MACAULAY'S 
 S OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
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 EDITED BY 
 
 FREDERICK H. SYKES, Ph.D. 
 
 TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
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Lord Macaulay 
 
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Zbc Sctibnet j&nglteb Glassies 
 
 THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY 
 
 M 
 
 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
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 ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 
 
 NEW YORK 
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 Copyright, 1912, by 
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MACAULAY 
 
 The dreamy rhymer's measured snore 
 
 Falls heavy on our ear no more; 
 
 And by long strides are left behind 
 
 The dear delights of woman-kind, 
 
 Who win their battles like their loves, 
 
 In satin waistcoats and kid gloves, 
 
 And have achieved the crowning work 
 
 When they have trussed and skewered a Turk. 
 
 Another comes with stouter tread, 
 And stalks among the statelier dead. 
 He rushes on, and hails by turns 
 High-crested Scott, broad-breasted Burns, 
 And shows the British youth, who ne'er 
 Will lag behind, what Romans were, 
 When all the Tuscans and their Lars 
 Shouted, and shook the towers of Mars. 
 
 — Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 "He who calls departed ages back again into being, enjoys a 
 bliss like that of creating: it were a great thing, if I could 
 scatter the mist that lies upon this most excellent portion of 
 ancient story, and could spread a clear light over it; so that the 
 Romans shall stand before the eyes of my readers, distinct, 
 intelligible, familiar as contemporaries, with their institutions 
 and the vicissitudes of their destiny, living and moving." 
 — B. G. Niebuhr, The History of Rome, I, p. 5. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY viii 
 
 INTRODUCTION: 
 
 I. Outline of Macaulay's Life ix 
 
 II. The Ballad Revival x 
 
 III. The Sources of Macaulay's "Lays" . . . xv 
 
 IV. "Lays of Ancient Rome" xviii 
 
 MACAULAY'S PREFACE TO THE "LAYS" . . . xxi 
 
 TEXT: "LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME": 
 
 horatius 3 
 
 The Battle of the Lake Regillus 28 
 
 Virginia 56 
 
 The Prophecy of Capys 72 
 
 NOTES: 
 
 Preface and Notes to Horatius 85 
 
 Preface and Notes to The Battle of the Lake 
 
 Regillus 90 
 
 Preface and Notes to Virginia 99 
 
 Preface and Notes to The Prophecy of Capys . 107 
 
 INDEX TO NOTES AND PREFACES 115 
 
 vii 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Biography: 
 
 Gilfillan, George. Gallery of Literary Portraits, 1845-1854. 
 
 Morison, J. C. Macaulay, in the "English Men of Letters" 
 Series, 1898. 
 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie. Macaulay, in the Dictionary of Na- 
 tional Biography. The best short life. 
 
 Trevelyan, George Otto. The Life and Letters of Lord Ma- 
 caulay. 2 vols. 1876. The standard life, and one of the 
 very best biographies in the English language. 
 
 Criticism op the "Lays op Ancient Rome": 
 
 Arnold, Matthew. Lectures on Translating Homer, 1861. 
 
 Bagehot, Walter. Estimations in Criticism. 2 vols. 1908- 
 1909. 
 
 Mill, J. S. Westminster Review, vol. xxxix. 
 
 Stedman, E. C. Victorian Poets, 1875. 
 
 Stephen, Sir Leslie. Hours in a Library. First Series, 1875. 
 
 Taine, H. A. History of English Literature, Book V., Chap- 
 ter III., 1863-7. 
 
 Walker, Hugh. The Literature of the Victorian Era, 1910. 
 
 Wilson, John (Christopher North). Blackwood's Magazine, 
 vol. Hi. 
 
 General Criticism: 
 
 Gladstone, W. E. Gleanings of Past Years. 
 
 Jebb, Sir Richard. Macaulay: a Lecture, 1900. 
 
 Saintsbury, George. History of Criticism, vol. in. 
 
 Sedgwick, H. D. Great Writers. 
 
 Thayer, W. R. North American Review, vol. cxc. Contem- 
 porary Review, vol. xcii. 
 
 Trevelyan, George Otto. Marginal Notes by Lord Macaulay, 
 1907. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. OUTLINE OF MACAULAY'S LIFE 
 
 1800, October 25. Thomas Babington Macaulay was born at 
 Rothley Temple, Leicestershire. His father, Zach- 
 aray Macaulay, was a Scotch Calvinist, and was de- 
 voted to the cause of anti-slavery. 
 
 1818. Macaulay entered Trinity College, Cambridge. 
 
 1819. Won the Chancellor's medal for English verse. 
 
 1821. Won the Craven Scholarship and the Chancellor's medal 
 
 for English verse. 
 
 1822. Received the degree of B.A. 
 
 1824. Elected a fellow of Trinity College. 
 
 1825. Wrote the Essay on Milton, his first essay in The Edin- 
 
 burgh Review. 
 
 1826. Called to the Bar. Became a regular contributor to The 
 
 Edinburgh Review, and until 1844 published many 
 
 essays in that periodical. 
 1830. Elected a member of Parliament for Calne. 
 1834. Went to India as a member of the Council for India. 
 
 1838. Returned from India. 
 
 1839. Elected to Parliament from Edinburgh. 
 
 1840. Published his Essay on Lord Clive. 
 
 1841. Published his Essay on Warren Hastings. 
 
 1842. Published his Lays of Ancient Rome. 
 
 1843. Published his Essays in book form. 
 
 ix 
 
x . LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 1844. Published his Essay on the Earl of Chatham, the last 
 essay which he wrote for The Edinburgh Review. 
 He then devoted himself to his History of England. 
 
 1848. Published Volumes I and II of the History of England. 
 
 1855. Published Volumes III and IV of the History of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 1857. Made Baron Macaulay of Rothley. 
 
 1859, December 28. Died, and was buried in the Poets' Cor- 
 ner of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 II. THE BALLAD REVIVAL 
 
 During the latter half of the eighteenth century in England 
 there was in progress a transformation in literary taste, which 
 produced the important result of bringing about a very great 
 change in the literature and art of the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century. In the earlier half of the eighteenth century 
 polish and regularity were the characteristics which were ad- 
 mired and demanded in poetry, with the accompanying dislike 
 of all that was irregular and impassioned. Literature dealt with 
 the polished society of the time, and did not seek subjects that 
 were in any degree different in kind from those with which the 
 people of the time were well acquainted from personal daily 
 experience. Man was dealt with as a perfectly civilized creat- 
 ure, and not as a savage or uncultivated man; and the thoughts 
 and emotions that were depicted were the thoughts and emo- 
 tions of the cultivated eighteenth century. But this regular- 
 ity of form and subject grew monotonous and distasteful; other 
 subjects and a new style gradually crept into the poetry of 
 the latter half of the century, until at its closing years literature 
 was almost entirely transformed. A world of strange supersti- 
 tions, of violent passions, of strange heroes, of demi-gods, came 
 into being, and displaced the old one of polished, civilized 
 heroes. The wonderful and marvellous came as a new and wel- 
 come sensation to minds jaded by the cold reason and smooth- 
 ness of eighteenth century verse; and as the wonderful and the 
 strange and the marvellous were all found in abundance in the 
 
INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 ballad, 1 that form of poetry attracted a great deal of attention in 
 the literary world. The ballads seemed to open up a new world 
 of incident and feeling, and reminded their readers of the early 
 age of man, such as Homer painted it; and presented to their 
 eyes and ears what seemed to them to be the sights and music 
 of the early golden age of the world, before man had submitted 
 himself to the trammels of civilized, artificial society. This is 
 the way in which the ballad is regarded by Addison in the expo- 
 sition and defence of the ballad of Chevy Chace which he wrote 
 for his Spectator in the early years of the eighteenth century; 
 and the opinion expressed so early by Addison became the 
 prevalent one in its later years. The ballad, the romance, the 
 story of mediaeval castles and heroes, and the tale of chivalry 
 all came into their own by the end of the century. 
 
 The taste for the ballad is shown by the great number of 
 collections that were published. The first great collection was 
 made by Ambrose Phillips in three volumes, which he published 
 in 1723-1725. This was followed forty years later by the fa- 
 mous collection by Bishop Percy, the Reliques of Ancient Eng- 
 lish Poetry, published in 1765. This great collection was a very 
 powerful influence in turning the taste of the people toward 
 the ballad and legend, and in making the public acquainted 
 with the real beauty and force of popular poetry. To be sure, 
 there were many poems in Percy's volumes which cannot be 
 called ballads; but the public felt that the material was new and 
 strange enough to satisfy them; and so no one except the anti- 
 quarian Joseph Ritson raised any question as to the nature of the 
 contents. The book attained an European reputation, and was 
 enormously influential in spreading a taste for popular ballads 
 and tales, strange and distant beliefs and customs, and the 
 general love of the wonderful. But, for the purposes of English 
 literature and for the purposes of the subject immediately in 
 hand, we must consider the influence of the book on Scott, as 
 he later became a determining influence on public taste. At the 
 
 1 A ballad is a lyrical narrative poem, of unknown authorship, popular in 
 origin, or cast in the common forms of popular poetry, and fitted in form 
 and content for oral circulation in a popular community. It was usually 
 sung and frequently accompanied by the dance. Examples of nearly all 
 the ballad-types will be found in Child's English and Scottish Popular 
 Ballads (Cambridge (U. S.) edition, 1904). 
 
xii LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 age of thirteen he lighted upon the volumes of the Reliques, and 
 in these words he tells us of the effect which they had upon him : 
 
 " I remember well the spot where I read these volumes for the 
 first time. It was beneath a large platanus-tree, in the ruins of 
 what had been intended for an old-fashioned arbor. The sum- 
 mer day sped onward so fast that, notwithstanding the sharp 
 appetite of thirteen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for 
 with anxiety, and was still found entranced in my intellectual 
 banquet. Henceforth I overwhelmed my schoolfellows and all 
 who would hearken to me with tragical recitations from the bal- 
 lads of Bishop Percy. The first time, too, that I could scrape a 
 few shillings together, I bought unto myself a copy of these be- 
 loved volumes; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so fre- 
 quently or with half the enthusiasm." 
 
 The results in the field of poetry were twofold: in 1802-1803 
 he published two volumes of ballads which he and his helpers 
 had collected during a number of years, under the title, Min- 
 strelsy of the Scottish Border. This work gathered the waifs and 
 strays of popular song and tradition current among the peas- 
 antry of that portion of Scotland adjacent to the English border; 
 and in richness of content and extent of influence is second only 
 to the Reliques itself. The second result of the study of Percy 
 was the series of narrative poems in the ballad style, beginning 
 with The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805, and ending with 
 Harold the Dauntless in 1816; and the series of short poems in 
 the ballad style, which approximate in actual length and in their 
 brief and suggestive treatment, to the real popular ballad. He 
 began his work in the briefer form by translating Burger's 
 Lenore from the German, and after a few further experiments 
 in translation went on to the production of original ballads, such 
 as Alice Brand in The Lady of the Lake. 
 
 In spite of the fact that Scott found in the ballad the model 
 according to which he could best work in verse, he saw the limi- 
 tations of the ballad stanza. In the Introduction to The Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel he points out its chief weakness, showing that 
 the four-line stanza form is likely to be monotonous in a poem 
 of any length. This is true of such stanzas as the following, in 
 spite of their excellence: 
 
INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 The wind blew loud, the waves rose hie 
 
 And dashed the boat on shore; 
 Fair Annie's corpse was in the faem, 
 
 The babe rose never more. 
 
 Lord Gregory tore his gowden locks 
 
 And made a wafu' moan; 
 Fair Annie's corpse lay at his feet, 
 
 His bonny son was gone. 
 
 O cherry, cherry was her cheek, 
 
 And gowden was her hair, 
 And coral, coral was her lips, 
 
 Nane might with them compare! 
 
 — The Lass of Rochroyal. 
 
 The king sits in Dumferling toune, 
 
 Drinking the blude-reid wine: 
 * O whar will I get guid sailor, 
 
 To sail this ship of mine?" 
 
 Up and spake an eldern knicht, 
 
 Sat at the king's richt knee: 
 " Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor 
 
 That sails upon the sea." 
 
 The king has written a braid letter, 
 
 And signed it with his hand, 
 And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence, 
 
 Was walking on the sand. 
 
 The first line that Sir Patrick read, 
 
 A loud laugh laughed he; 
 The next line that Sir Patrick read, 
 
 The tear blinded his ee. 
 
 — Sir Patrick Spence. 
 
 How to preserve this stanza and at the same time to rid it of 
 its monotony was first suggested to Scott by Coleridge. Scott 
 had heard portions of Christabel, and was attracted by the varia- 
 tions of rhyme and metre which he found there, for out of the 
 simple ballad line and stanza Coleridge obtained the most won- 
 derful metrical effects, such as these: 
 
xiv LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 The lady sprang up suddenly, 
 
 The lovely lady, Christabel ! 
 
 It moaned as near, as near can be, 
 
 But what it is she cannot tell. — 
 
 On the other side it seems to be, 
 
 Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. 
 
 The night is chill; the forest bare; 
 
 Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? 
 
 There is wind enough in the air 
 
 To move away the ringlet curl 
 
 From the lovely lady's cheek — 
 
 There is not wind enough to twirl 
 
 The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
 
 That dances as often as dance it can, 
 
 Hanging so light and hanging so high, 
 
 On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky. 
 
 On this type of verse Scott based his own metrical practice; 
 and Macaulay, in turn, tells us at the end of his Preface to the 
 Lays of Ancient Rome that he borrowed from Scott. Macaulay, 
 however, adopts the verse with three accents rather than the 
 verse with four, though some of his lines have four feet. In this 
 way his stanza form reads more like that of Coleridge's Ancient 
 Mariner and the common ballad form than Christabel and the 
 longer poems of Scott: 
 
 But the Consul's brow was sad, 
 
 And the Consul's speech was low, 
 And darkly looked he at the wall, 
 
 And darkly at the foe. 
 " Their van will be upon us 
 
 Before the bridge goes down ; 
 And if they once may win the bridge, 
 
 What hope to save the town?" 
 
 Then out spake brave Horatius, 
 
 The Captain of the Gate: 
 * To every man upon this earth 
 
 Death cometh soon or late. 
 And how can man die better 
 
 Than facing fearful odds, 
 For the ashes of his fathers 
 
 And the temples of his gods." 
 
INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 The Lays are well represented in this passage from ttoratius: 
 they have the force and vigorous simplicity of Scott, with the 
 directness of the ballad, combined with the free stanza-form of 
 Coleridge. They have numerous repetitions in phrase and word 
 as have the ballads, though this peculiarity is as much a char- 
 acteristic of Homer as of the ballads. Above all, the Lays are 
 real narratives, like the ballads, telling brave stories for the sake 
 of the stories, placing the stress on the stories themselves, with 
 little or no comment on them. The emotion which is aroused 
 by the story is not made anything of, but is passed over with 
 ( little notice. Thus they are objective poetry, dealing with the 
 event that is narrated; not lyric poetry, dealing with feeling or 
 emotion. In this particular they are closely modelled on the 
 ballad, and in so far must be regarded as a successful attempt to 
 transform some part of Roman legend back again into the lost 
 ballad-poetry of the ancient city. 
 
 III. THE SOURCES OF MACAULAY'S "LAYS" 
 
 In the previous section we have traced the sources whence 
 Macaulay derived his verse-form and general style of poetic art: 
 there still remain to be considered the sources of the material of 
 the Lays and the general spirit in which the Roman legends are 
 treated. From this point of view the Lays are the outcome of a 
 new method of approach in a field distinct from the ballad but 
 somewhat closely related to it. This was the field of the early 
 history of Rome. In the days before the introduction of the 
 critical method into early Roman history, the stories of Romulus 
 and Remus, of Horatius, of Virginia, and of a long list of heroes 
 and their deeds, were regarded for the most part as sober fact. 
 But research and comparative studies, begun on an extended 
 scale only in the early years of the nineteenth century, first threw 
 doubt on their credibility, and finally discredited them as records 
 of fact, relegating them to the region of the mythical and the 
 legendary. The chief representative of this school of historians 
 of Rome was Professor B. G. Niebuhr, 1 who carried out this 
 
 1 B. G. Niebuhr, The History of Rome. Vols. I and II. 1831 and 1832, 
 translated by Julius Charles Hare, M.A., and Connop Thirlwall, M.A.; 
 Vol. Ill, 1842, translated by William Smith, Ph. D., and Leonhard Schmidt, 
 Ph.D. 
 
xvi LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 method of comparison and analysis more thoroughly than any 
 one else. He was accepted as leader by the chief historians of 
 Rome in England; and what is especially important for us, his 
 results were implicitly accepted by Macaulay. His History of 
 Rome, the first volume of which was published in Germany in 
 1826, was translated into English by two representative scholars 
 in 1831; the other two volumes appearing in English in 1832 and 
 1842. 
 
 We will now give a brief summary of Niebuhr's principles and 
 theories, making a free use of his own words. 
 
 According to his theory, the stories of early Rome are purely 
 legendary and imaginative, and not historical in any sense. In 
 the earliest days of the city, popular bards sang the deeds of 
 heroes; and these songs a later and less imaginative age turned 
 into prose. These legends were handed down from generation 
 to generation in lays, which were sung at banquets to the flute. 
 
 "The guests themselves sang in turn; so it was expected that 
 the lays, as being the common property of the nation, should 
 be known to every free citizen. According to Varro, who calls 
 them old, they were sung by modest boys, sometimes to the flute, 
 sometimes without music. The peculiar function of the Cam- 
 menae (lays) was to sing the praises of the ancients; and among 
 the rest those of the kings. For never did republican Rome 
 strip herself of the recollection of them, any more than she re- 
 moved their statues from the Capitol: in the best times of her 
 freedom their memory was revered and celebrated." 
 
 Arguing from the well-known fact that there are heroic lays 
 in Scotland, in Spain, in Germany, and that the lays of the Ser- 
 vians and of the Greeks were well known in his day, he pro- 
 ceeds to the statement that there must have been ballads in 
 ancient Rome. 
 
 "If any one does not discern the traces of such lays in the 
 epical part of Roman story, he may continue blind to them: he 
 will be left more and more alone every day: there can be no 
 going backward on this point for generations." 
 
 "The poems out of which what we call the history of the 
 Roman kings was resolved into a prose narrative were ... of 
 great extent; consisting partly of lays united into a uniform 
 
INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 whole, partly of detached ones without any necessary connection. 
 The story of Romulus is an epopee by itself: on Numa there 
 can only have been short lays. Tullus, the story of the Horatii, 
 and the destruction of Alba, form an epical whole, like the poem 
 of Romulus: indeed Livy has here preserved a fragment of the 
 poem unaltered, in the lyrical numbers of the old Roman verse. 
 On the other hand, in what is related of Ancus there is not a 
 touch of poetical coloring. But afterward with L. Tarquinius 
 Priscus a great poem begins, which ends with the battle of 
 Regillus; and this lay of the Tarquins even in its prose shape is 
 inexpressibly poetical; nor is it less unlike real history. The 
 arrival of Tarquinius the Lucumo at Rome; his deeds and vic- 
 tories; his death; then the marvellous story of Servius; Tullia's 
 impious nuptials; the murder of the just king; the whole story 
 of the last Tarquinius; the warning presage of his fall; Lu- 
 cretia; the assumed idiocy of Brutus; his death; the war with 
 Porsenna; in the last place, the truly Homeric battle of Reg- 
 illus; all this forms an epopee, which in force and brilliance of 
 imagination leaves everything produced by the Romans in later 
 times far behind it. A stranger to the unity which characterizes 
 the most perfect of Greek poems, it divides itself into sections, 
 answering to the adventures in the Lay of the Nibelungen: and 
 should any one ever have the boldness to think of restoring it in 
 a poetical form, he would make a great mistake in selecting any 
 other than that of this noble work." 1 
 
 To have reconstituted the whole of this body of ancient 
 legendary poem would have been a great task; and Macaulay 
 attempted only four out of the many possible lays. But it must 
 be clear to any one who reads the foregoing account of Niebuhr 
 how completely Macaulay works in his spirit. This is shown 
 both in the Preface to the Lays as well as in the poems them- 
 selves. The Lays of Ancient Rome are the result of the pro- 
 found scholarship of Niebuhr and the brilliant, rhetorical genius 
 of Macaulay. 
 
