Ex-spouse Lucretius | ||
Lucilia is the wife of the Roman philosopher Lucretius and is mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue". According to legend, in order to make her husband love only her, Lucilia prepared an aphrodisiac which killed him.
In his poem "Lucretius", Tennyson follows the tradition that Lucretius was driven mad by a love-potion, which was given to him by Lucilia, and perished by his own hand, His poem first imagines Lucilia greatly dissatisfied with the cooling of her husband's ardor for her after the first bloom of their marriage has passed, and her scheme to reinvigorate that flame:
References
Lucilia (wife of Lucretius) Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA