught us otherwise.

The legend of Lucretia ends with the banishment of kings and the birth of the short-lived Roman Republic. Perhaps the modern story — beginning with Virginia Giuffre — can start with the arrest of the Andrew formally known as prince, and it can end with the purge of all of the billionaires, royals, celebrities and moguls listed in the Epstein files — even the name redacted hundreds of thousands of times, and, hopefully, we too can, as a result, have a true republic — one that represents we, the people, and not they, those who rely on a complicit cabal with eyes wide shut.

J. David Core

Toronto