 In this way Macaulay occupies a distinct place among the 
 balladists of the nineteenth century: Wordsworth attempts to 
 make common things poetical by throwing over them a coloring 
 1 History of Rome (English Translation), Vol. I, pp. 251-256. 
 
xviii LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 of imagination; Coleridge makes the strange and uncanny seem 
 credible and familiar; Southey celebrates far-off heroes of 
 strange and vaguely gigantic mould; Campbell celebrates in 
 stirring strains the heroic history of England; and Aytoun re- 
 calls the feats of the renowned and romantic Scottish cavaliers. 
 To Macaulay belongs the distinction of making alive the old 
 legendary Roman heroes in the familiar ballad measure, so that 
 they have become almost a part of the heroic story of the Eng- 
 lish-speaking race. 
 
 IV. THE "LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME" 
 
 The small volume containing the Lays of Ancient Rome was 
 published in 1842, and at once became a very popular book. 
 Trevelyan, in his Life of Lord Macaulay, says that eighteen thou- 
 sand copies were sold in ten years; forty thousand in twenty 
 years; and that by June, 1875, upward of a hundred thousand 
 had passed into the hands of readers. These figures show that 
 the Lays suited the popular taste for poems in the ballad style, 
 and this fact is further shown by the very favorable reviews 
 which were accorded them. John Stuart Mill compares them 
 with the work of Scott and Campbell, saying that they are more 
 like these than the real ballads and epics of an earlier age. The 
 old bard did everything by single touches; Scott and Macaulay 
 by repetition and accumulation of particulars. 
 
 "They produce all effect by what they say; he by what he 
 suggested — by what he stimulated the imagination to paint for 
 itself. But then the old ballads were not written for the light 
 reading of tired readers. To do the work in their way, they 
 required to be brooded over, or had at least the aid of time 
 and of impassioned recitation. Stories which are to be told to 
 children in the age of eagerness and excitability, or sung in ban- 
 quet halls to assembled warriors, whose daily ideas and feelings 
 supply a flood of comment ready to gush forth on the slightest 
 hint of the poet, cannot fly too swift and straight to the mark. 
 But Mr. Macaulay wrote only to be read, and by readers for 
 whom it was necessary to do all." 
 
 He further praises Macaulay for his services to history, in that 
 
INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 he has made familiar "that true conception of early Roman 
 history, the irrefragible establishment of which has made Nie- 
 buhr famous." l 
 
 John Wilson, "Christopher North," praised the fire, strength, 
 and directness of the Lays; and noted the learning of the author 
 who was able to produce them. He noted, too, that the style 
 and spirit of the poems were the style and spirit of Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
 "Sir Walter would have rejoiced in Horatius as if he had 
 been a doughty Douglas. 
 
 Now by our Sire Quirinus, 
 
 It was a goodly sight 
 To see the thirty standards 
 
 Swept down the tides of flight. 
 
 That is the way of doing business ! A cut-and-thrust style, with- 
 out any flourish. Scott's style when his blood was up, and the 
 first words came like a vanguard impatient for battle. ... It is 
 a great merit of these poems that they are free from ambition 
 or exaggeration. Nothing seems overdone — no tawdry piece of 
 finery disfigures the simplicity of the plan that has been chosen. 
 They seem to have been framed with great artistic skill — with 
 much self-denial and abstinence from anything incongruous — 
 and with a very successful imitation of the effects intended to be 
 represented. Yet every here and there images of beauty and 
 expressions of feeling are thrown out, that are wholly inde- 
 pendent of Rome or the Romans and that appeal to the widest 
 sensibilities of the human heart. In point of homeliness of 
 thought and language, there is often a boldness which none but 
 a man conscious of great powers of writing would have ventured 
 to show." a 
 
 This chorus of praise was interrupted with the change of 
 taste; and the reaction in opinion is most clearly shown by 
 Matthew Arnold. In his opinion the Lays are "pinchbeck," 
 and they are marked by a "hard, metallic movement." "Let 
 me frankly say," he exclaims, "that, to my mind, a man's power 
 
 1 Westminster Review. Vol. XXXIX (February, 1843). 
 
 2 Blackwood' s Magazine, Vol. LII. 
 
xx LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 to detect the false metal in those Lays is a good measure of his 
 fitness to give an opinion about poetical matters at all — I say, 
 Lord Macaulay's 
 
 1 To all the men upon this earth 
 Death cometh soon or late,' 
 
 is hard to read without a cry of pain." 1 
 
 This is harsh criticism; and if by "pinchbeck" Arnold in- 
 tended to imply any insincerity or pretence in the poems, he 
 surely must have misread them. The reason that these lines 
 from Horatius pained him must be that he was heart-sick with 
 ballad imitations of Homer and so with all ballad imitations 
 whatsoever. But not all later critics agree with Arnold; and 
 even if they did, the testimony of youth would override them 
 all. For youth has always been charmed by the Lays, when- 
 ever it has had an opportunity to hear the simple, direct vigor 
 of the verse, and to feel the frank simplicity of the thoughts and, 
 feelings of the characters. Civic patriotism in Horatius; per^j 
 sonal bravery and the charm that surrounds fighting gods and' 
 fighting men in The Battle of Lake Regillus; tender pathos and 
 paternal and filial and neighborly love in Virginia; and a long 
 roll-call of glory in The Prophecy of Capys; — surely here is dn 
 abundance of good matter for the nurture of the spirit and of 
 the imagination, which cannot fail to develop in youth the love 
 for the best in life and literature. To be sure, the Lays do not 
 possess the very finest things in literature, but they are sound 
 as far as they go; and are stepping-stones from the more lowly 
 things to higher. 
 
 No juster judgment has been pronounced on Macaulay than 
 by Sir Leslie Stephen: 
 
 " He understands most thoroughly the value of concentration, 
 unity, and simplicity. Every speech or essay forms an artistic 
 whole, in which some distinct moral is vigorously driven home 
 by a succession of downright blows. This strong rhetorical 
 instinct is shown conspicuously in the Lays of Ancient Rome, 
 which, whatever we may say of them as poetry, are an admi- 
 rable specimen of rhymed rhetoric. We know how good they 
 1 Lectures on Translating Homer. 
 
INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 are when we see how incapable are modern ballad-writers in 
 general of putting the same swing and fire into their verse. . . . 
 There are, of course, many living poets who can do tolerably 
 something of far higher quality which Macaulay could not do 
 at all. But I don't know who, since Scott, could have done this 
 particular thing." 1 
 
 It would be impossible to give in any other form a better idea 
 of Macaulay's purpose and method than he himself has given 
 in his Preface to the Lays. The pupil or teacher who wishes to 
 enter into the author's spirit cannot do better than read what he 
 has there set down in detail. To the author's own Preface 
 which follows all readers are therefore referred. 
 
 MACAULAY'S PREFACE TO THE "LAYS OF 
 ANCIENT ROME" 
 
 That what is called the history of the Kings and early Con- 
 suls of Rome is to a great extent fabulous, few scholars have, 
 since the time of Beaufort, ventured to deny. It is certain that, 
 more than three hundred and sixty years after the date ordi- 
 narily assigned for the foundation of the city, the public records 
 were, with scarcely an exception, destroyed by the Gauls. It 
 is certain that the oldest annals of the commonwealth were com- 
 piled more than a century and a half after this destruction of 
 the records. It is certain, therefore, that the great Latin writers 
 of the Augustan age did not possess those materials, without 
 which a trustworthy account of the infancy of the republic could 
 not possibly be framed. Those writers own, indeed, that the 
 chronicles to which they had access were filled with battles that 
 were never fought, and Consuls that were never inaugurated; 
 and we have abundant proof that, in these chronicles, events of 
 the greatest importance, such as the issue of the war with Por- 
 sena, and the issue of the war with Brennus, were grossly mis- 
 represented. Under these circumstances, a wise man will look 
 with great suspicion on the legend which has come down to us. 
 He will perhaps be inclined to regard the princes who are said 
 to have founded the civil and religious institutions of Rome, the 
 
 1 Hours in a Library, I. 
 
xxii LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 .son of Mars, and the husband of Egeria, as mere mythological 
 personages, of the same class with Perseus and Ixion. As he 
 draws nearer and nearer to the confines of authentic history, 
 he will become less and less hard of belief. He will admit that 
 the most important parts of the narrative have some foundation 
 in truth. But he will distrust almost all the details, not only 
 because they seldom rest on any solid evidence, but also because 
 he will constantly detect in them, even when they are within 
 the limits of physical possibility, that peculiar character, more 
 easily understood than defined, which distinguishes the crea- 
 tions of the imagination from the realities of the world in which 
 we live. 
 
 The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than 
 anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and 
 the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the 
 fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin, the recognition, the 
 fratricide, the rape of the Sabines, the death of Tarpeia, the 
 fall of Hostus Hostilius, the struggle of Mettus Curtius through 
 the marsh, the women rushing with torn raiment and dishevelled 
 hair between their fathers and their husbands, the nightly 
 meetings of Numa and the Nymph by the well in the sacred 
 grove, the fight of the three Romans and the three Albans, the 
 purchase of the Sibylline books, the crime of Tullia, the simu- 
 lated madness of Brutus, the ambiguous reply of the Delphian 
 oracle to the Tarquins, the wrongs of Lucretia, the heroic ac- 
 tions of Horatius Codes, of Scsevola, and of Cloelia, the battle of 
 Regillus won by the aid of Castor and Pollux, the defence of 
 Cremera, the touching story of Coriolanus, the still more touch- 
 ing story of Virginia, the wild legend about the draining of the 
 Alban lake, the combat between Valerius Corvus and the gigan- 
 tic Gaul, are among the many instances which will at once sug- 
 gest themselves to every reader. 
 
 In the narrative of Livy, who was a man of fine imagination, 
 these stories retain much of their genuine character. Nor could 
 even the tasteless Dionysius distort and mutilate them into mere 
 prose. The poetry shines, in spite of him, through the dreary 
 pedantry of his eleven books. It is discernible in the most tedious 
 and in die most superficial modern works on the early times of 
 
INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 Rome. It enlivens the dulness of the Universal History, and 
 gives a charm to the most meagre abridgments of Goldsmith. 
 
 Even in the age of Plutarch there were discerning men who 
 rejected the popular account of the foundation of Rome, be- 
 cause that account appeared to them to have the air, not of a 
 history, but of a romance or a drama. Plutarch, who was dis- 
 pleased at their incredulity, had nothing better to say in reply 
 to their arguments than that chance sometimes turns poet, and 
 produces trains of events not to be distinguished from the most 
 elaborate plots which are constructed by art. But though the 
 existence of a poetical element in the early history of the Great 
 City was detected so many years ago, the first critic who dis- 
 tinctly saw from what source that poetical element had been 
 derived was James Perizonius, one of the most acute and learned 
 antiquaries of the seventeenth century. His theory, which, in 
 his own days, attracted little or no notice, was revived in the 
 present generation by Niebuhr, a man who would have been the 
 first writer of his time, if his talent for communicating truths 
 had borne any proportion to his talent for investigating them. 
 That theory has been adopted by several eminent scholars of 
 our own country, particularly by the Bishop of St. David's, by 
 Professor Maiden, and by the lamented Arnold. It appears to 
 be now generally received by men conversant with classical 
 antiquity; and indeed it rests on such strong proofs, both in- 
 ternal and external, that it will not be easily subverted. A pop- 
 ular exposition of this theory, and of the evidence by which it is 
 supported, may not be without interest even for readers who are 
 unacquainted with the ancient languages. 
 
 The Latin literature which has come down to us is of later 
 date than the commencement of the Second Punic War, and 
 consists almost exclusively of works fashioned on Greek models. 
 The Latin metres, heroic, elegiac, lyric, and dramatic, are of 
 Greek origin. The best Latin epic poetry is the feeble echo of 
 the Iliad and Odyssey. The best Latin eclogues are imitations 
 of Theocritus. The plan of the most finished didactic poem in 
 the Latin tongue was taken from Hesiod. The Latin tragedies 
 are bad copies of the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides. 
 The Latin comedies are free translations from Demophilus, 
 
xxiv LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Menander, and Apollodorus. The Latin philosophy was bor- 
 rowed, without alteration, from the Portico and the Academy; 
 and the great Latin orators constantly proposed to themselves 
 as patterns the speeches of Demosthenes and Lysias. 
 
 But there was an earlier Latin literature, a literature truly 
 Latin, which has wholly perished, which had, indeed, almost 
 wholly perished long before those whom we are in the habit of 
 regarding as the greatest Latin writers were born. That litera- 
 ture abounded with metrical romances, such as are found in 
 every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence, but 
 little reading and writing. All human beings not utterly savage 
 long for some information about past times, and are delighted by 
 narratives which present pictures to the eye of the mind. But 
 it is only in very enlightened communities that books are readily 
 accessible. Metrical composition, therefore, which, in a highly 
 civilized nation, is a mere luxury, is, in nations imperfectly civ- 
 ilized, almost a necessary of life, and is valued less on account 
 of the pleasure which it gives to the ear, than on account of the 
 help which it gives to the memory. A man who can invent or 
 embellish an interesting story, and put it into a form which 
 others may easily retain in their recollection, will always be 
 highly esteemed by a people eager for amusement and infor- 
 mation, but destitute of libraries. Such is the origin of ballad- 
 poetry, a species of composition which scarcely ever fails to 
 spring up and flourish in every society at a certain point in the 
 progress toward refinement. Tacitus informs us that songs 
 were the only memorials of the past which the ancient Germans 
 possessed. We learn from Lucan and from Ammianus Mar- 
 cellinus that the brave actions of the ancient Gauls were com- 
 memorated in the verses of Bards. During many ages, and 
 through many revolutions, minstrelsy retained its influence over 
 both the Teutonic and the Celtic race. The vengeance exacted 
 by the spouse of Attila for the murder of Siegfried was celebrated 
 in rhymes, of which Germany is still justly proud. The ex- 
 ploits of Athelstane were commemorated by the Anglo-Saxons, 
 and those of Canute by the Danes, in rude poems, of which a 
 few fragments have come down to us. The chants of the Welsh 
 harpers preserved, through ages of darkness, a faint and doubt- 
 
INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 ful memory of Arthur. In the Highlands of Scotland may still 
 be gleaned some relics of the old songs about Cuthullin and 
 Fingal. The long struggle of the Servians against the Ottoman 
 power was recorded in lays full of martial spirit. We learn 
 from Herrera that, when a Peruvian Inca died, men of skill were 
 appointed to celebrate him in verses, which all the people learned 
 by heart, and sang in public on days of festival. The feats of 
 Kurroglou, the great freebooter of Turkistan, recounted in bal- 
 lads composed by himself, are known in every village of North- 
 ern Persia. Captain Beechey heard the Bards of the Sandwich 
 Islands recite the heroic achievements of Tamehameha, the most 
 illustrious of their kings. Mungo Park found in the heart of 
 Africa a class of singing-men, the only annalists of their rude 
 tribes, and heard them tell the story of the victory which 
 Darnel, the negro prince of the Jaloffs, won over Abdulkader, 
 the Mussulman tyrant of Foota Torra. This species of poetry 
 attained a high degree of excellence among the Castilians, before 
 they began to copy Tuscan patterns. It attained a still higher 
 degree of excellence among the English and the Lowland Scotch, 
 during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. But it 
 reached its full perfection in ancient Greece; for there can be no 
 doubt that the great Homeric poems are generically ballads, 
 though widely distinguished from all other ballads, and indeed 
 from almost all other human compositions, by transcendent sub- 
 limity and beauty. 
 
 As it is agreeable to general experience that, at a certain stage 
 in the progress of society, ballad-poetry should flourish, so is it 
 also agreeable to general experience that, at a subsequent stage 
 in the progress of society, ballad-poetry should be undervalued 
 and neglected. Knowledge advances: manners change: great 
 foreign models of composition are studied and imitated. The 
 phraseology of the old minstrels becomes obsolete. Their versi- 
 fication, which, having received its laws only from the ear, 
 abounds in irregularities, seems licentious and uncouth. Their 
 simplicity appears beggarly when compared with the quaint 
 forms and gaudy coloring of such artists as Cowley and Gon- 
 gora. The ancient lays, unjustly despised by the learned and 
 polite, linger for a time in the memory of the vulgar, and are at 
 
xxvi LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 length too often irretrievably lost. We cannot wonder that the 
 ballads of Rome should have altogether disappeared, when we 
 remember how very narrowly, in spite of the invention of print- 
 ing, those of our own country and those of Spain escaped the 
 same fate. There is indeed little doubt that oblivion covers 
 many English songs equal to any that were published by Bishop 
 Percy, and many Spanish songs as good as the best of those 
 which have been so happily translated by Mr. Lockhart 
 Eighty years ago England possessed only one tattered copy of 
 Childe Waters and Sir Cauline, and Spain only one tattered copy 
 of the noble poem of the Cid. The snuff of a candle, or a mis- 
 chievous dog, might in a moment have deprived the world for- 
 ever of any of those fine compositions. Sir Walter Scott, who 
 united to the fire of a great poet the minute curiosity and patient 
 diligence of a great antiquary, was but just in time to save the 
 precious relics of the Minstrelsy of the Border. In Germany, 
 the lay of the Nibelungs had been long utterly forgotten, when, in 
 the eighteenth century, it was, for the first time, printed from a 
 manuscript in the old library of a noble family. In truth, the 
 only people who, through their whole passage from simplicity 
 to the highest civilization, never for a moment ceased to love and 
 admire their old ballads, were the Greeks. 
 
 That the early Romans should have had ballad-poetry, and 
 that this poetry should have perished, is therefore not strange. 
 It would, on the contrary, have been strange if these things had 
 not come to pass; and we should be justified in pronouncing 
 them highly probable, even if we had no direct evidence on the 
 subject. But we have direct evidence of unquestionable au- 
 thority. 
 
 Ennius, who flourished in the time of the Second Punic War, 
 was regarded in the Augustan age as the father of Latin poetry. 
 He was, in truth, the father of the second school of Latin poetry, 
 the only school of which the works have descended to us. But 
 from Ennius himself we learn that there were poets who stood 
 to him in the same relation in which the author of the romance 
 of Count Alarcos stood to Garcilaso, or the author of the Lytell 
 Geste of Robyn Hode to Lord Surrey. Ennius speaks of verses 
 which the Fauns and the Bards were wont to chant in the old 
 
INTRODUCTION xxvii 
 
 time, when none had yet studied the graces of speech, when 
 none had yet climbed the peaks sacred to the Goddesses of 
 Grecian song. " Where," Cicero mournfully asks, " are those old 
 verses now?" 
 
 Contemporary with Ennius was Quintus Fabius Pictor, the 
 earliest of the Roman annalists. His account of the infancy and 
 youth of Romulus and Remus has been preserved by Dionysius, 
 and contains a very remarkable reference to the ancient Latin 
 poetry. Fabius says that, in his time, his countrymen were still 
 in the habit of singing ballads about the Twins. "Even in the 
 hut of Faustulus," — so these old lays appear to have run — "the 
 children of Rhea and Mars were, in port and in spirit, not like 
 unto swineherds or cowherds, but such that men might well 
 guess them to be of the blood of Kings and Gods." 
 
 Cato the Censor, who also lived in the days of the Second 
 Punic War, mentioned this lost literature in his lost work on 
 the antiquities of his country. Many ages, he said, before his 
 time, there were ballads in praise of illustrious men; and these 
 ballads it was the fashion for the guests at banquets to sing in 
 turn while the piper played. "Would," exclaims Cicero, "that 
 we still had the old ballads of which Cato speaks!" 
 
 Valerius Maximus gives us exactly similar information, with- 
 out mentioning his authority, and observes that the ancient 
 Roman ballads were probably of more benefit to the young than 
 all the lectures of the Athenian schools, and that to the influence 
 of the national poetry were to be ascribed the virtues of such 
 men as Camillus and Fabricius. 
 
 Varro, whose authority on all questions connected with the 
 antiquities of his country is entitled to the greatest respect, tells 
 us that at banquets it was once the fashion for boys to sing, some- 
 times with and sometimes without instrumental music, ancient 
 ballads in praise of men of former times. These young per- 
 formers, he observes, were of unblemished character, a circum- 
 stance which he probably mentioned because, among the Greeks, 
 and indeed in his time among the Romans also, the morals of 
 singing-boys were in no high repute. 
 
 The testimony of Horace, though given incidentally, confirms 
 the statements of Cato, Valerius Maximus, and Varro. The 
 
xxviii LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 poet predicts that, under the peaceful administration of Au- 
 gustus, the Romans will, over their full goblets, sing to the pipe, 
 after the fashion of their fathers, the deeds of brave captains 
 and the ancient legends touching the origin of the city. 
 
 The proposition, then, that Rome had ballad-poetry, is not 
 merely in itself highly probable, but is fully proved by direct 
 evidence of the greatest weight. 
 
 This proposition being established, it becomes easy to under- 
 stand why the early history of the city is unlike almost every- 
 thing else in Latin literature, native where almost everything 
 else is borrowed, imaginative where almost everything else is 
 prosaic. We can scarcely hesitate to pronounce that the mag- 
 nificent, pathetic, and truly national legends, which present so 
 striking a contrast to all that surrounds them, are broken and 
 defaced fragments of that early poetry which, even in the age 
 of Cato the Censor, had become antiquated, and of which Tully 
 had never heard a line. 
 
 That this poetry should have been suffered to perish will not 
 appear strange when we consider how complete was the triumph 
 of the Greek genius over the public mind of Italy. It is probable 
 that, at an early period, Homer and Herodotus furnished some 
 hints to the Latin minstrels; 1 but it was not till after the war 
 with Pyrrhus that the poetry of Rome began to put off its old 
 Ausonian character. The transformation was soon consum- 
 mated. The conquered, says Horace, led captive the con- 
 querors. It was precisely at the time at which the Roman 
 people rose to unrivalled political ascendancy that they stooped 
 to pass under the intellectual yoke. It was precisely at the time 
 at which the sceptre departed from Greece that the empire of 
 her language and of her arts became universal and despotic. 
 The revolution indeed was not effected without a struggle. 
 Naevius seems to have been the last of the ancient line of poets. 
 Ennius was the founder of a new dynasty. Naevius celebrated 
 the First Punic War in Saturnian verse, the old national verse 
 of Italy. Ennius sang the Second Punic War in numbers bor- 
 rowed from the Iliad. The elder poet, in the epitaph which he 
 wrote for himself, and which is a fine specimen of the early 
 1 See the Preface to the Lay of the Battle of Regillus 
 
INTRODUCTION xxix 
 
 Roman diction and versification, plaintively boasted that the 
 Latin language had died with him. Thus what to Horace ap- 
 peared to be the first faint dawn of Roman literature, appeared 
 to Nsevius to be its hopeless setting. In truth, one literature was 
 setting, and another dawning. 
 
 The victory of the foreign taste was decisive: and indeed we 
 can hardly blame the Romans for turning away with contempt 
 from the rude lays which had delighted their fathers, and giving 
 their whole admiration to the immortal productions of Greece. 
 The national romances, neglected by the great and the refined 
 whose education had been finished at Rhodes or Athens, con- 
 tinued, it may be supposed, during some generations, to delight 
 the vulgar. While Vergil, in hexameters of exquisite modula- 
 tion, described the sports of rustics, those rustics were still sing- 
 ing their wild Saturnian ballads. It is not improbable that, at 
 the time when Cicero lamented the irreparable loss of the poems 
 mentioned by Cato, a search among the nooks of the Apennines, 
 as active as the search which Sir Walter Scott made among the 
 descendants of the mosstroopers of Liddesdale, might have 
 brought to light many fine remains of ancient minstrelsy. No 
 such search was made. The Latin ballads perished forever. 
 Yet discerning critics have thought that they could still perceive 
 in the early history of Rome numerous fragments of this lost 
 poetry, as the traveller on classic ground sometimes finds, built 
 into the heavy wall of a fort or convent, a pillar rich with acan- 
 thus leaves, or a frieze where the Amazons and Bacchanals seem 
 to live. The theatres and temples of the Greek and the Roman 
 were degraded into the quarries of the Turk and the Goth. 
 Even so did the ancient Saturnian poetry become the quarry in 
 which a crowd of orators and annalists found the materials of 
 their prose. 
 
 It is not difficult to trace the process by which the old songs 
 were transmuted into the form which they now wear. Funeral 
 panegyric and chronicle appear to have been the intermediate 
 links which connected the lost ballads with the histories now 
 extant. From a very early period it was the usage that an ora- 
 tion should be pronounced over the remains of a noble Roman. 
 The orator, as we learn from Polybius, was expected, on such an 
 
xxx LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 occasion, to recapitulate all the services which the ancestors of 
 the deceased had, from the earliest time, rendered to the com- 
 monwealth. There can be little doubt that the speaker on whom 
 this duty was imposed would make use of all the stories suited 
 to his purpose which were to be found in the popular lays. 
 There can be as little doubt that the family of an eminent man 
 would preserve a copy of the speech which had been pronounced 
 over his corpse. The compilers of the early chronicles would 
 have recourse to these speeches; and the great historians of a 
 later period would have recourse to the chronicles. 
 
 It may be worth while to select a particular story, and to trace 
 its probable progress through these stages. The description of 
 the migration of the Fabian house to Cremera is one of the finest 
 of the many fine passages which lie thick in the earlier books of 
 Livy. The Consul, clad in his military garb, stands in the ves- 
 tibule of his house, marshalling his clan, three hundred and six 
 fighting men, all of the same proud patrician blood, all worthy 
 to be attended by the fasces, and to command the legions. 
 A sad and anxious retinue of friends accompanies the adven- 
 turers through the streets; but the voice of lamentation is 
 drowned by the shouts of admiring thousands. As the pro- 
 cession passes the Capitol, prayers and vows are poured forth, 
 but in vain. The devoted band, leaving Janus on the right, 
 marches to its doom through the Gate of Evil Luck. After 
 achieving high deeds of valor against overwhelming numbers, 
 all perish save one child, the stock from which the great Fabian 
 race was destined again to spring for the safety and glory of the 
 commonwealth. That this fine romance, the details of which 
 are so full of poetical truth, and so utterly destitute of all show 
 of historical truth, came originally from some lay which had 
 often been sung with great applause at banquets, is in the high- 
 est degree probable. Nor is it difficult to imagine a mode in 
 which the transmission might have taken place. 
 
 The celebrated Quintus Fabius Maximus, who died about 
 twenty years before the First Punic War, and more than forty 
 years before Ennius was born, is said to have been interred with 
 extraordinary pomp. In the eulogy pronounced over his body 
 all the great exploits of his ancestors were doubtless recounted 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxi 
 
 and exaggerated. If there were then extant songs which gave 
 a vivid and touching description of an event, the saddest and 
 the most glorious in the long history of the Fabian house, noth- 
 ing could be more natural than that the panegyrist should bor- 
 row from such songs their finest touches, in order to adorn his 
 speech. A few generations later the songs would perhaps be 
 forgotten, or remembered only by shepherds and vine-dressers. 
 But the speech would certainly be preserved in the archives of 
 the Fabian nobles. Fabius Pictor would be well acquainted 
 with a document so interesting to his personal feelings, and 
 would insert large extracts from it in his rude chronicle. That 
 chronicle, as we know, was the oldest to which Livy had access. 
 Livy would at a glance distinguish the bold strokes of the for- 
 gotten poet from the dull and feeble narrative by which they 
 were surrounded, would retouch them with a delicate and pow- 
 erful pencil, and would make them immortal. 
 
 That this might happen at Rome can scarcely be doubted; for 
 something very like this has happened in several countries, and, 
 among others, in our own. Perhaps the theory of Perizonius 
 cannot be better illustrated than by showing that what he sup- 
 poses to have taken place in ancient times has, beyond all doubt, 
 taken place in modern times. 
 
 "History," says Hume with the utmost gravity, "has pre- 
 served some instances of Edgar's amours, from which, as from 
 a specimen, we may form a conjecture of the rest." He then 
 tells very agreeably the stories of Elfleda and Elfrida, two stories 
 which have a most suspicious air of romance, and which indeed 
 greatly resemble, in their general character, some of the legends 
 of early Rome. He cites, as his authority for these two tales, the 
 chronicle of William of Malmesbury, who lived in the time of 
 King Stephen. The great majority of readers suppose that 
 the device by which Elfrida was substituted for her young mis- 
 tress, the artifice by which Athelwold obtained the hand of 
 Elfrida, the detection of that artifice, the hunting party, and the 
 vengeance of the amorous king, are things about which there is 
 no more doubt than about the execution of Anne Boleyn, or 
 the slitting of Sir John Coventry's nose. But when we turn to 
 William of Malmesbury, we find that Hume, in his eagerness to 
 
xxxii LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 relate these pleasant fables, has overlooked one very important 
 circumstance. William does indeed tell both the stories; but 
 he gives us distinct notice that he does not warrant their truth, 
 and that they rest on no better authority than that of ballads. 
 
 Such is the way in which these two well-known tales have been 
 handed down. They originally appeared in a poetical form. 
 They found their way from ballads into an old chronicle. The 
 ballads perished; the chronicle remained. A great historian, 
 some centuries after the ballads had been altogether forgotten, 
 consulted the chronicle. He was struck by the lively coloring 
 of these ancient fictions; he transferred them to his pages; and 
 thus we find inserted, as unquestionable facts, in a narrative 
 which is likely to last as long as the English tongue, the inven- 
 tions of some minstrel whose works were probably never com- 
 mitted to writing, whose name is buried in oblivion, and whose 
 dialect has become obsolete. It must, then, be admitted to be 
 possible, or rather highly probable, that the stories of Romulus 
 and Remus, and of the Horatii and Curiatii, may have had a 
 similar origin. 
 
 Castilian literature will furnish us with another parallel case. 
 Mariana, the classical historian of Spain, tells the story of the 
 ill-starred marriage which the King Don Alonso brought about 
 between the heirs of Carrion and the two daughters of the Cid. 
 The Cid bestowed a princely dower on his sons-in-law. But 
 the young men were base and proud, cowardly and cruel. They 
 were tried in danger, and found wanting. They fled before the 
 Moors, and once, when a lion broke out of his den, they ran 
 and crouched in an unseemly hiding-place. They knew that 
 they were despised, and took counsel how they might be avenged. 
 They parted from their father-in-law with many signs of love, 
 and set forth on a journey with Dona Elvira and Dona Sol. 
 In a solitary place the bridegrooms seized their brides, stripped 
 them, scourged them, and departed, leaving them for dead. 
 But one of the house of Bivar, suspecting foul play, had followed 
 the travellers in disguise. The ladies were brought back safe 
 to the house of their father. Complaint was made to the king. 
 It was adjudged by the Cortes that the dower given by the Cid 
 should be returned, and that the heirs of Carrion together with 
 
INTRODUCTION xxxiii 
 
 one of their kindred should do battle against three knights of 
 the party of the Cid. The guilty youths would have declined 
 the combat; but all their shifts were vain. They were van- 
 quished in the lists, and forever disgraced, while their injured 
 wives were sought in marriage by great princes. 
 
 Some Spanish writers have labored to show, by an examina- 
 tion of dates and circumstances, that this story is untrue. Such 
 confutation was surely not needed; for the narrative is on the 
 face of it a romance. How it found its way into Mariana's his- 
 tory is quite clear. He acknowledges his obligations to the 
 ancient chronicles; and had doubtless before him the Cronica 
 del famoso Cavallero Cid Ruy Diez Campeador, which had 
 been printed as early as the year 1552. He little suspected that 
 all the most striking passages in this chronicle were copied from 
 a poem of the twelfth century, a poem of which the language 
 and versification had long been obsolete, but which glowed with 
 no common portion of the fire of the Iliad. Yet such was the 
 fact. More than a century and a half after the death of Mariana, 
 this venerable ballad, of which one imperfect copy on parch- 
 ment, four hundred years old, had been preserved at Bivar, was 
 for the first time printed. Then it was found that every inter- 
 esting circumstance of the story of the heirs of Carrion was de- 
 rived by the eloquent Jesuit from a song of which he had never 
 heard, and which was composed by a minstrel whose very name 
 had long been forgotten. 
 
 Such, or nearly such, appears to have been the process by 
 which the lost ballad-poetry of Rome was transformed into his- 
 tory. To reverse that process, to transform some portions of 
 early Roman history back into the poetry out of which they 
 were made, is the object of this work. 
 
 In the following poems the author speaks, not in his own per- 
 son, but in the persons of ancient minstrels who know only 
 what a Roman citizen, born three or four hundred years before 
 the Christian era, may be supposed to have known, and who are 
 in nowise above the passions and prejudices of their age and 
 nation. To these imaginary poets must be ascribed some 
 blunders which are so obvious that it is unnecessary to point 
 them out. The real blunder would have been to represent 
 
xxxiv LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 these old poets as deeply versed in general history, and studious 
 of chronological accuracy. To them must also be attributed 
 the illiberal sneers at the Greeks, the furious party-spirit, the 
 contempt for the arts of peace, the love of war for its own sake, 
 the ungenerous exultation over the vanquished, which the reader 
 will sometimes observe. To portray a Roman of the age of 
 Camillus or Curius as superior to national antipathies, as mourn- 
 ing over the devastation and slaughter by which empire and 
 triumphs were to be won, as looking on human suffering with 
 the sympathy of Howard, or as treating conquered enemies with 
 the delicacy of the Black Prince, would be to violate all dra- 
 matic propriety. The old Romans had some great virtues, forti- 
 tude, temperance, veracity, spirit to resist oppression, respect 
 for legitimate authority, fidelity in the observing of contracts, 
 disinterestedness, ardent patriotism; but Christian charity and 
 chivalrous generosity were alike unknown to them. 
 
 It would have been obviously improper to mimic the manner 
 of any particular age or country. Something has been bor- 
 rowed, however, from our own old ballads, and more from Sir 
 Walter Scott, the great restorer of our ballad-poetry. To the 
 Iliad still greater obligations are due; and those obligations 
 have been contracted with the less hesitation, because there is 
 reason to believe that some of the old Latin minstrels really had 
 recourse to that inexhaustible store of poetical images. 
 
 It would have been easy to swell this little volume to a very 
 considerable bulk, by appending notes filled with quotations; 
 but to a learned reader such notes are not necessary; for an 
 unlearned reader they would have little interest; and the judg- 
 ment passed both by the learned and by the unlearned on a 
 work of the imagination will always depend much more on the 
 general character and spirit of such a work than on minute 
 details. 
 
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
r/ 
 
 ^v 
 
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 HORATIUS 
 
 A LAY MADE ABCftlT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX 
 
 Lars Porsena of Clusium 
 
 By the Nine Gods he swore 
 That the great house of Tarquin 
 
 Should suffer wrong no more. 
 By the Nine Gods he swore it, 5 
 
 And named a trysting day, 
 And bade his messengers ride forth, 
 East and west and south and north, 
 
 To summon his array. 
 
 ii i 
 
 East and west and south and north 10 
 
 The messengers ride fast, 
 And tower and town and cottage 
 
 Have heard the trumpet's blast. 
 Shame on the false Etruscan 
 
 Who lingers in his home, 15 
 
 When Porsena of Clusium 
 
 Is on the march for Rome. 
 3 
 
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 in 
 
 The horsemen and the footmen 
 
 Are pouring in amain 
 From many a stately market-place; 20 
 
 From many a fruitful plain ; 
 From many a lonely hamlet, 
 
 Which, hid by beech and pine, 
 Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest 
 
 Of purple Apennine; 25 
 
 IV 
 
 . 
 From lordly Volaterrae, 
 
 Where scowls the far-famed hold 
 Piled by the hands of giants 
 
 For godlike kings of old; 
 From seagirt Populonia, 30 
 
 Whose sentinels descry 
 Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops 
 
 Fringing the southern sky; 
 
 From the proud mart of Pisae, 
 
 Queen of the western waves, 35 
 
 Where ride Massilia's triremes 
 
 Heavy with fair-haired slaves; 
 From where sweet Clanis wanders 
 
 Through corn and vines and flowers; 
 From where Cortona lifts to heaven 40 
 
 Her diadem of towers. 
 
HORATIUS 
 
 VI 
 
 Tall are the oaks whose acorns 
 
 Drop in dark Auser's rill; 
 Fat are the stags that champ the boughs 
 
 Of the Ciminian hill; 45 
 
 Beyond all streams Clitumnus 
 
 Is to the herdsman dear; 
 Best of all pools the fowler loves 
 
 The great Volsinian mere. 
 
 VII 
 
 But now no stroke of woodman 50 
 
 Is heard by Auser's rill ; 
 No hunter tracks the stag's green path 
 
 Up the Ciminian hill; 
 Unwatched along Clitumnus 
 
 Grazes the milk-white steer; 55 
 
 Unharmed the water-fowl may dip 
 
 In the Volsinian mere. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The harvests of Arretium, 
 
 This year, old men shall reap, 
 This year, young boys in Umbro 60 
 
 Shall plunge the struggling sheep; 
 And in the vats of Luna, 
 
 This year, the must shall foam 
 Round the white feet of laughing girls 
 
 Whose sires have marched to Rome. 65 
 
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 IX 
 
 There be thirty chosen prophets, 
 
 The wisest of the land, 
 Who always by Lars Porsena 
 
 Both morn and evening stand : 
 Evening and morn the Thirty 70 
 
 Have turned the verses o'er, 
 Traced from the right on linen white 
 
 By mighty seers of yore. 
 
 And with one voice the Thirty 
 
 Have their glad answer given : 75 
 
 "Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena; 
 
 Go forth, beloved of Heaven; 
 Go, and return in glory 
 
 To Clusium's royal dome; 
 And hang round Nurscia's altars 80 
 
 The golden shields of Rome." 
 
 XI 
 
 And now hath every city 
 
 Sent up her tale of men; 
 The foot are fourscore thousand, 
 
 The horse are thousands ten: 85 
 
 Before the gates of Sutrium 
 
 Is met the great array. 
 A proud man was Lars Porsena 
 
 Upon the trysting day. 
 
HORATIUS 7 
 
 XII 
 
 For all the Etruscan armies 90 
 
 Were ranged beneath his eye, 
 And many a banished Roman, 
 
 And many a stout ally; 
 And with a mighty following 
 
 To join the muster came 95 
 
 The Tusculan Mamilius, 
 
 Prince of the Latian name. 
 
 XIII 
 
 But by the yellow Tiber 
 
 Was tumult and affright: 
 From all the spacious champaign 100 
 
 To Rome men took their flight. 
 A mile around the city, 
 
 The throng stopped up the ways; 
 A fearful sight it was to see 
 
 Through two long nights and days. 105 
 
 XIV 
 
 For aged folks on crutches, 
 
 And women great with child, 
 And mothers sobbing over babes 
 
 That clung to them and smiled. 
 And sick men borne in litters no 
 
 High on the necks of slaves, 
 And troops of sun-burned husbandmen 
 
 With reaping-hooks and staves, 
 
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 xv 
 
 And droves of mules and asses 
 
 Laden with skins of wine, lis 
 
 And endless flocks of goats and sheep, 
 
 And endless herds of kine, 
 And endless trains of wagons 
 
 That creaked beneath the weight 
 Of corn-sacks and of household goods, 120 
 
 Choked every roaring gate. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Now, from the rock Tarpeian, 
 
 Could the wan burghers spy 
 The line of blazing villages 
 
 Red in the midnight sky. 125 
 
 The Fathers of the City, 
 
 They sat all night and day, 
 For every hour some horseman came 
 
 With tidings of dismay. 
 
 XVII 
 
 To eastward and to westward 130 
 
 Have spread the Tuscan bands; 
 Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecot 
 
 In Crustumerium stands. 
 Verbenna down to Ostia 
 
 Hath wasted all the plain ; 135 
 
 Astur hath stormed Janiculum, 
 
 And the stout guards are slain. 
 
HORATIUS 9 
 
 XVIII 
 
 1 wis, in all the Senate, 
 
 There was no heart so bold, 
 But sore it ached and fast it beat, 140 
 
 When that ill news was told. 
 Forthwith up rose the Consul, 
 
 Up rose the Fathers all; 
 In haste they girded up their gowns, 
 
 And hied them to the wall. 145 
 
 XIX 
 
 They held a council standing 
 
 Before the River-Gate; 
 Short time was there, ye well may guess, 
 
 For musing or debate. 
 Out spake the Consul roundly 150 
 
 "The bridge must straight go down; 
 For, since Janiculum is lost, 
 
 Naught else can save the town." 
 
 xx 
 
 Just then a scout came flying, 
 
 All wild with haste and fear; 155 
 
 " To arms ! to arms ! Sir Consul : 
 
 Lars Porsena is here." 
 On the low hills to westward 
 
 The Consul fixed his eye, 
 And saw the swarthy storm of dust 160 
 
 Rise fast along the sky. 
 
10 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 XXI 
 
 And nearer fast and nearer 
 
 Doth the red whirlwind come; 
 And louder still and still more loud, 
 From underneath that rolling cloud, 165 
 
 Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, 
 
 The trampling, and the hum. 
 And plainly and more plainly 
 
 Now through the gloom appears, 
 Far to left and far to right, 170 
 
 In broken gleams of dark-blue light, 
 The long array of helmets bright, 
 
 The long array of spears. 
 
 XXII 
 
 And plainly and more plainly, 
 
 Above that glimmering line, 175 
 
 Now might ye see the banners 
 
 Of twelve fair cities shine; 
 But the banner of proud Clusium 
 
 Was highest of them all, 
 The terror of the Umbrian, 180 
 
 The terror of the Gaul. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 And plainly and more plainly 
 
 Now might the burghers know 
 By port and vest, by horse and crest 
 
 Each warlike Lucumo. 185 
 
HORATIUS 11 
 
 There Cilnius of Arretium 
 
 On his fleet roan was seen; 
 And Astur of the fourfold shield, 
 Girt with the brand none else may wield, 
 Tolumnius with the belt of gold, 190 
 
 And dark Verbenna from the hold 
 
 By reedy Thrasymene. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Fast by the royal standard, 
 
 O'erlooking all the war, 
 Lars Porsena of Clusium 195 
 
 Sat in his ivory car. 
 By the right wheel rode Mamilius, 
 
 Prince of the Latian name; 
 And by the left false Sextus, 
 
 That wrought the deed of shame. 200 
 
 XXV 
 
 But when the face of Sextus 
 
 Was seen among the foes, 
 A yell that rent the firmament 
 
 From all the town arose. 
 On the house-tops was no woman 205 
 
 But spat towards him and hissed, 
 No child but screamed out curses, 
 
 And shook its little fist. 
 
12 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 XXVI 
 
 But the Consul's brow was sad, 
 
 And the Consul's speech was low, 210 
 
 And darkly looked he at the wall, 
 
 And darkly at the foe. 
 " Their van will be upon us 
 
 Before the bridge goes down ; 
 And if they once may win the bridge, 215 
 
 What hope to save the town?" 
 
 t 
 
 XXVII 
 
 Then out spake brave Horatius, 
 
 The Captain of the. Gate : 
 " To every man upon this earth 
 
 Death cometh soon or late. 220 
 
 And how can man die better 
 
 Than facing fearful odds, ' 
 For the ashes of his fathers, 
 ~ y . And the temples of his Gods, ' 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 " And for the tender mother 225 
 
 Who dandled him to rest, 
 And for the wife who nurses 
 
 His baby at her breast, 
 And for the holy maidens 
 
 Who feed the eternal flame, 230 
 
 To save them from false Sextus 
 
 That wrought the deed of shame ? 
 
HORATIUS 13 
 
 XXIX 
 
 "Hew down the bridge, Sir Consul, 
 
 With all the speed ye may; 
 I, with two more to help me, 235 
 
 Will hold the foe in play. 
 In yon strait path a thousand 
 
 May well be stopped by three. 
 Now who will stand on either hand, 
 
 And keep the bridge with me? " 240 
 
 XXX 
 
 Then out spake Spurius Lartius; 
 
 A Ramnian proud was he: 
 " Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, 
 
 And keep the bridge with thee." * / 
 And out spake strong Herminius; 245 
 
 Of Titian blood was he: 
 "I will abide on thy left side, 
 
 And keep the bridge with thee." 
 
 XXXI 
 
 "Horatius," quoth the Consul, 
 
 "As thou sayest, so let it be." 250 
 
 And straight against that great array 
 
 Forth went the dauntless Three. 
 For Romans in Rome's quarrel 
 
 Spared neither land nor gold, 
 Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, 255 
 
 In the brave days of old. 
 
14 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 XXXII 
 
 Then none was for a party; 
 
 Then all were for the state; 
 Then the great man helped the poor, 
 
 And the poor man loved the great: 260 
 
 Then lands were fairly portioned; 
 
 Then spoils were fairly sold: 
 The Romans were like brothers 
 
 In the brave days of old. 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 Now Roman is to Roman 265 
 
 More hateful than a foe, 
 And the Tribunes beard the high, 
 
 And the Fathers grind the low. 
 As we wax hot in faction, 
 
 In battle we wax cold : 270 
 
 Wherefore men fight not as they fought 
 
 In the brave days of old. 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 Now while the Three were tightening 
 
 Their harness on their backs, 
 The Consul was the foremost man 275 
 
 To take in hand an axe: 
 And Fathers mixed with Commons 
 
 Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, 
 And smote upon the planks above, 
 
 And loosed the props below. 280 
 
HORATIUS 15 
 
 XXXV 
 
 Meanwhile the Tuscan army, 
 
 Right glorious to behold, 
 Came flashing back the noonday light, 
 
 Rank behind rank, like surges bright 
 
 Of a broad sea of gold. 285 
 
 Four hundred trumpets sounded 
 
 A peal of warlike glee, 
 As that great host, with measured tread, 
 And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, 
 Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head, 290 
 
 Where stood the dauntless Three. 
 
 xxxvi 
 
 The Three stood calm and silent, 
 
 And looked upon the foes, 
 And a great shout of laughter 
 
 From all the vanguard rose: 295 
 
 And forth three chiefs came spurring 
 
 Before that deep array: 
 To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, 
 And lifted high their shields, and flew 
 
 To win the narrow way; 300 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 Aunus from green Tifernum, 
 
 Lord of the Hill of Vines; 
 And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves 
 
 Sicken in Ilva's mines; 
 
16 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 And Picus, long to Clusium 305 
 
 Vassal in peace and war, 
 Who led to fight his Umbrian powers 
 From that gray crag where, girt with towers, 
 The fortress of Nequinum lowers 
 
 O'er the pale waves of Nar. 310 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus 
 
 Into the stream beneath: 
 Herminius struck at Seius, 
 
 And clove him to the teeth: 
 At Picus brave Horatius 315 
 
 Darted one fiery thrust; 
 And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms 
 
 Clashed in the bloody dust. 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 Then Ocnus of Falerii 
 
 Rushed on the Roman Three; 320 
 
 And Lausulus of Urgo, 
 
 The rover of the sea; 
 And Aruns of Volsinium, 
 
 Who slew the great wild boar, 
 The great wild boar that had his den 325 
 
 Amidst the reeds of Cosa's fen, 
 And wasted fields, and slaughtered men, 
 
 Along Albinia's shore. 
 
HORATIUS 17 
 
 XL 
 
 Herminius smote down Aruns: 
 
 Lartius laid Ocnus low: 330 
 
 Right to the heart of Lausulus 
 
 Horatius sent a blow. 
 "Lie there," he cried, "fell pirate! 
 
 No more, aghast and pale, 
 From Ostia's walls the crowd shall mark 335 
 The track of thy destroying bark. 
 No more Campania's hinds shall fly 
 To woods and caverns when they spy 
 Thy thrice accursed sail." 
 
 XLI 
 
 But now no sound of laughter 340 
 
 Was heard among the foes, 
 A wild and wrathful clamor 
 
 From all the vanguard rose. 
 Six spears' lengths from the entrance 
 
 Halted that deep array, 345 
 
 And for a space no man came forth 
 
 To win the narrow way. 
 
 XLII 
 
 But hark! the cry is Astur: 
 And lo! the ranks divide; 
 
 And the great Lord of Luna 
 Comes with his stately stride. 
 
 Upon his ample shoulders 
 
 350 
 
18 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Clangs loud the fourfold shield, 
 And in his hand he shakes the brand 
 
 Which none but he can wield. 355 
 
 XLIII 
 
 He smiled on those bold Romans 
 
 A smile serene and high; 
 He eyed the flinching Tuscans, 
 
 And scorn was in his eye, 
 Quoth he, "The she- wolf's litter 360 
 
 Stand savagely at bay: 
 But will ye dare to follow, 
 
 If Astur clears the way ? " 
 
 XLIV 
 
 Then, whirling up his broadsword 
 
 With both hands to the height, 365 
 
 He rushed against Horatius, 
 
 And smote with all his might. 
 With shield and blade Horatius 
 
 Right deftly turned the blow. 
 The blow, though turned, came yet too 
 
 nigh; 370 
 
 It missed his helm, but gashed his thigh: 
 The Tuscans raised a joyful cry 
 
 To see the red blood flow. 
 
 XLV 
 
 He reeled, and on Herminius 
 
 He leaned one breathing-space; 375 
 
HORATIUS 19 
 
 Then, like a wild-cat mad with wounds, 
 
 Sprang right at Astur's face: 
 Through teeth, and skull, and helmet 
 
 So fierce a thrust he sped, 
 The good sword stood a hand-breadth out 380 
 
 Behind the Tuscan's head. 
 
 XLVI 
 
 And the great Lord of Luna 
 
 Fell at that deadly stroke, 
 As falls on Mount Alvernus 
 
 A thunder-smitten oak. 385 
 
 Far o'er the crashing forest 
 
 The giant arms lie spread; 
 And the pale augurs, muttering low, 
 
 Gaze on the blasted head. 
 
 XLVII 
 
 On Astur's throat Horatius 390 
 
 Right firmly pressed his heel, 
 And thrice and four times tugged amain, 
 
 Ere he wrenched out the steel. 
 "And see," he cried, "the welcome 
 
 Fair guests, that waits you here ! 395 
 
 What noble Lucumo comes next 
 
 To taste our Roman cheer?" 
 
 XLVIII 
 
 But at his haughty challenge 
 A sullen murmur ran, 
 
20 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread, 400 
 
 Along that glittering van. 
 There lacked not men of prowess, 
 
 Nor men of lordly race; 
 For all Etruria's noblest 
 
 Were round the fatal place. 405 
 
 XLIX 
 
 But all Etruria's noblest 
 
 Felt their hearts sink to see 
 On the earth the bloody corpses, 
 
 In the path the dauntless Three: 
 And, from the ghastly entrance 4io 
 
 Where those bold Romans stood, 
 All shrank, like boys who unaware, 
 Ranging the woods to start a hare, 
 Come to the mouth of the dark lair 
 Where, growling low, a fierce old bear 4 15 
 
 Lies amidst bones and blood. 
 
 Was none who would be foremost 
 
 To lead such dire attack: 
 But those behind cried "Forward!" 
 
 And those before cried "Back!" 420 
 
 And backward now and forward 
 
 Wavers the deep array; 
 And on the tossing sea of steel, 
 
 To and fro the standards reel; 
 And the victorious trumpet-peal 425 
 
 Dies fitfully away. 
 
HORATIUS 21 
 
 LI 
 
 Yet one man for one moment 
 
 Stood out before the crowd; 
 Well-known was he to all the Three, 
 
 And they gave him greeting loud, 430 
 
 "Now welcome, welcome, Sextus! 
 
 Now welcome to thy home! 
 Why dost thou stay, and turn away ? 
 
 Here lies the road to Rome.'' 
 
 LTI 
 
 Thrice looked he at the city; 435 
 
 Thrice looked he at the dead; 
 And thrice came on in fury, 
 
 And thrice turned back in dread: 
 And, white with fear and hatred, 
 
 Scowled at the narrow way 440 
 
 Where, wallowing in a pool of blood, 
 
 The bravest Tuscans lay. 
 
 LIII 
 
 But meanwhile axe and lever 
 
 Have manfully been plied; 
 And now the bridge hangs tottering 445 
 
 Above the boiling tide. 
 "Come back, come back, Horatius! ,, 
 
 Loud cried the Fathers all. 
 "Back, Lartius! back, Herminius! 
 
 Back, ere the ruin fall!" 450 
 
22 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 LIV 
 
 Back darted Spurius Lartius; 
 
 Herminius darted back: 
 And, as they passed, beneath their feet 
 
 They felt the timbers crack. 
 But when they turned their faces, 455 
 
 And on the farther shore 
 Saw brave Horatius stand alone, 
 
 They would have crossed once more. 
 
 LV 
 
 But with a crash like thunder 
 
 Fell every loosened beam, 460 
 
 And, like a dam, the mighty wreck 
 
 Lay right athwart the stream: 
 And a long shout of triumph 
 
 Rose from the walls of Rome, 
 As to the highest turret-tops 465 
 
 Was splashed the yellow foam. 
 
 LVI 
 
 And, like a horse unbroken 
 
 When first he feels the rein, 
 The furious river struggled hard, 
 
 And tossed his tawny mane, 470 
 
 And burst the curb, and bounded, 
 
 Rejoicing to be free, 
 And whirling down, in fierce career, 
 Battlement, and plank, and pier, 
 
 Rushed headlong to the sea. 475 
 
HORATIUS 23 
 
 LVII 
 
 Alone stood brave Horatius, 
 
 But constant still in mind; 
 Thrice thirty thousand foes before, 
 
 And the broad flood behind. 
 "Down with him!" cried false Sextus, 480 
 
 With a smile on his pale face. 
 "Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena, 
 
 "Now yield thee to our grace." 
 
 LVIII 
 
 Round turned he, as not deigning 
 
 Those craven ranks to see; 485 
 
 Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, 
 
 To Sextus nought spake he; 
 But he saw on Palatinus 
 
 The white porch of his home; 
 And he spake to the noble river 490 
 
 That rolls by the towers of Rome. 
 
 LIX 
 
 "Oh, Tiber! father Tiber! 
 
 To whom the Romans pray, 
 A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, 
 
 Take thou in charge this day!" 495 
 
 So he spake, and speaking sheathed 
 
 The good sword by his side, 
 And with his harness on his back, 
 
 Plunged headlong in the tide. 
 
24 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 LX 
 
 No sound of joy or sorrow 500 
 
 Was heard from either bank; 
 But friends and foes in dumb surprise, 
 With parted lips and straining eyes, 
 
 Stood gazing where he sank; 
 And when above the surges 505 
 
 They saw his crest appear, 
 All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, 
 And even the ranks of Tuscany 
 
 Could scarce forbear to cheer. 
 
 LXI 
 
 But fiercely ran the current, 5io 
 
 Swollen high by months of rain : 
 And fast his blood was flowing; 
 
 And he was sore in pain, 
 And heavy with his armor, 
 
 And spent with changing blows; 515 
 
 And oft they thought him sinking, 
 
 But still again he rose. 
 
 LXII 
 
 Never, I ween, did swimmer, 
 
 In such an evil case, 
 Struggle through such a raging flood 520 
 
 Safe to the landing-place: 
 But his limbs were borne up bravely 
 
 By the brave heart within, 
 And our good father Tiber 
 
 Bore bravely up his chin. 525 
 
HORATIUS 25 
 
 LXIII 
 
 "Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus; 
 
 " Will not the villain drown ? 
 But for this stay, ere close of day 
 
 We should have sacked the town! " 
 "Heaven help him!" quoth Lars Porsena, 530 
 
 "And bring him safe to shore; 
 For such a gallant feat of arms 
 
 Was never seen before." 
 
 LXIV 
 
 And now he feels the bottom ; 
 
 Now on dry earth he stands; 535 
 
 Now round him throng the Fathers 
 
 To press his gory hands; 
 And now, with shouts and clapping, 
 
 And noise of weeping loud, 
 He enters through the River-Gate, 540 
 
 Borne by the joyous crowd. 
 
 LXV 
 
 They gave him of the corn-land, 
 
 That was of public right, 
 As much as two strong oxen 
 
 Could plough from morn till night; 545 
 
 And they made a molten image, 
 
 And set it up on high, 
 And there it stands unto this day 
 
 To witness if I lie. 
 
26 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 LXVI 
 
 It stands in the Comitium, 550 
 
 Plain for all folk to see; 
 Horatius in his harness, 
 
 Halting upon one knee: 
 And underneath is written, 
 
 In letters all of gold, 555 
 
 How valiantly he kept the bridge 
 
 In the brave days of old. 
 
 LXVII 
 
 And still his name sounds stirring 
 
 Unto the men of Rome, 
 As the trumpet-blast that cries to them 560 
 
 To charge the Volscian home; 
 And wives still pray to Juno 
 
 For boys with hearts as bold 
 As his who kept the bridge so well 
 
 In the brave days of old. 565 
 
 LXVIII 
 
 And in the nights of winter, 
 
 When the cold north winds blow, 
 And the long howling of the wolves 
 
 Is heard amidst the snow; 
 When round the lonely cottage 570 
 
 Roars loud the tempest's din, 
 And the good logs of Algidus 
 
 Roar louder yet within ; 
 
HORATIUS 27 
 
 LXIX 
 
 When the oldest cask is opened, 
 
 And the largest lamp is lit; 575 
 
 When the chestnuts glow in the embers, 
 
 And the kid turns on the spit; 
 When young and old in circle 
 
 Around the firebrands close; 
 When the girls are weaving baskets, 580 
 
 And the lads are shaping bows; 
 
 LXX 
 
 When the goodman mends his armor, 
 
 And trims his helmet's plume; 
 When the goodwife's shuttle merrily 
 
 Goes flashing through the loom; 585 
 
 With weeping and with laughter 
 
 Still is the story told, 
 How well Horatius kept the bridge 
 
 In the brave days of old. 
 
THE BATTLE OF THE LAKE 
 REGILLUS 
 
 A LAY SUNG AT THE FEAST OF CASTOR AND 
 
 POLLUX, ON THE IDES OF QUINTILIS, IN 
 
 THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCCLI 
 
 Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note! 
 
 Ho, lictors, clear the way! 
 The Knights will ride, in all their pride, 
 
 Along the streets to-day. 
 To-day the doors and windows 5 
 
 Are hung with garlands all, 
 From Castor in the Forum, 
 
 To Mars without the wall. 
 Each Knight is robed in purple, 
 
 With olive each is crowned; 10 
 
 A gallant war-horse under each 
 
 Paws haughtily the ground. 
 While flows the Yellow River, 
 
 While stands the Sacred Hill, 
 The proud Ides of Quintilis 15 
 
 Shall have such honor still. 
 Gay are the Martian Kalends : 
 
 December's Nones are gay: 
 But the proud Ides, when the squadron rides, 
 
 Shall be Rome's whitest day. 20 
 
 28 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 29 
 
 ii 
 
 Unto the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 We keep this solemn feast. 
 Swift, swift, the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 Came spurring from the east. 
 They came o'er wild Parthenius 25 
 
 Tossing in waves of pine, 
 O'er Cirrha's dome, o'er Adria's foam, 
 
 O'er purple Apennine, 
 From where with flutes and dances 
 
 Their ancient mansion rings, 30 
 
 In lordly Lacedaemon, 
 
 The City of two kings, 
 To where, by Lake Regillus, 
 
 Under the Porcian height, 
 All in the lands of Tusculum, 35 
 
 Was fought the glorious fight. 
 
 in 
 
 Now on the place of slaughter 
 
 Are cots and sheepfolds seen, 
 And rows of vines, and fields of wheat, 
 
 And apple-orchards green; 40 
 
 The swine crush the big acorns 
 
 That fall from Corne's oaks. 
 Upon the turf by the Fair Fount 
 
 The reaper's pottage smokes. 
 The fisher baits his angle; 45 
 
 The hunter twangs his bow; 
 Little they think on those strong limbs 
 
 That moulder deep below. 
 
LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Little they think how sternly 
 
 That day the trumpets pealed; 50 
 
 How in the slippery swamp of blood 
 
 Warrior and war-horse reeled; 
 How wolves came with fierce gallop, 
 
 And crows on eager wings, 
 To tear the flesh of captains, 55 
 
 And peck the eyes of kings; 
 How thick the dead lay scattered 
 
 Under the Porcian height; 
 How through the gates of Tusculum 
 
 Raved the wild stream of flight; 60 
 
 And how the Lake Regillus 
 
 Bubbled with crimson foam, 
 What time the Thirty Cities 
 
 Came forth to war with Rome. 
 
 IV 
 
 But, Roman, when thou standest 65 
 
 Upon that holy ground, 
 Look thou with heed on the dark rock 
 
 That girds the dark lake round, 
 So shalt thou see a hoof-mark 
 
 Stamped deep into the flint: 70 
 
 It was no hoof of mortal steed 
 
 That made so strange a dint : 
 There to the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 Vow thou thy vows, and pray 
 That they, in tempest and in fight, 75 
 
 Will keep thy head alway. 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 31 
 
 Since last the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 Of mortal eyes were seen, 
 Have years gone by an hundred 
 
 And fourscore and thirteen. 8 o 
 
 That summer a Virginius 
 
 Was Consul first in place; 
 The second was stout Aulus, 
 
 Of the Posthumian race. 
 The Herald of the Latines 85 
 
 From Gabii came in state: 
 The Herald of the Latines 
 
 Passed through Rome's Eastern Gate: 
 The Herald of the Latines 
 
 Did in our Forum stand; 90 
 
 And there he did his office, 
 
 A sceptre in his hand. 
 
 VI 
 
 " Hear, Senators and people 
 
 Of the good town of Rome, 
 The Thirty Cities charge you 95 
 
 To bring the Tarquins home: 
 And if ye still be stubborn, 
 
 To work the Tarquins wrong, 
 The Thirty Cities warn you, 
 
 Look that your walls be strong.' , 100 
 
 VII 
 
 Then spake the Consul Aulus, 
 He spake a bitter jest: 
 
32 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 " Once the jay sent a message 
 
 Unto the eagle's nest: — 
 Now yield thou up thine eyrie 105 
 
 Unto the carrion-kite, 
 Or come forth valiantly, and face 
 
 The jays in deadly fight. — 
 Forth looked in wrath the eagle; 
 
 And carrion-kite and jay, no 
 
 Soon as they saw his beak and claw, 
 
 Fled screaming far away." 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Herald of the Latines 
 
 Hath hied him back in state; 
 The Fathers of the City 115 
 
 Are met in high debate. 
 Then spake the elder Consul, 
 
 An ancient man and wise: 
 "Now hearken, Conscript Fathers, 
 
 To that which I advise. 120 
 
 In seasons of great peril 
 
 'Tis good that one bear sway; 
 Then choose we a Dictator, 
 
 Whom all men shall obey. 
 Camerium knows how deeply 125 
 
 The sword of Aulus bites, 
 And all our city calls him 
 
 The man of seventy fights. 
 Then let him be Dictator 
 
 For six months and no more, 130 
 
 And have a Master of the Knights, 
 
 And axes twenty-four." 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 
 
 33 
 
 IX 
 
 135 
 
 So Aulus was Dictator, 
 
 The man of seventy fights; 
 He made Aebutius Elva 
 
 His Master of the Knights. 
 On the third morn thereafter, 
 
 At dawning of the day, 
 Did Aulus and Aebutius 
 
 Set forth with their array. 140 
 
 Sempronius Atratinus 
 
 Was left in charge at home 
 With boys, and with gray-headed men, 
 
 To keep the walls of Rome. 
 Hard by the Lake Regillus 145 
 
 Our camp was pitched at night: 
 Eastward a mile the Latines lay, 
 
 Under the Porcian height. 
 Far over hill and valley 
 
 Their mighty host was spread; 150 
 
 And with their thousand watch-fires 
 
 The midnight sky was red. 
 
 Up rose the golden morning 
 
 Over the Porcian height, 
 The proud Ides of Quintilis 155 
 
 Marked evermore with white, 
 Not without secret trouble 
 
 Our bravest saw the foes, 
 For girt by threescore thousand spears, 
 
 The thirty standards rose. 160 
 
34 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 From every warlike city 
 
 That boasts the Latian name, 
 Foredoomed to dogs and vultures, 
 
 That gallant army came; 
 From Setia's purple vineyards, 165 
 
 From Norba's ancient wall, 
 From the white streets of Tusculum, 
 
 The proudest town of all; 
 From where the Witch's Fortress 
 
 O'erhangs the dark-blue seas; iro 
 
 From the still glassy lake that sleeps 
 
 Beneath Aricia's trees — 
 Those trees in whose dim shadow 
 
 The ghastly priest doth reign, 
 The priest who slew the slayer, 175 
 
 And shall himself be slain; 
 From the drear banks of Ufens, 
 
 Where flights of marsh-fowl play, 
 And buffaloes lie wallowing 
 
 Through the hot summer's day; iso 
 
 From the gigantic watch-towers, 
 
 No work of earthly men, 
 Whence Cora's sentinels o'erlook 
 
 The never-ending fen ; 
 From the Lauren tian jungle, 185 
 
 The wild hog's reedy home ; 
 From the green steeps whence Anio leaps 
 
 In floods of snow-white foam. 
 
 XI 
 
 Aricia, Cora, Norba, 
 
 Velitrae, with the might 190 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 3.5 
 
 Of Setia and of Tusculum, 
 
 Were marshalled on the right: 
 The leader was Mamilius, 
 
 Prince of the Latian name; 
 Upon his head a helmet 195 
 
 Of red gold shone like flame; 
 High on a gallant charger 
 
 Of dark-gray hue he rode; 
 Over his gilded armor 
 
 A vest of purple flowed, 200 
 
 Woven in the land of sunrise 
 
 By Syria's dark-browed daughters, 
 And by the sails of Carthage brought 
 
 Far o'er the southern waters. 
 
 XII 
 
 Lavinium and Laurentum 205 
 
 Had on the left their post, 
 With all the banners of the marsh, 
 
 And banners of the coast. 
 Their leader was false Sextus, 
 
 That wrought the deed of shame: 210 
 
 With restless pace and haggard face 
 
 To his last field he came. 
 Men said he saw strange visions 
 
 Which none beside might see, 
 And that strange sounds were in his ears 215 
 
 Which none might hear but he. 
 A woman fair and stately, 
 
 But pale as are the dead, 
 Oft through the watches of the night 
 
 Sat spinning by his bed. 220 
 
36 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 And as she plied the distaff, 
 
 In a sweet voice and low, 
 She sang of great old houses, 
 
 And fights fought long ago. 
 So spun she, and so sang she, 225 
 
 Until the east was gray, 
 Then pointed to her bleeding breast, 
 
 And shrieked, and fled away. 
 
 XIII 
 
 But in the centre thickest 
 
 Were ranged the shields of foes, 230 
 
 And from the centre loudest 
 
 The cry of battle rose. 
 There Tibur marched and Pedum 
 
 Beneath proud Tarquin's rule, 
 And Ferentinum of the rock, 235 
 
 And Gabii of the pool. 
 There rode the Volscian succors: 
 
 There, in a dark stern ring, 
 The Roman exiles gathered close 
 
 Around the ancient king. 240 
 
 Though white as Mount Soracte, 
 
 When winter nights are long, 
 His beard flowed down o'er mail and belt, 
 
 His heart and hand were strong: 
 Under his hoary eyebrows 245 
 
 Still flashed forth quenchless rage, 
 And, if the lance shook in his gripe, 
 
 'Twas more with hate than age. 
 Close at his side was Titus 
 
 On an Apulian steed, 250 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 37 
 
 Titus, the youngest Tarquin, 
 Too good for such a breed. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Now on each side the leaders 
 
 Give signal for the charge; 
 And on each side the footmen 255 
 
 Strode on with lance and targe; 
 And on each side the horsemen 
 
 Struck their spurs deep in gore; 
 And front to front the armies 
 
 Met with a mighty roar: 260 
 
 And under that great battle 
 
 The earth with blood was red ; 
 And, like the Pomptine fog at morn, 
 
 The dust hung overhead; 
 And louder still and louder 265 
 
 Rose from the darkened field 
 The braying of the war-horns, 
 
 The clang of sword and shield, 
 The rush of squadrons sweeping 
 
 Like whirlwinds o'er the plain, 270 
 
 The shouting of the slayers, 
 
 And screeching of the slain. 
 
 xv 
 
 False Sextus rode out foremost: 
 
 His look was high and bold; 
 His corselet was of bison's hide, 275 
 
 Plated with steel and gold. 
 As glares the famished eagle 
 
 From the Digentian rock 
 
38 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 On a choice lamb that bounds alone 
 
 Before Bandusia's flock, 280 
 
 Hemrinius glared on Sextus, 
 
 And came with eagle speed, 
 Herminius on black Auster, 
 
 Brave champion on brave steed ; 
 In his right hand the broadsword 285 
 
 That kept the bridge so well, 
 And on his helm the crown he won 
 
 When proud Fidenae fell. 
 Woe to the maid whose lover 
 
 Shall cross his path to-day! 290 
 
 False Sextus saw, and trembled, 
 
 And turned, and fled away. 
 As turns, as flies, the woodman 
 
 In the Calabrian brake, 
 When through the reeds gleams the round eye 295 
 
 Of that fell speckled snake; 
 So turned, so fled, false Sextus, 
 
 And hid him in the rear, 
 Behind the dark Lavinian ranks, 
 
 Bristling with crest and spear. 300 
 
 XVI 
 
 But far to north Aebutius, 
 
 The Master of the Knights, 
 Gave Tubero of Norba 
 
 To feed the Porcian kites. 
 Next under those red horse-hoofs 305 
 
 Flaccus of Setia lay; 
 Better had he been pruning 
 
 Among his elms that day. 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 39 
 
 Mamilius saw the slaughter, 
 
 And tossed his golden crest, 310 
 
 And towards the Master of the Knights 
 
 Through the thick battle pressed. 
 Aebutius smote Mamilius 
 
 So fiercely on the shield 
 That the great lord of Tusculum 3is 
 
 Well nigh rolled on the field. 
 Mamilius smote Aebutius, 
 
 With a good aim and true, 
 Just where the neck and shoulder join, 
 
 And pierced him through and through ; 320 
 
 And brave Aebutius Elva 
 
 Fell swooning to the ground: 
 But a thick wall of bucklers 
 
 Encompassed him around. 
 His clients from the battle 325 
 
 Bare him some little space, 
 And filled a helm from the dark lake, 
 
 And bathed his brow and face; 
 And when at last he opened 
 
 His swimming eyes to light, 330 
 
 Men say, the earliest word he spake 
 
 Was, "Friends, how goes the fight?" 
 
 XVII 
 
 But meanwhile in the centre 
 
 Great deeds of arms were wrought; 
 
 There Aulus the Dictator ' 335 
 
 And there Valerius fought. 
 
 Aulus with his good broadsword 
 A bloody passage cleared 
 
40 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 To where, amidst the thickest foes, 
 
 He saw the long white beard. 340 
 
 Flat lighted that good broadsword 
 
 Upon proud Tarquin's head. 
 He dropped the lance: he dropped the reins: 
 
 He fell as fall the dead. 
 Down Aulus springs to slay him, 345 
 
 With eyes like coals of fire; 
 But faster Titus hath sprung down, 
 
 And hath bestrode his sire. 
 Latian captains, Roman knights, 
 
 Fast down to earth they spring, 350 
 
 And hand to hand they fight on foot 
 
 Around the ancient king. 
 First Titus gave tall Caeso 
 
 A death wound in the face; 
 Tall Caeso was the bravest man 355 
 
 Of the brave Fabian race: 
 Aulus slew Rex of Gabii, 
 
 The priest of Juno's shrine: 
 Valerius smote down Julius, 
 
 Of Rome's great Julian line; 360 
 
 Julius, who left his mansion 
 
 High on the Velian hill, 
 And through all turns of weal and woe 
 
 Followed proud Tarquin still. 
 Now right across proud Tarquin 365 
 
 A corpse was Julius laid; 
 And Titus groaned with rage and grief, 
 
 And at Valerius made. 
 Valerius struck at Titus, 
 
 And lopped off half his crest; 370 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 41 
 
 But Titus stabbed Valerius 
 
 A span deep in the breast. 
 Like a mast snapped by the tempest, 
 
 Valerius reeled and fell. 
 Ah ! woe is me for the good house 375 
 
 That loves the people well! 
 Then shouted loud the Latines; 
 
 And with one rush they bore 
 The struggling Romans backward 
 
 Three lances' length and more: 380 
 
 And up they took proud Tarquin, 
 
 And laid him on a shield, 
 And four strong yeomen bare him, 
 
 Still senseless, from the field. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 But fiercer grew the fighting 385 
 
 Around Valerius dead; 
 For Titus dragged him by the foot, 
 
 And Aulus by the head. 
 "On, Latines, on!" quoth Titus, 
 
 "See how the rebels fly!" 390 
 
 "Romans, stand firm!" quoth Aulus, 
 
 "And win this fight or die! 
 They must not give Valerius 
 
 To raven and to kite; 
 For aye Valerius loathed the wrong, 395 
 
 And aye upheld the right: 
 And for your wives and babies 
 
 In the front rank he fell. 
 Now play the men for the good house 
 
 That loves the people well!" 400 
 
42 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 XIX 
 
 Then tenfold round the body 
 
 The roar of battle rose, 
 Like the roar of a burning forest, 
 
 When a strong north wind blows. 
 Now backward, and now forward, 405 
 
 Rocked furiously the fray, 
 Till none could see Valerius, 
 
 And none wist where he lay. 
 For shivered arms and ensigns 
 
 Were heaped there in a mound, 4io 
 
 And corpses stiff, and dying men 
 
 That writhed and gnawed the ground; 
 And wounded horses kicking, 
 
 And snorting purple foam: 
 Right well did such a couch befit 415 
 
 A Consular of Rome. 
 
 xx 
 
 But north looked the Dictator; 
 
 North looked he long and hard; 
 And spake to Caius Cossus, 
 
 The Captain of his Guard : 420 
 
 " Caius, of all the Romans 
 
 Thou hast the keenest sight; 
 Say, what through yonder storm of dust 
 
 Comes from the Latian right ?" 
 
 XXI 
 
 Then answered Caius Cossus 425 
 
 "I see an evil sight; 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 43 
 
 The banner of proud Tusculum 
 
 Comes from the Latian right: 
 I see the plumed horsemen; 
 
 And far before the rest 430 
 
 I see the dark-gray charger, 
 
 I see the purple vest; 
 I see the golden helmet 
 
 That shines far off like flame; 
 So ever rides Mamilius, 435 
 
 Prince of the Latian name." 
 
 XXII 
 
 "Now hearken, Caius Cossus: 
 
 Spring on thy horse's back; 
 Ride as the wolves of Apennine 
 
 Were all upon thy track; 440 
 
 Haste to our southward battle: 
 
 And never draw thy rein 
 Until thou find Herminius, 
 
 And bid him come amain." 
 
 XXIII 
 
 So Aulus spake, and turned him 445 
 
 Again to that fierce strife ; 
 And Caius Cossus mounted, 
 
 And rode for death and life. 
 Loud clanged beneath his horse-hoofs 
 
 The helmets of the dead, 450 
 
 And many a curdling pool of blood 
 
 Splashed him from heel to head. 
 So came he far to southward, 
 
 Where fought the Roman host, 
 
44 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Against the banners of the marsh 455 
 
 And banners of the coast. 
 Like corn before the sickle 
 
 The stout Lavinians fell, 
 Beneath the edge of the true sword 
 
 That kept the bridge so well. 460 
 
 XXIV 
 
 "Herminius! Aulus greets thee; 
 
 He bids thee come with speed, 
 To help our central battle; 
 
 For sore is there our need. 
 There wars the youngest Tarquin, 465 
 
 And there the Crest of Flame, 
 The Tusculan Mamilius, 
 
 Prince of the Latian name. 
 Valerius hath fallen fighting 
 
 In front of our array: 470 
 
 And Aulus of the seventy fields 
 
 Alone upholds the day." 
 
 XXV 
 
 Herminius beat his bosom : 
 
 But never a word he spake. 
 He clapped his hand on Auster's mane: 475 
 
 He gave the reins a shake, 
 Away, away went Auster, 
 
 Like an arrow from the bow: 
 Black Auster was the fleetest steed 
 
 From Aufidus to Po. 480 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 45 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Right glad were all the Romans 
 
 Who, in that hour of dread, 
 Against great odds bare up the war 
 
 Around Valerius dead, 
 When from the South the cheering 485 
 
 Rose with a mighty swell; 
 "Herminius comes, Herminius, 
 
 Who kept the bridge so well! ,, 
 
 XXVII 
 
 Mamilius spied Herminius, 
 
 And dashed across the way. 490 
 
 " Herminius ! I have sought thee 
 
 Through many a bloody day. 
 One of us two, Herminius, 
 
 Shall never more go home. 
 I will lay on for Tusculum, 495 
 
 And lay thou on for Rome!" 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 All round them paused the battle, 
 
 While met in mortal fray 
 The Roman and the Tusculan, 
 
 The horses black and gray. 500 
 
 Herminius smote Mamilius 
 
 Through breast-plate and through breast; 
 And fast flowed out the purple blood 
 
 Over the purple vest. 
 Mamilius smote Herminius 505 
 
 Through head-piece and through head; 
 
46 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 And side by side those chiefs of pride 
 
 Together fell down dead. 
 Down fell they dead together 
 
 In a great lake of gore; 510 
 
 And still stood all who saw them fall 
 
 While men might count a score. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 Fast, fast, with heels wild spurning, 
 
 The dark-gray charger fled : 
 He burst through ranks of fighting men; 515 
 
 He sprang o'er heaps of dead. 
 His bridle far out-streaming, 
 
 His flanks all blood and foam, 
 He sought the southern mountains, 
 
 The mountains of his home. 520 
 
 The pass was steep and rugged, 
 
 The wolves they howled and whined; 
 But he ran like a whirlwind up the pass, 
 
 And he left the wolves behind. 
 Through many a startled hamlet, 525 
 
 Thundered his flying feet; 
 He rushed through the gate of Tusculum, 
 
 He rushed up the long white street; 
 He rushed by tower and temple, 
 
 And paused not from his race 530 
 
 Till he stood before his master's door 
 
 In the stately market-place. 
 And straightway round him gathered 
 
 A pale and trembling crowd, 
 And when they knew him, cries of rage 535 
 
 Brake forth, and wailing loud: 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 47 
 
 And women rent their tresses 
 
 For their great prince's fall ; 
 And old men girt on their old swords, 
 
 And went to man the wall. 540 
 
 XXX 
 
 But, like a graven image, 
 
 Black Auster kept his place, 
 And ever wistfully he looked 
 
 Into his master's face. 
 The raven-mane that daily 545 
 
 With pats and fond caresses, 
 The young Herminia washed and combed 
 
 And twined in even tresses, 
 And decked with colored ribands 
 
 From her own gay attire, 550 
 
 Hung sadly o'er her father's corpse 
 
 In carnage and in mire. 
 Forth with a shout sprang Titus, 
 
 And seized black Auster's rein. 
 Then Aulus sware a fearful oath, 555 
 
 And ran at him amain. 
 "The furies of thy brother 
 
 With me and mine abide, 
 If one of your accursed house 
 
 Upon black Auster ride!" 560 
 
 As on an Alpine watch-tower 
 
 From heaven comes down the flame, 
 Full on the neck of Titus 
 
 The blade of Aulus came : 
 And out the red blood spouted, 665 
 
 In a wide arch and tall. 
 
48 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 As spouts a fountain in the court 
 
 Of some rich Capuan's hall, 
 The knees of all the Latines 
 
 Were loosened with dismay 570 
 
 When dead, on dead Herminius, 
 
 The bravest Tarquin lay. 
 
 XXXI 
 
 And Aulus the Dictator 
 
 Stroked Auster's raven mane, 
 With heed he looked unto the girths, 575 
 
 With heed unto the rein. 
 "Now bear me well, black Auster, 
 
 Into yon thick array; 
 And thou and I will have revenge 
 
 For thy good lord this day." 580 
 
 XXXII 
 
 So spake he; and was buckling 
 
 Tighter black Auster's band, 
 When he was aware of a princely pair 
 
 That rode at his right hand. 
 So like they were, no mortal 585 
 
 Might one from other know: 
 White as snow their armor was ; 
 
 Their steeds were white as snow. 
 Never on earthly anvil 
 
 Did such rare armor gleam; 590 
 
 And never did such gallant steeds 
 
 Drink of an earthly stream. 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 49 
 
 XXXIII 
 
 And all who saw them trembled, 
 
 And pale grew every cheek; 
 And Aulus the Dictator 595 
 
 Scarce gathered voice to speak. 
 "Say by what name men call you? 
 
 What city is your home ? 
 And wherefore ride ye in such guise 
 
 Before the ranks of Rome ?" 600 
 
 XXXIV 
 
 "By many names men call us; 
 
 In many lands we dwell: 
 Well Samothracia knows us; 
 
 Cyrene knows us well. 
 Our house in gay Tarentum 605 
 
 Is hung each morn with flowers: 
 High o'er the masts of Syracuse 
 
 Our marble portal towers; 
 But by the proud Eurotas 
 
 Is our dear native home; 610 
 
 And for the right we come to fight 
 
 Before the ranks of Rome. ,, 
 
 XXXV 
 
 So answered those strange horsemen, 
 
 And each couched low his spear; 
 And forthwith all the ranks of Rome 615 
 
 Were bold, and of good cheer: 
 And on the thirty armies 
 
 Came wonder and affright, 
 
50 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 And Ardea wavered on the left, 
 
 And Cora on the right. 620 
 
 "Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus; 
 
 "The foe begins to yield! 
 Charge for the hearth of Vesta ! 
 
 Charge for the Golden Shield ! 
 Let no man stop to plunder, 625 
 
 But slay, and slay, and slay; 
 The Gods who live for ever 
 
 Are on our side to-day." 
 
 XXXVI 
 
 Then the fierce trumpet-flourish 
 
 From earth to heaven arose. 630 
 
 The kites knew well the long stern swell 
 
 That bids the Romans close. 
 Then the good sword of Aulus 
 
 Was lifted up to slay: 
 Then, like a crag down Apennine, 635 
 
 Rushed Auster through the fray. 
 But under those strange horsemen 
 
 Still thicker lay the slain; 
 And after those strange horses 
 
 Black Auster toiled in vain. 640 
 
 Behind them Rome's long battle 
 
 Came rolling on the foe, 
 Ensigns dancing wild above, 
 
 Blades all in line below. 
 So comes the Po in flood-time 645 
 
 Upon the Celtic plain: 
 So comes the squall, blacker than night, 
 
 Upon the Adrian main. 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 51 
 
 Now, by our Sire Quirinus, 
 
 It was a goodly sight 650 
 
 To see the thirty standards 
 
 Swept down the tide of flight. 
 So flies the spray of Adria 
 
 When the black squall doth blow, 
 So corn-sheaves in the flood-time 655 
 
 Spin down the whirling Po. 
 False Sextus to the mountains 
 
 Turned first his horse's head; 
 And fast fled Ferentinum, 
 
 And fast Lanuvium fled. 660 
 
 The horsemen of Nomentum 
 
 Spurred hard out of the fray; 
 The footmen of Velitrae 
 
 Threw shield and spear away. 
 And underfoot was trampled, 665 
 
 Amidst the mud and gore, 
 The banner of proud Tusculum, 
 
 That never stooped before : 
 And down went Flavius Faustus, 
 
 Who led his stately ranks 670 
 
 From where the apple blossoms wave 
 
 On Anio's echoing banks, 
 And Tullus of Arpinum, 
 
 Chief of the Volscian aids, 
 And Metius with the long fair curls, 675 
 
 The love of Anxur's maids, 
 And the white head of Vulso, 
 
 The great Arician seer, 
 And Nepos of Laurentum, 
 
 The hunter of the deer; 680 
 
52 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 And in the back false Sextus 
 
 Felt the good Roman steel, 
 And wriggling in the dust he dies, 
 
 Like a worm beneath the wheel: 
 And fliers and pursuers 685 
 
 Were mingled in a mass; 
 And far away the battle 
 
 Went roaring through the pass. 
 
 XXXVII 
 
 Sempronius Atratinus 
 
 Sate in the Eastern Gate, 690 
 
 Beside him were three Fathers, 
 
 Each in his chair of state; 
 Fabius, whose nine stout grandsons 
 
 That day were in the field, 
 And Manlius, eldest of the Twelve, 695 
 
 Who kept the Golden Shield; 
 And Sergius, the High Pontiff, 
 
 For wisdom far renowned; 
 In all Etruria's colleges 
 
 Was no such Pontiff found. 700 
 
 And all around the portal, 
 
 And high above the wall, 
 Stood a great throng of people, 
 
 But sad and silent all ; 
 Young lads, and stooping elders 705 
 
 That might not bear the mail, 
 Matrons with lips that quivered, 
 
 And maids with faces pale. 
 Since the first gleam of daylight, 
 
 Sempronius had not ceased 7io 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 53 
 
 To listen for the rushing 
 
 Of horse-hoofs from the east. 
 The mist of eve was rising, 
 
 The sun was hastening down, 
 When he was aware of a princely pair 715 
 
 Fast pricking towards the town. 
 So like they were, man never 
 
 Saw twins so like before; 
 Red with gore their armor was, 
 
 Their steeds were red with gore. 720 
 
 XXXVIII 
 
 "Hail to the great Asylum! 
 
 Hail to the hill-tops seven! 
 Hail to the fire that burns for aye, 
 
 And the shield that fell from heaven! 
 This day, by Lake Regillus, 725 
 
 Under the Porcian height, 
 All in the lands of Tusculum 
 
 Was fought a glorious fight, 
 To-morrow your Dictator 
 
 Shall bring in triumph home 730 
 
 The spoils of thirty cities 
 
 To deck the shrines of Rome!" 
 
 XXXIX 
 
 Then burst from that great concourse 
 
 A shout that shook the towers 
 And some ran north, and some ran south 735 
 
 Crying, "The day is ours!" 
 But on rode these strange horsemen, 
 
 With slow and lordly pace; 
 
54 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 And none who saw their bearing 
 
 Durst ask their name or race. 740 
 
 On rode they to the Forum, 
 
 While laurel-boughs and flowers, 
 From house-tops and from windows, 
 
 Fell on their crests in showers. 
 When they drew nigh to Vesta, 745 
 
 They vaulted down amain, 
 And washed their horses in the well 
 
 That springs by Vesta's fane. 
 And straight again they mounted 
 
 And rode to Vesta's door; 750 
 
 Then, like a blast, away they passed, 
 
 And no man saw them more. 
 
 XL 
 
 And all the people trembled, 
 
 And pale grew every cheek; 
 And Sergius the High Pontiff 755 
 
 Alone found voice to speak: 
 "The gods who live for ever 
 
 Have fought for Rome to-day V ' 
 These be the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 To whom the Dorians pray. r 760 
 
 Back comes the Chief in triumph, 
 
 Who, in the hour of fight, 
 Hath seen the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 In harness on his right. 
 Safe comes the ship to haven, 765 
 
 Through billows and through gales, 
 If once the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 Sit shining on the sails. 
 
BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 55 
 
 Wherefore they washed their horses 
 
 In Vesta's holy well, 770 
 
 Wherefore they rode to Vesta's door, 
 
 I know, but may not tell. 
 Here, hard by Vesta's Temple, 
 
 Build we a stately dome 
 Unto the Great Twin Brethren 775 
 
 Who fought so well for Rome. 
 And when the months returning 
 
 Bring back this day of fight, 
 The proud Ides of Quintilis, 
 
 Marked evermore with white, 780 
 
 Unto the Great Twin Brethren 
 
 Let all the people throng, 
 With chaplets and with offerings, 
 
 With music and with song; 
 And let the doors and windows 785 
 
 Be hung with garlands all, 
 , And let the Knights be summoned 
 
 To Mars without the wall: 
 Thence let them ride in purple 
 
 With joyous trumpet-sound, 790 
 
 Each mounted on his war-horse, 
 And each with olive crowned; 
 And pass in solemn order 
 Before the sacred dome, 
 Where dwell the Great Twin Brethren 795 
 
 Who fought so well for Rome!" 
 
VIRGINIA 
 
 FRAGMENTS OF A LAY SUNG IN THE FORUM ON THE DAY 
 WHEREON LUCIUS SEXTIUS SEXTINUS LATERANUS 
 AND CAIUS LICINIUS CALVUS STOLO WERE ELECTED 
 TRIBUNES OF THE COMMONS THE FIFTH TIME, IN THE 
 YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLXXXII 
 
 Ye good men of the Commons, with loving hearts and 
 
 true, 
 Who stand by the bold Tribunes that still have stood by 
 
 you, 
 Come, make a circle round me, and mark my tale with 
 
 care, 
 A tale of what Rome once hath borne, of what Rome yet 
 
 may bear. 
 This is no Grecian fable, of fountains running wine, 5 
 
 Of maids with snaky tresses, or sailors turned to swine. 
 Here, in this very Forum, under the noonday sun, 
 In sight of all the people, the bloody deed was done. 
 Old men still creep among us who saw that fearful day, 
 Just seventy years and seven ago, when the wicked Ten 
 
 bare sway. 10 
 
 Of all the wicked Ten still the names are held accursed, 
 And of all the wicked Ten Appius Claudius was the worst. 
 He stalked along the Forum like King Tarquin in his 
 pride: 
 
 56 
 
VIRGINIA 57 
 
 Twelve axes waited on him, six marching on a side; 
 The townsmen shrank to right and left, and eyed askance 
 
 with fear 15 
 
 His lowering brow, his curling mouth, which always 
 
 seemed to sneer: 
 That brow of hate, that mouth of scorn, marks all the 
 
 kindred still; 
 For never was there Claudius yet but wished the Com- 
 mons ill: 
 Nor lacks he fit attendance; for close behind his heels, 
 With outstretched chin and crouching pace, the client 
 
 Marcus steals, 20 
 
 His loins girt up to run with speed, be the errand what it 
 
 may, 
 And the smile flickering on his cheek, for aught his lord 
 
 may say. 
 Such varlets pimp and jest for hire among the lying 
 
 Greeks : 
 Such varlets still are paid to hoot when brave Licinius 
 
 speaks. 
 Where'er ye shed the honey, the buzzing flies will crowd; 25 
 Where'er ye fling the carrion, the raven's croak is loud; 
 Where'er down Tiber garbage floats, the greedy pike ye 
 
 see; 
 And wheresoe'er such lord is found, such client still will be. 
 
 Just then, as through one cloudless chink in a black 
 stormy sky, 
 Shines out the dewy morning-star, a fair young girl came 
 
 by. 30 
 
 With her small tablets in her hand, and her satchel on her 
 arm, 
 
58 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Home she went bounding from the school, nor dreamed 
 of shame or harm; 
 
 And past those dreaded axes she innocently ran, 
 
 With bright, frank brow that had not learned to blush at 
 gaze of man; 
 
 And up the Sacred Street she turned, and, as she danced 
 
 along, 35 
 
 She warbled gaily to herself lines of the good old song, 
 
 How for a sport the princes came spurring from the 
 camp, 
 
 And found Lucrece, combing the fleece, under the mid- 
 night lamp. 
 
 The maiden sang as sings the lark, when up he darts his 
 flight, 
 
 From his nest in the green April corn, to meet the morn- 
 ing light; 40 
 
 And Appius heard her sweet young voice, and saw her 
 sweet young face, 
 
 And loved her with the accursed love of his accursed race, 
 
 And all along the Forum, and up the Sacred Street, 
 
 His vulture eye pursued the trip of those small glancing 
 feet. 
 
 Over the Alban mountains the light of morning broke; 45 
 From all the roofs of the Seven Hills curled the thin 
 
 wreaths of smoke: 
 The city-gates were opened; the Forum all alive, 
 With buyers and with sellers was humming like a hive: 
 Blithely on brass and timber the craftsman's stroke was 
 
 ringing, 
 And blithely o'er her panniers the m arket-girl was singing, 50 
 
VIRGINIA 59 
 
 And blithely young Virginia came smiling from her home: 
 Ah! woe for young Virginia, the sweetest maid in Rome! 
 With her small tablets in her hand, and her satchel on her 
 
 arm, 
 Forth she went bounding to the school, nor dreamed of 
 
 shame or harm. 
 She crossed the Forum shining with stalls in alleys gay, 55 
 And just had reached the very spot whereon I stand this 
 
 day, 
 When up the varlet Marcus came; not such as when ere- 
 
 while 
 He crouched behind his patron's heels with the true 
 
 client smile: 
 He came with lowering forehead, swollen features, and 
 
 clenched fist, 
 And strode across Virginia's path, and caught her by the 
 
 wrist. 60 
 
 Hard strove the frighted maiden, and screamed with look 
 
 aghast; 
 And at her scream from right and left the folk came run- 
 ning fast; 
 The money-changer Crispus, with his thin silver hairs, 
 And Hanno from the stately booth glittering with Punic 
 
 wares, 
 And the strong smith Muraena, grasping a half-forged 
 
 brand, 65 
 
 And Volero the flesher, his cleaver in his hand. 
 All came in wrath and wonder; for all knew that fair 
 
 child; 
 And, as she passed them twice a day, all kissed their 
 
 hands and smiled; 
 And the strong smith Muraena gave Marcus such a blow, 
 
60 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 The caitiff reeled three paces back, and let the maiden 
 
 go. 70 
 
 Yet glared he fiercely round him, and growled in harsh, 
 
 fell tone, 
 "She's mine, and I will have her: I seek but for mine 
 
 own: 
 She is my slave, born in my house, and stolen away and 
 
 sold, 
 The year of the sore sickness, ere she was twelve hours old. 
 'Twas in the sad September, the month of wail and 
 
 fright, 75 
 
 Two augurs were borne forth that morn; the Consul died 
 
 ere night. 
 I wait on Appius Claudius, I waited on his sire : 
 Let him who works the client wrong beware the patron's 
 
 ire!" 
 
 So spake the varlet Marcus; and dread and silence 
 came 
 On all the people at the sound of the great Claudian 
 
 name. 80 
 
 For then there was no Tribune to speak the word of 
 
 might, 
 Which makes the rich man tremble, and guards the poor 
 
 man's right. 
 There was no brave Licinius, no honest Sextius then; 
 But all the city, in great fear, obeyed the wicked Ten. 
 Yet ere the varlet Marcus again might seize the maid, 85 
 Who clung tight to Muraena's skirt, and sobbed, and 
 
 shrieked for aid, 
 Forth through the throng of gazers the young Icilius 
 
 pressed, 
 
VIRGINIA 61 
 
 And stamped his foot, and rent his gown, and smote upon 
 
 his breast, 
 And sprang upon that column, by many a minstrel sung, 
 Whereon three mouldering helmets, three rusting swords, 
 
 are hung. 90 
 
 And beckoned to the people, and in bold voice and clear 
 Poured thick and fast the burning words which tyrants 
 
 quake to hear. 
 
 "Now, by your children's cradles, now by your fathers' 
 graves, 
 Be men to-day, Quirites, or be for ever slaves! 
 For this did Servius give us laws ? For this did Lucrece 
 
 bleed ? 95 
 
 For this was the great vengeance wrought on Tarquin's 
 
 evil seed? 
 For this did those false sons make red the axes of their 
 
 sire? 
 For this did Scaevola's right hand hiss in the Tuscan 
 
 fire? 
 Shall the vile fox-earth awe the race that stormed the 
 
 lion's den? 
 Shall we, who could not brook one lord, crouch to the 
 
 wicked Ten ? 100 
 
 Oh for that ancient spirit which curbed the Senate's will ! 
 Oh for the tents which in old time whitened the Sacred 
 
 Hill! 
 In those brave days our fathers stood firmly side by side; 
 They faced the Marcian fury; they tamed the Fabian 
 
 pride : 
 They drove the fiercest Quinctius an outcast forth from 
 
 Rome; 105 
 
62 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 They sent the haughtiest Claudius with shivered fasces 
 
 home. 
 But what their care bequeathed us our madness flung 
 
 away: 
 All the ripe fruit of threescore years was blighted in a day. 
 Exult, ye proud Patricians ! The hard-fought fight is o'er. 
 We strove for honors — 'twas in vain: for freedom — 'tis 
 
 no more. no 
 
 No crier to the polling summons the eager throng; 
 No Tribune breathes the word of might that guards the 
 
 weak from wrong. 
 Our very hearts, that were so high, sink down beneath 
 
 your will. 
 Riches, and lands, and power, and state — ye have them : 
 
 — keep them still. 
 Still keep the holy fillets; still keep the purple gown, 115 
 The axes, and the curule chair, the car, and laurel crown : 
 Still press us for your cohorts, and, when the fight is done, 
 Still fill your garners from the soil which our good swords 
 
 have won. 
 Still, like a spreading ulcer, which leech-craft may not 
 
 cure, 
 Let your foul usance eat away the substance of the poor. 120 
 Still let your haggard debtors bear all their fathers bore; 
 Still let your dens of torment be noisome as of yore; 
 No fire when Tiber freezes; no air in dog-star heat; 
 And store of rods for free-born backs, and holes for free- 
 born feet. 
 Heap heavier still the fetters; bar closer still the grate; 125 
 Patient as sheep we yield us up unto your cruel hate. 
 But, by the Shades beneath us, and by the Gods above, 
 Add not unto your cruel hate your yet more cruel love! 
 
VIRGINIA 63 
 
 Have ye not graceful ladies, whose spotless lineage 
 
 springs 
 From Consuls, and High Pontiffs, and ancient Alban 
 
 kings ? 130 
 
 Ladies, who deign not on our paths to set their tender 
 
 feet, 
 Who from their cars look down with scorn upon the won- 
 dering street, 
 Who in Corinthian mirrors their own proud smiles behold, 
 And breathe of Capuan odors, and shine with Spanish 
 
 gold? 
 Then leave the poor Plebeian his single tie to life — 135 
 
 The sweet, sweet love of daughter, of sister, and of wife, 
 The gentle speech, the balm for all that his vexed soul 
 
 endures, 
 The kiss, in which he half forgets even such a yoke as 
 
 yours. 
 Still let the maiden's beauty swell the father's breast with 
 
 pride; 
 Still let the bridegroom's arms infold an unpolluted bride. 140 
 Spare us the inexpiable wrong, the unutterable shame, 
 That turns the coward's heart to steel, the sluggard's 
 
 blood to flame, 
 Lest, when our latest hope is fled, ye taste of our despair, 
 And learn by proof, in some wild hour, how much the 
 
 wretched dare." 
 
 Straightway Virginius led the maid a little space aside, 145 
 To where the reeking shambles stood, piled up with horn 
 
 and hide, 
 Close to yon low dark archway, where, in a crimson 
 
 flood, 
 
64 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Leaps down to the great sewer the gurgling stream of 
 
 blood. 
 Hard by, a flesher on a block had laid his whittle down; 
 Virginius caught the whittle up, and hid it in his gown. 150 
 And then his eyes grew very dim, and his throat began 
 
 to swell, 
 And in a hoarse, changed voice he spake, "Farewell, 
 
 sweet child! Farewell! 
 Oh! how I loved my darling! Though stern I some- 
 times be, 
 To thee, thou know'st I was not so. Who could be so to 
 
 thee? 
 And how my darling loved me! How glad she was to 
 
 hear 155 
 
 My footstep on the threshold when I came back last year! 
 And how she danced with pleasure to see my civic crown, 
 And took my sword, and hung it up, and brought me 
 
 forth my gown! 
 Now, all those things are over — yes, all thy pretty ways, 
 Thy needlework, thy prattle, thy snatches of old lays; 160 
 And none will grieve when I go forth, or smile when I 
 
 return, 
 Or watch beside the old man's bed, or weep upon his urn. 
 The house that was the happiest within the Roman 
 
 walls, 
 The house that envied not the wealth of Capua's marble 
 
 halls, 
 Now, for the brightness of thy smile, must have eternal 
 
 gloom, 165 
 
 And for the music of thy voice, the silence of the tomb. 
 The time is come. See how he points his eager hand this 
 
 way! 
 
VIRGINIA 65 
 
 See how his eyes gloat on thy grief, like a kite's upon the 
 
 prey! 
 With all his wit, he little deems, that, spurned, betrayed, 
 
 bereft, 
 Thy father hath in his despair one fearful refuge left. 170 
 He little deems that in this hand I clutch what still can 
 
 save 
 Thy gentle youth from taunts and blows, the portion of 
 
 the slave; 
 Yea, and from that nameless evil, that passeth taunt and 
 
 blow — 
 Foul outrage which thou knowest not, which thou shalt 
 
 never know. 
 Then clasp me round the neck once more and give me one 
 
 more kiss; 175 
 
 And now, mine own dear little girl, there is no way but 
 
 this." 
 With that he lifted high the steel, and smote her in the side, 
 And in her blood she sank to earth, and with one sob she 
 
 died. 
 
 Then, for a little moment, all people held their breath; 
 And through the crowded Forum was stillness as of 
 
 death; 180 
 
 And in another moment brake forth from one and all 
 A cry as if the Volscians were coming o'er the wall. 
 Some with averted faces shrieking fled home amain; 
 Some ran to call a leech; and some ran to lift the slain: 
 Some felt her lips and little wrist, if life might there be 
 
 found; 185 
 
 And some tore up their garments fast, and strove to 
 
 stanch the wound. 
 
66 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 In vain they ran, and felt, and stanched ; for never truer 
 
 blow 
 That good right arm had dealt in fight against a Volscian 
 
 foe. 
 
 When Appius Claudius saw that deed, he shuddered 
 and sank down, 
 And hid his face some little space with the corner of his 
 
 gown, 190 
 
 Till, with white lips and bloodshot eyes, Virginius tottered 
 
 nigh, 
 And stood before the judgment-seat, and held the knife 
 
 on high. 
 " Oh ! dwellers in the nether gloom, avengers of the slain, 
 By this dear blood I cry to you, do right between us twain ; 
 And even as Appius Claudius hath dealt by me and mine, 195 
 Deal you by Appius Claudius and all the Claudian line!" 
 So spake the slayer of his child, and turned, and went 
 
 his way; 
 But first he cast one haggard glance to where the body 
 
 lay, 
 And writhed, and groaned a fearful groan, and then, with 
 
 steadfast feet, 
 Strode right across the market-place unto the Sacred 
 
 Street. ' 200 
 
 Then up sprang Appius Claudius: "Stop him; alive 
 or dead! 
 Ten thousand pounds of copper to the man who brings 
 
 his head." 
 He looked upon his clients; but none would work his 
 will. 
 
VIRGINIA 67 
 
 He looked upon his lictors; but they trembled, and stood 
 
 still. 
 And, as Virginius through the press his way in silence 
 
 cleft, 205 
 
 Ever the mighty multitude fell back to right and left. 
 And he hath passed in safety unto his woful home, 
 And there ta'en horse to tell the camp what deeds are 
 
 done in Rome. 
 
 By this the flood of people was swollen from every 
 side, 
 And streets and porches round were filled with that o'er- 
 
 flowing tide; 210 
 
 And close around the body gathered a little train 
 Of them that were the nearest and dearest to the slain. 
 They brought a bier, and hung it with many a cypress 
 
 crown, 
 And gently they uplifted her, and gently laid her down. 
 The face of Appius Claudius wore the Claudian scowl 
 
 and sneer, 215 
 
 And in the Claudian note he cried, "What doth this 
 
 rabble here? 
 Have they no crafts to mind at home, that hitherward 
 
 they stray? 
 Ho! lictors, clear the market-place, and fetch the corpse 
 
 away!" 
 The voice of grief and fury till then had not been loud; 
 But a deep sullen murmur wandered among the crowd, 220 
 Like the moaning noise that goes before the whirlwind on 
 
 the deep, 
 Or the growl of a fierce watch-dog but half-aroused from 
 
 sleep. 
 
68 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 But when the lictors at that word, tall yeomen all and 
 
 strong, 
 Each with his axe and sheaf of twigs, went down into the 
 
 throng, 
 Those old men say, who saw that day of sorrow and of 
 
 sin, 225 
 
 That in the Roman Forum was never such a din. 
 The wailing, hooting, cursing, the howls of grief and 
 
 hate, 
 Were heard beyond the Pincian Hill, beyond the Latin 
 
 Gate. 
 But close around the body, where stood the little train 
 Of them that were the nearest and dearest to the slain, 230 
 No cries were there, but teeth set fast, low whispers and 
 
 black frowns, 
 And breaking up of benches, and girding up of gowns. 
 'Twas well the lictors might not pierce to where the 
 
 maiden lay, 
 Else surely had they been all twelve torn limb from limb 
 
 that day. 
 Right glad they were to struggle back, blood streaming 
 
 from their heads, 235 
 
 With axes all in splinters, and raiment all in shreds. 
 Then Appius Claudius gnawed his lip, and the blood left 
 
 his cheek; 
 And thrice he beckoned with his hand, and thrice he 
 
 strove to speak; 
 And thrice the tossing Forum set up a frightful yell; 
 "See, see, thou dog! what thou hast done; and hide thy 
 
 shame in hell! 240 
 
 Thou that wouldst make our maidens slaves must first 
 
 make slaves of men. 
 
VIRGINIA 69 
 
 Tribunes ! Hurrah for Tribunes ! Down with the wicked 
 
 Ten!" 
 And straightway, thick as hailstones, came whizzing 
 
 through the air 
 Pebbles, and bricks, and potsherds, all round the curule 
 
 chair: 
 And upon Appius Claudius great fear and trembling 
 
 came; 245 
 
 For never was a Claudius yet brave against aught but 
 
 shame. 
 Though the great houses love us not, we own, to do them 
 
 right, 
 That the great houses, all save one, have borne them well 
 
 in fight. 
 Still Caius of Corioli, his triumphs and his wrongs, 
 His vengeance and his mercy, live in our camp-fire songs. 250 
 Beneath the yoke of Furius oft have Gaul and Tuscan 
 
 bowed; 
 And Rome may bear the pride of him of whom herself is 
 
 proud. 
 But evermore a Claudius shrinks from a stricken field, 
 And changes color like a maid at sight of sword and 
 
 shield. 
 The Claudian triumphs all were won within the city 
 
 towers; ' 255 
 
 The Claudian yoke was never pressed on any necks but 
 
 ours. 
 A Cossus, like a wild-cat, springs ever at the face; 
 A Fabius rushes like a boar against the shouting chase; 
 But the vile Claudian litter, raging with currish spite, 
 Still yelps and snaps at those who run, still runs from 
 
 those who smite. 260 
 
70 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 So now 'twas seen of Appius. When stones began to 
 
 He shook, and crouched, and wrung his hands, and smote 
 
 upon his thigh. 
 " Kind clients, honest lictors, stand by me in this fray ! 
 Must I be torn in pieces? Home, home, the nearest 
 
 way!" 
 While yet he spake, and looked around with a bewildered 
 
 stare, 265 
 
 Four sturdy lictors put their necks beneath the curule 
 
 chair; 
 And fourscore clients on the left, and fourscore on the 
 
 right, 
 Arrayed themselves with swords and staves, and loins girt 
 
 up for fight. 
 But, though without or staff or sword, so furious was the 
 
 throng, 
 That scarce the train with might and main could bring 
 
 their lord along. 270 
 
 Twelve times the crowd made at him; five times they 
 
 seized his gown; 
 Small chance was his to rise again, if once they got him 
 
 down : 
 And sharper came the pelting; and evermore the yell — 
 " Tribunes ! we will have Tribunes \" — rose with a louder 
 
 swell : 
 And the chair tossed as tosses a bark with tattered sail 275 
 When raves the Adriatic beneath an eastern gale, 
 When the Calabrian sea-marks are lost in clouds of 
 
 spume, 
 And the great Thunder-Cape has donned his veil of inky 
 
 gloom. 
 
VIRGINIA 71 
 
 ( )ne stone hit Appius in the mouth, and one beneath the 
 
 ear; 
 And ere he reaehed Mount Palatine, he swooned with 
 
 pain and fear. 280 
 
 His cursed head, that he was wont to hold so high with 
 
 pride, 
 Now, like a drunken man's hung down, and swayed 
 
 from side to side; 
 And when his stout retainers had brought him to his door, 
 His face and neck were all one cake of filth and clotted 
 
 gore. 
 As Appius Claudius was that day, so may his grandson be ! 285 
 God send Rome one such other sight, and send me there 
 
 to see! 
 
THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 
 
 A LAY SUNG AT THE BANQUET IN THE CAPITOL, ON THE 
 DAY WHEREON MANIUS CURIUS DENTATUS, A SECOND 
 TIME CONSUL, TRIUMPHED OVER KING PYRRHUS 
 AND THE TARENTINES, IN THE YEAR OF THE CITY 
 CCCCLXXIX 
 
 Now slain is King Amulius, 
 
 Of the great Sylvian line, 
 Who reigned in Alba Longa, 
 
 On the throne of Aventine. 
 Slain is the Pontiff Camers, 5 
 
 Who spake the words of doom : 
 "The children to the Tiber; 
 
 The mother to the tomb." 
 
 ii 
 
 In Alba's lake no fisher 
 
 His net to-day is flinging: 10 
 
 On the dark rind of Alba's oaks 
 
 To-day no axe is ringing: 
 The yoke hangs o'er the manger: 
 
 The scythe lies in the hay: 
 Through all the Alban villages 15 
 
 No work is done to-day. 
 72 
 
THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 73 
 
 in 
 
 And every Alban burgher 
 
 Hath donned his whitest gown; 
 And every head in Alba 
 
 Weareth a poplar crown; 20 
 
 And every Alban door-post 
 
 With boughs and flowers is gay: 
 For to-day the dead are living; 
 
 The lost are found to-day. 
 
 IV 
 
 They were doomed by a bloody king: 25 
 
 They were doomed by a lying priest : 
 They were cast on the raging flood: 
 
 They were tracked by the raging beast: 
 Raging beast and raging flood 
 
 Alike have spared the prey; 30 
 
 And to-day the dead are living: 
 
 The lost are found to-day. 
 
 The troubled river knew them, 
 
 And smoothed his yellow foam, 
 And gently rocked the cradle 35 
 
 That bore the fate of Rome. 
 The ravening she-wolf knew them, 
 
 And licked them o'er and o'er, 
 And gave them of her own fierce milk, 
 
 Rich with raw flesh and gore. 40 
 
 Twenty winters, twenty springs, 
 
74 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Since then have rolled away; 
 And to-day the dead are living: 
 The lost are found to-day. 
 
 VI 
 
 Blithe it was to see the twins, 45 
 
 Right goodly youths and tall, 
 Marching from Alba Longa 
 
 To their old grandsire's hall. 
 Along their path fresh garlands 
 
 Are hung from tree to tree; 50 
 
 Before them stride the pipers, 
 
 Piping a note of glee. 
 
 VII 
 
 On the right goes Romulus, 
 
 With arms to the elbows red, 
 And in his hand a broadsword, 55 
 
 And on the blade a head — 
 A head in an iron helmet, 
 
 With horse-hair hanging down, 
 A shaggy head, a swarthy head, 
 
 Fixed in a ghastly frown — 60 
 
 The head of King Amulius 
 
 Of the great Sylvian line, 
 Who reigned in Alba Longa, 
 
 On the throne of Aventine. 
 
 VIII 
 
 On the left side goes Remus, 65 
 
 With wrists and fingers red, 
 
THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 75 
 
 And in his hand a boar-spear, 
 
 And on the point a head — 
 A wrinkled head and aged, 
 
 With silver beard and hair, 70 
 
 And holy fillets round it, 
 
 Such as the pontiffs wear. 
 The head of ancient Camers, 
 
 Who spake the words of doom : 
 "The children to the Tiber; 75 
 
 The mother to the tomb." 
 
 IX 
 
 Two and two behind the twins 
 
 Their trusty comrades go, 
 Four and forty valiant men, 
 
 With club, and axe, and bow. 80 
 
 On each side every hamlet 
 
 Pours forth its joyous crowd, 
 Shouting lads and baying dogs 
 
 And children laughing loud, 
 And old men weeping fondly 85 
 
 As Rhea's boys go by, 
 And maids who shriek to see the heads, 
 
 Yet, shrieking, press more nigh. 
 
 So they marched along the lake; 
 
 They marched by fold and stall, 90 
 
 By corn-field and by vineyard, 
 
 Unto the old man's hall. 
 
76 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 XI 
 
 In the hall-gate sate Capys, 
 
 Capys, the sightless seer; 
 From head to foot he trembled 95 
 
 As Romulus drew near. 
 And up stood stiff his thin white hair, 
 
 And his blind eyes flashed fire: 
 " Hail ! foster-child of the wondrous nurse ! 
 
 Hail! son of the wondrous sire! 100 
 
 XII 
 
 " But thou — what dost thou here 
 
 In the old man's peaceful hall ? 
 What doth the eagle in the coop, 
 
 The bison in the stall? 
 Our corn fills many a garner; 105 
 
 Our vines clasp many a tree; 
 Our flocks are white on many a hill, 
 
 But these are not for thee. 
 
 XIII 
 
 "For thee no treasure ripens 
 
 In the Tartessian mine: no 
 
 For thee no ship brings precious bales 
 
 Across the Libyan brine: 
 Thou shalt not drink from amber; 
 
 Thou shalt not rest on down; 
 Arabia shall not steep thy locks, 115 
 
 Nor Sidon tinge thy gown. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 77 
 
 XIV 
 
 " Leave gold and myrrh and jewels, 
 
 Rich table and soft bed, 
 To them who of man's seed are born, 
 
 Whom woman's milk have fed. 120 
 
 Thou wast not made for lucre, 
 
 For pleasure, nor for rest; 
 Thou that art sprung from the War-god's 
 loins, 
 
 And hast tugged at the she-wolf's breast. 
 
 xv 
 
 "From sunrise unto sunset 125 
 
 All earth shall hear thy fame: 
 A glorious city thou shalt build, 
 
 And name it by thy name: 
 And there, unquenched through ages, 
 
 Like Vesta's sacred fire, 130 
 
 Shall live the spirit of thy nurse, 
 
 The spirit of thy sire. 
 
 XVI 
 
 "The ox toils through the furrow, 
 
 Obedient to the goad; 
 The patient ass, up flinty paths, 135 
 
 Plods with his weary load: 
 With whine and bound the spaniel 
 
 His master's whistle hears; 
 And the sheep yields her patiently 
 
 To the loud clashing shears. 140 
 
78 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 XVII 
 
 "But thy nurse will hear no master; 
 
 Thy nurse will bear no load; 
 And woe to them that shear her, 
 
 And woe to them that goad! 
 When all the pack, loud baying, 145 
 
 Her bloody lair surrounds, 
 She dies in silence, biting hard, 
 
 Amidst the dying hounds. 
 
 XVIII 
 
 "Pomona loves the orchard; 
 
 And Liber loves the vine; 150 
 
 And Pales loves the straw-built shed 
 
 Warm with the breath of kine; 
 And Venus loves the whispers 
 
 Of plighted youth and maid, 
 In April's ivory moonlight 155 
 
 Beneath the chestnut shade. 
 
 XIX 
 
 "But thy father loves the clashing 
 
 Of broadsword and of shield: 
 He loves to drink the steam that reeks 
 
 From the fresh battle-field: 160 
 
 He smiles a smile more dreadful 
 
 Than his own dreadful frown, 
 When he sees the thick black cloud of smoke 
 
 Go up from the conquered town. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 79 
 
 xx 
 
 "And such as is the War-god, 165 
 
 The author of thy line, 
 And such as she who suckled thee, 
 
 Even such be thou and thine. 
 Leave to the soft Campanian 
 
 His baths and his perfumes; 170 
 
 Leave to the sordid race of Tyre 
 
 Their dyeing- vats and looms: 
 Leave to the sons of Carthage 
 
 The rudder and the oar: 
 Leave to the Greek his marble Nymphs 175 
 
 And scrolls of wordy lore. 
 
 XXI 
 
 "Thine, Roman, is the pilum: 
 
 Roman, the sword is thine, 
 That even trench, the bristling mound, 
 
 The legion's ordered line; 180 
 
 And thine the wheels of triumph, 
 
 Which with their laurelled train 
 Move slowly up the shouting streets 
 
 To Jove's eternal fane. 
 
 XXII 
 
 " Beneath thy yoke the Volscian 185 
 
 Shall vail his lofty brow: 
 Soft Capua's curled revellers 
 
 Before thy chairs shall bow: 
 The Lucumoes of Arnus 
 
 Shall quake thy rods to see; 190 
 
80 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 And the proud Samnite's heart of steel 
 Shall yield to only thee. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 "The Gaul shall come against thee 
 From the land of snow and night: 
 
 Thou shalt give his fair-haired armies 195 
 
 To the raven and the kite. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 "The Greek shall come against thee 
 
 The conqueror of the East. 
 Beside him stalks to battle 
 
 The huge earth-shaking beast, 200 
 
 The beast on whom the castle 
 
 With all its guards doth stand, 
 The beast who hath between his eyes 
 
 The serpent for a hand. 
 First march the bold Epirotes, 205 
 
 Wedged close with shield and spear; 
 And the ranks of false Tarentum 
 
 Are glittering in the rear. 
 
 XXV 
 
 "The ranks of false Tarentum 
 
 Like hunted sheep shall fly: 210 
 
 In vain the bold Epirotes 
 
 Shall round their standards die: 
 And Apennine's gray vultures 
 
 Shall have a noble feast 
 On the fat and the eyes 215 
 
 Of the huge earth -shaking beast. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 81 
 
 XXVI 
 
 " Hurrah! for the good weapons 
 
 That keep the War-god's land. 
 Hurrah ! for Rome's stout pilum 
 
 In a stout Roman hand. 220 
 
 Hurrah ! for Rome's short broadsword, 
 
 That through the thick array 
 Of levelled spears and serried shields 
 
 Hews deep its gory way. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 " Hurrah ! for the great triumph 225 
 
 That stretches many a mile. 
 Hurrah! for the wan captives 
 
 That pass in endless file. 
 Ho! bold Epirotes, whither 
 
 Hath the Red King ta'en flight ? 230 
 
 Ho ! dogs of false Tarentum, 
 
 Is not the gown washed white ? 
 
 XXVIII 
 
 "Hurrah! for the great triumph 
 
 That stretches many a mile. 
 Hurrah ! for the rich dye of Tyre, 235 
 
 And the fine web of Nile, 
 The helmets gay with plumage 
 
 Torn from the pheasant's wings, 
 The belts set thick with starry gems 
 
 That shone on Indian kings, 240 
 
 The urns of massy silver, 
 
 The goblets rough with gold, 
 
S* LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 The many-colored tablets bright 
 
 With loves and wars of old, 
 The stone that breathes and struggles, 245 
 
 The brass that seems to speak; — 
 Such cunning they who dwell on high 
 
 Hath given unto the Greek. 
 
 XXIX 
 
 " Hurrah ! for Manius Curius, 
 
 The bravest son of Rome, 250 
 
 Thrice in utmost need sent forth, 
 
 Thrice drawn in triumph home. 
 Weave, weave, for Manius Curius 
 
 The third embroidered gown: 
 Make ready the third lofty car, 255 
 
 And twine the third green crown; 
 And yoke the steeds of Rosea 
 
 With necks like a bended bow, 
 And deck the bull, Mevania's bull, 
 
 The bull as white as snow. 260 
 
 xxx 
 
 "Blest and thrice blest the Roman 
 
 Who sees Rome's brightest day, 
 Who sees that long victorious pomp 
 
 Wind down the Sacred Way, 
 And through the bellowing Forum, 265 
 
 And round the Suppliant's Grove, 
 Up to the everlasting gates 
 
 Of Capitolian Jove. 
 
THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 83 
 
 XXXI 
 
 " Then where, o'er two bright havens, 
 
 The towers of Corinth frown; 270 
 
 Where the gigantic King of Day 
 
 On his own Rhodes looks down 
 Where soft Orontes murmurs 
 
 Beneath the laurel shades; 
 Where Nile reflects the endless length 275 
 
 Of dark-red colonnades; 
 Where in the still deep water, 
 
 Sheltered from waves and blasts, 
 Bristles the dusky forest 
 
 Of Byrsa's thousand masts ; 280 
 
 Where fur-clad hunters wander 
 
 Amidst the northern ice; 
 Where through the sand of morning-land 
 
 The camel bears the spice; 
 Where Atlas flings his shadow 285 
 
 Far o'er the western foam, 
 Shall be great fear on all who hear 
 
 The mighty name of Rome." 
 
NOTES 
 
 HORATIUS 
 
 macaulay's preface 
 
 There can be little doubt that among those parts of early 
 Roman history which had a poetical origin was ^ the jegend of 
 Horatius Codes. We have several versions of the story and 
 these versions differ from each other m points o no ^ im- 
 portance. Polybius, there is reason to believe, heard the tale 
 recited over the remains of some Consul or Praetor descended 
 from the old Horatian patricians; for he introduces it as a speci- 
 men of the narratives with which the Romans were m the habit 
 of embellishing their funeral oratory. It is remarkable that, 
 according to him, Horatius defended the bridge alone and per- 
 ished in the waters. According to the chronicles which Livy 
 and Dionysius followed, Horatius had two companions, swam 
 safe to shore, and was loaded with honors and rewards 
 
 These discrepancies are easily explained. Our own literature, 
 indeed, will furnish an exact parallel to what may have taken 
 place at Rome. It is highly probable that the memory of he 
 war of Porsena was preserved by compositions much resembling 
 the two ballads which stand first in the Relics of Ancient Eng- 
 lish Poetry. In both those ballads the English c °5™^ 1 £ 
 the Percy, fight with the Scots, commanded by the Douglas 
 In one of the ballads the Douglas is killed by a nameless English 
 archer, and the Percy by a Scottish spearman: in the other, the 
 Percy slays the Douglas in single combat, and is himself made 
 prisoner. In the former, Sir Hugh Montgomery is ^through 
 the heart by a Northumbrian bowman: m the ^tter, he is taken, 
 and exchanged for the Percy. Yet both the baHads relate to 
 the same event, and that an event which probably took place 
 within the memory of persons who were alive when both the 
 ballads were made. One of the minstrels says : 
 
 "Old men that knowen the grounde well yenoughe 
 Call it the battell of Otterburn: 
 At Otterburn began this spume 
 Upon a monnyn day. _..,__. 
 Ther was the dougghte Doglas slean. 
 The Perse never went away. 
 85 
 
86 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 The other poet sums up the event in the following lines: 
 
 "Thys fraye bygan at Otterborne 
 Bytwene the nyghte and the day: 
 Ther the Dowglas lost hys lyfe, 
 And the Percy was lede away." 
 
 It is by no means unlikely that there were two old Roman 
 lays about the defence of the bridge; and that, while the story 
 which Livy has transmitted to us was preferred by the multi- 
 tude, the other, which ascribed the whole glory to Horatius 
 alone, may have been the favorite with the Horatian house. 
 
 The following ballad is supposed to have been made about a 
 hundred and twenty years after the war which it celebrates, 
 and just before the taking of Rome by the Gauls. The author 
 seems to have been an honest citizen, proud of the military 
 glory of his country, sick of the disputes of factions, and much 
 given to pining after good old times which had never really 
 existed. The allusion, however, to the partial manner in which 
 the public lands were allotted, could proceed only from a ple- 
 beian; and the allusion to the fraudulent sale of spoils marks 
 the date of the poem, and shows that the poet shared in the 
 general discontent with which the proceedings of Camillus, after 
 the taking of Veii, were regarded. . . . 
 
 Niebuhr's supposition, that each of the three defenders of the 
 bridge was the representative of one of the three patrician 
 tribes, is both ingenious and probable, and has been adopted in 
 the following poem. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 On account of the wickedness of Sextus, — "false Sextus," as 
 he is called by Macaulay, — who ravished Lucretia, the Tarquins 
 were banished from the city of Rome. Sextus made an appeal 
 to Lars Porsena, the King of Clusium, the leading state in the 
 confederacy of twelve Etruscan states, or cities. Lars Porsena 
 came to the aid of the Tarquins, and the other Etruscan cities 
 joined him, especial mention being made of his son-in-law, Ma- 
 milius of Tusculum. The combined armies of Etruria marched 
 against Rome, and captured the Janiculum, a citadel which 
 gave access to the Sublician bridge, and so to Rome. In order 
 to save the city the bridge must be defended until it could be 
 destroyed. This Horatius and his companions volunteered to 
 
NOTES 87 
 
 do; and then began the struggle between the brave defenders 
 of the bridge and the besieging army. 
 
 Title. Year of the City CCCLX. Rome was founded B. C. 
 753. The year CCCLX would therefore be B. C. 393. The 
 date commonly given for the defence of the bridge is B. C. 507. 
 Macaulay supposes the Lay to have been made about one hun- 
 dred and twenty years afterwards. 
 
 Line 1. — Lars. An Etruscan word for chieftain, or leader. 
 
 5. — Nine Gods. The Etruscans, like the Romans, had several 
 gods. The authorities of Macaulay's day seem to have re- 
 garded nine as the number of the chief gods. 
 
 6. — trysting day. A day set for a meeting. 
 
 26. — Volaterrae. An Etruscan city not far from the coast, 
 with a famous fortress, 1700 feet above the sea. 
 
 30. — Populonia. A sea-coast city of Etruria. 
 
 34. — Pisae. A city of Etruria, in the extreme north, now 
 known as Pisa. 
 
 36. — Massilia's triremes. Triremes were vessels with three 
 banks of oars. Massilia is the modern Marseilles, in France. 
 
 37. — fair -haired slaves. The slaves were fair-haired Gauls, 
 captives, sold into slavery. 
 
 38. — Clanis. A river in the south of Etruria, flowing into 
 the Tiber. 
 
 40. — Cortona. A city in the eastern part of Etruria. It was 
 a very important centre. 
 
 43. — Auser. A river in northern Etruria, now known as the 
 Serchio. 
 
 45. — Ciminian hill. Hills thickly covered with forests. They 
 were in central Etruria. 
 
 46. — Clitumnus. A river in Umbria. Its meadows were fa- 
 mous for white cattle, which were selected as victims in cele- 
 bration of the triumph in Rome. See line 55. 
 
 49. — Volsinian. A lake in southern Etruria. 
 
 55. — milk-white steer. See note to line 46. 
 
 58. — Arretium. A city in the eastern part of Etruria, the 
 modern Arezzo. It was one of the twelve cities of the League. 
 
 60. — Umbro. One of the largest rivers of Etruria, flowing into 
 the Tyrrhene Sea. 
 
 62. — Luna. A city in the extreme north-west corner of 
 Etruria. 
 
 63. — must. The fresh juice of the grapes. 
 
88 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 66-73. — According to Niebuhr, the Etruscans were a priest- 
 ridden people, and depended much on signs and auguries. 
 
 72. — Traced from the right. Etruscan writing ran from right 
 to left. 
 
 80-81. — Nurscia, etc. -Nurscia, or Nortia, was the Etruscan 
 goddess of Fortune. The shields were the shield which fell 
 from heaven and eleven others made exactly like it. On the 
 preservation of this shield depended the welfare of Rome. 
 
 83. — tale. Number, or proportion. 
 
 86. — Sutrium. A city in the southern part of Etruria, the 
 modern Sutri. 
 
 96. — Mamilius. See the general introductory note on the 
 poem. Tusculum was a city of Latium, now in ruins. 
 
 98. — yellow Tiber. "Yellow" is a constant epithet of the 
 river Tiber in the Latin writers. It is so called because of its 
 yellow sands. 
 
 123. — rock Tarpeian. A high rock in Rome, from which 
 criminals were frequently thrown. 
 
 126. — Fathers of the City. The Patres Conscripti, or Senators 
 of the city of Rome. 
 
 133. — Crustumerium. A Sabine town a short distance up 
 the Tiber from Rome. 
 
 134. — Verbenna . . . Ostia. Verbenna, one of the Etruscan 
 leaders, according to Macaulay's account, came from Ostia, the 
 port of Rome, at the mouth of the Tiber. 
 
 136. — Astur . . . Janiculum. Another Etruscan leader (ac- 
 cording to Macaulay), Astur, had stormed Janiculum, the hill 
 across the Tiber from Rome. It was connected with Rome by 
 the Sublician bridge, which the heroes in our story defend. 
 
 142. — Consul. One of the two chief magistrates of Rome, 
 elected annually by the people. They took the place of the 
 banished kings. 
 
 147. — River-Gate. Probably in the wall of the city between 
 the Tiber and the Capitoline Hill. 
 
 151. — The bridge. The Pons Sublicius. See note to line 136. 
 
 180. — Umbrian. The people of Umbria, a district lying to 
 the east of Etruria. 
 
 181. — Gaul. The Gauls were barbarians who had conquered 
 part of northern Italy. 
 
 185. — Lucumo. The title given to the hereditary chiefs of 
 each of the twelve Etruscan cities. 
 
 186. — Cilnus of Arretium. See note to line 58. 
 
NOTES 89 
 
 188. — Astur. See note to line 136. 
 190-2. — Tolumnius . . , Thrasymene. This Lucumo, or lead- 
 er, came from Lake Thrasymene, in the eastern part of Etruria. 
 
 199-200. — false Sextus . . . shame. See the general intro- 
 ductory note on the poem. 
 
 229-30. — holy maidens. The six priestesses of the goddess 
 Vesta, who guarded the sacred fire. 
 
 237. — strait. Narrow. 
 
 241. — Spurius Lartius. He, with Horatius and Herminius, 
 were the defenders of the bridge. See the last paragraph of 
 Macaulay's Preface to the poem. 
 
 261. — The public lands, or ager publicus, were not always 
 divided fairly. In line 542 this land is called the "corn- 
 land." 
 
 267. — Tribunes. The official representatives of the common 
 people in the government of Rome. 
 
 274. — harness. Armor. 
 
 301-2. — Aunus . . . Tifernum . . . Hill of Vines. This stan- 
 za describes three of the adversaries of Horatius and his two 
 companions. Tifernum, an Umbrian town on the Tiber. 
 
 303-4. — Seius . . . Ilva. Ilva is the island now called Elba, 
 off the coast of Etruria. It was famous for its iron mines. 
 
 305-310. — Picus . . . Nequinum . . . Nar. Picus, one of the 
 three opponents of Horatius and his companions, was from 
 Nequinum, one of the most important cities in Umbria, situated 
 on the Nar a few miles above the Nar's confluence with the 
 Tiber. 
 
 319. — Ocnus of Falerii. This stanza describes three more of 
 the Romans' adversaries. Falerii, a city in the southern part 
 of Etruria. 
 
 321. — Lausulus of Urgo. Urgo, a small island twenty miles 
 off the coast of Etruria, now called Gorgona. 
 
 323. — Aruns of Volsinium. Volsinium, a city in the south 
 central region of Etruria. 
 
 326. — Cosa. A coast city in the southern part of Etruria. 
 
 328. — Albinia. A river of Etruria, flowing into the sea near 
 the centre of the coast-line. 
 
 337. — Campania. A fertile district south of Rome. 
 
 348.— Astur. See line 136. 
 
 360. — she-wolf's litter. The Romans are so called because 
 the legend of the City tells that Romulus and Remus, who 
 founded Rome, were suckled by a she-wolf. 
 
90 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 384. — Alvernus. Modern Alvernia, a rough and rocky hill 
 between the sources of the Tiber and the Arno. 
 
 406. — Etruria. Another form of the name Etruscan or Tus- 
 can. 
 
 488.— Palatinus. The Palatine Hill in the city of Rome. 
 
 525. — Bore bravely up his chin. Macaulay here refers in a 
 note to the following parallel passages: 
 
 " Our ladye bare upp her chinne." 
 
 Ballad of Childe Waters. 
 
 " Never heavier man and horse 
 Stemmed a midnight torrent's force; 
 
 Yet, through good heart and our Lady's grace. 
 At length he gained the landing place." 
 
 Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel, I 
 
 542. — corn -land. See note to line 261. 
 
 550. — Comitium. The northern portion of the Roman Forum 
 used for elections, law-suits, and public meetings. 
 
 561. — Volscian. Enemies of Rome, south of the Tiber. 
 
 562. — Juno. The wife of Jupiter, the mightiest of the Roman 
 goddesses. 
 
 572. — Algidus. A range of mountains near Rome. They are 
 celebrated by Horace for their oaks. Mount Albanus is near by. 
 
 THE BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS 
 
 macaulay's preface 
 
 The following poem is supposed to have been produced about 
 ninety years after the lay of Horatius. Some persons men- 
 tioned in the lay of Horatius make their appearance again, and 
 some appellations and epithets used in the lay of Horatius have 
 been purposely repeated: for, in an age of ballad poetry, it 
 scarcely ever fails to happen, that certain phrases come to be 
 appropriated to certain men and things, and are regularly ap- 
 plied to those men and things by every minstrel. Thus we 
 find, both in the Homeric poems and in Hesiod, /3»7 "SpaKXrjetrj, 
 irepucXtiTos ' Afx<t>iyvT?i€t.s, di&KTopos 'ApyeKpovT-rjs, ewTaTvXos 6t)/St7, 
 'EX^s Zvck 7ivk6/xoio. Thus, too, in our own national songs, 
 Douglas is almost always the doughty Douglas; England is 
 merry England; all the gold is red; and all the ladies are gay. 
 
NOTES 91 
 
 The principal distinction between the lay of Horatius and 
 the lay of the Lake Regillus is, that the former is meant to be 
 purely Roman, while the latter, though national in its general 
 spirit, has a slight tincture of Greek learning and of Greek super- 
 stition. The story of the Tarquins, as it has come down to us, 
 appears to have been compiled from the works of several popu- 
 lar poets; and one, at least, of those poets appears to have 
 visited the Greek colonies in Italy, if not Greece itself, and to 
 have had some acquaintance with the works of Homer and 
 Herodotus. Many of the most striking adventures of the house 
 of Tarquin, before Lucretia makes her appearance, have a 
 Greek character. The Tarquins themselves are represented as 
 Corinthian nobles of the great house of the Bacchiadse, driven 
 from their country by the tyranny of that Cypselus, the tale of 
 whose strange escape Herodotus has related with incomparable 
 simplicity and liveliness. Livy and Dionysius tell us that, 
 when Tarquin the Proud was asked what was the best mode of 
 governing a conquered city, he replied only by beating down 
 with his staff all the tallest poppies in his garden. This is ex- 
 actly what Herodotus, in the passage to which reference has 
 already been made, relates of the counsel given to Periander, 
 the son of Cypselus. The stratagem by which the town of Gabii 
 is brought under the power of the Tarquins is, again, obviously 
 copied from Herodotus. The embassy of the young Tarquins 
 to the oracle at Delphi is just such a story as would be told by 
 a poet whose head was full of the Greek mythology; and the 
 ambiguous answer returned by Apollo is in the exact style of 
 the prophecies which, according to Herodotus, lured Crcesus to 
 destruction. Then the character of the narrative changes. 
 From the first mention of Lucretia to the retreat of Porsena noth- 
 ing seems to be borrowed from foreign sources. The villany 
 of Sextus, the suicide of his victim, the revolution, the death 
 of the sons of Brutus, the defence of the bridge, Mucius burning 
 his hand, Clcelia swimming through Tiber, seem to be all strictly 
 Roman. But when we have done with the Tuscan war, and 
 enter upon the war with the Latines, we are again struck by 
 the Greek air of the story. The Battle of the Lake Regillus is 
 in all respects a Homeric battle, except that the combatants 
 ride astride on their horses, instead of driving chariots. The 
 mass of fighting men is hardly mentioned. The leaders single 
 each other out, and engage hand to hand. The great object 
 of the warriors on both sides is, as in the Iliad, to obtain posses- 
 
92 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 sion of the spoils and bodies of the slain; and several circum- 
 stances are related which forcibly remind us of the great 
 slaughter round the corpses of Sarpedon and Patroclus. . . . 
 
 In the following poem, therefore, images and incidents have 
 been borrowed, not merely without scruple, but on principle, 
 from the incomparable battle-pieces of Homer. 
 
 The popular belief at Rome, from an early period, seems to 
 have been that the event of the great day of Regillus was de- 
 cided by supernatural agency. Castor and Pollux, it was said, 
 had fought, armed and mounted, at the head of the legions of 
 the commonwealth, and had afterward carried the news of the 
 victory with incredible speed to the city. The well in the Forum 
 at which they had alighted was pointed out. Near the well 
 rose their ancient temple. A great festival was kept to their 
 honor on the Ides of Quintilis, supposed to be the anniversary 
 of the battle; and on that day sumptuous sacrifices were offered 
 to them at the public charge. One spot on the margin of Lake 
 Regillus was regarded during many ages with superstitious awe. 
 A mark, resembling in shape a horse's hoof, was discernible in 
 the volcanic rock; and this mark was believed to have been 
 made by one of the celestial chargers. 
 
 How the legend originated cannot now be ascertained: but 
 we may easily imagine several ways in which it might have orig- 
 inated; nor is it at all necessary to suppose, with Julius Fron- 
 tinus, that two young men were dressed up by the Dictator to 
 personate the sons of Leda. It is probable that Livy is correct 
 when he says that the Roman general, in the hour of peril, 
 vowed a temple to Castor. If so, nothing could be more natural 
 than that the multitude should ascribe the victory to the favor 
 of the Twin Gods. When such was the prevailing sentiment, 
 any man who chose to declare that, in the midst of the confusion 
 and slaughter, he had seen two godlike forms on white horses 
 scattering the Latines, would find ready credence. We know, 
 indeed, that, in modern times, a very similar story actually 
 found credence among a people much more civilized than the 
 Romans of the fifth century before Christ. A chaplain of Cortes, 
 writing about thirty years after the conquest of Mexico, in an 
 age of printing presses, libraries, universities, scholars, lo- 
 gicians, jurists, and statesmen, had the face to assert that, in 
 one engagement against the Indians, Saint James had appeared 
 on a gray horse at the head of the Castilian adventurers. Many 
 of those adventurers were living when this lie was printed. 
 
NOTES 93 
 
 One of them, honest Bernal Diaz, wrote an account of the expe- 
 dition. He had the evidence of his own senses against the 
 legend; but he seems to have distrusted even the evidence of 
 his own senses. He says that he was in the battle, and that he 
 saw a gray horse with a man on his back, but that the man 
 was, to his thinking, Francesco de Morla, and not the ever- 
 blessed apostle Saint James. "Nevertheless," Bernal adds, 
 " it may be that the person on the gray horse was the glorious 
 apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was un- 
 worthy to see him." The Romans of the age of Cincinnatus 
 were probably quite as credulous as the Spanish subjects of 
 Charles the Fifth. It is therefore conceivable that the appear- 
 ance of Castor and Pollux may have become an article of faith 
 before the generation which had fought at Regillus had passed 
 away. Nor could anything be more natural than that the poets 
 of the next age should embellish this story, and make the ce- 
 lestial horsemen bear the tidings of victory to Rome. 
 
 Many years after the temple of the Twin Gods had been 
 built in the Forum, an important addition was made to the 
 ceremonial by which the state annually testified its gratitude 
 for their protection. Quintus Fabius and Publius Decius were 
 elected Censors at a momentous crisis. It had become abso- 
 lutely necessary that the classification of the citizens should be 
 revised. On that classification depended the distribution of 
 political power. Party-spirit ran high; and the republic seemed 
 to be in danger of falling under the dominion either of a narrow 
 oligarchy or of an ignorant and headstrong rabble. Under 
 such circumstances, the most illustrious patrician and the most 
 illustrious plebeian of the age were entrusted with the office of 
 arbitrating between the angry factions; and they performed 
 their arduous task to the satisfaction of all honest and reason- 
 able men. 
 
 One of their reforms was a remodelling of the equestrian 
 order; and, having effected this reform, they determined to give 
 to their work a sanction derived from religion. In the chival- 
 rous societies of modern times, societies which have much more 
 than may at first sight appear in common with the equestrian 
 order of Rome, it has been usual to invoke the special protec- 
 tion of some Saint, and to observe his day with peculiar solem- 
 nity. Thus the Companions of the Garter wear the image of 
 Saint George depending from their collars, and meet, on great 
 occasions, in Saint George's Chapel. Thus, when Lewis the 
 
94 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 Fourteenth instituted a new order of chivalry for the rewarding 
 of military merit, he commended it to the favor of his own 
 glorified ancestor and patron, and decreed that all the members 
 of the fraternity should meet at the royal palace on the feast 
 of Saint Lewis, should attend the king to chapel, should hear 
 mass, and should subsequently hold their great annual assem- 
 bly. There is a considerable resemblance between this rule of 
 the order of Saint Lewis and the rule which Fabius and Decius 
 made respecting the Roman knights. It was ordained that a 
 grand muster and inspection of the equestrian body should be 
 part of the ceremonial performed, on the anniversary of the 
 battle of Regillus, in honor of Castor and Pollux, the two 
 equestrian Gods. All the knights, clad in purple and crowned 
 with olive, were to meet at a temple of Mars in the suburbs. 
 Thence they were to ride in state to the Forum, where the temple 
 of the Twins stood. This pageant was, during several centuries, 
 considered as one of the most splendid sights of Rome. In the 
 time of Dionysius the cavalcade sometimes consisted of five 
 thousand horsemen, all persons of fair repute and easy fortune. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Censors who instituted this 
 august ceremony acted in concert with the Pontiffs to whom, 
 by the constitution of Rome, the superintendence of the public 
 worship belonged; and it is probable that those high religious 
 functionaries were, as usual, fortunate enough to find in their 
 books or traditions some warrant for the innovation. 
 
 The following poem is supposed to have been made for this 
 great occasion. Songs, we know, were chanted at the religious 
 festivals of Rome from an early period; indeed from so early 
 a period, that some of the sacred verses were popularly ascribed 
 to Numa, and were utterly unintelligible in the age of Augustus. 
 In the Second Punic War a great feast was held in honor of 
 Juno, and a song was sung in her praise. This song was extant 
 when Livy wrote; and, though exceedingly rugged and uncouth, 
 seemed to him not wholly destitute of merit. A song, as we 
 learn from Horace, was part of the established ritual at the great 
 Secular Jubilee. It is therefore likely that the Censors and Pon- 
 tiffs, when they had resolved to add a grand procession of 
 knights to the other solemnities annually performed on the Ides 
 of Quintilis, would call in the aid of a poet. Such a poet would 
 naturally take for his subject the battle of Regillus, the appear- 
 ance of the Twin Gods, and the institution of their festival. 
 He would find abundant materials in the ballads of his prede- 
 
NOTES 95 
 
 cessors; and he would make free use of the scanty stock of 
 Greek learning which he had himself acquired. He would prob- 
 ably introduce some wise and holy Pontiff enjoining the mag- 
 nificent ceremonial, which, after a long interval, had at length 
 been adopted. If the poem succeeded, many persons would 
 commit it to memory. Parts of it would be sung to the pipe 
 at banquets. It would be peculiarly interesting to the great 
 Posthumian House, which numbered among its many images 
 that of the Dictator Aulus, the hero of Regillus. The orator 
 who, in the following generation, pronounced the funeral pane- 
 gyric over the remains of Lucius Posthumius Megellus, thrice 
 Consul, would borrow largely from the lay; and thus some 
 passages, much disfigured, would probably find their way into 
 the chronicles which were afterward in the hands of Dionysius 
 and Livy. 
 
 Antiquaries differ widely as to the situation of the field of 
 battle. The opinion of those who suppose that the armies met 
 near Cornufelle, between Frascati and the Monte Porzio, is at 
 least plausible, and has been followed in the poem. 
 
 As to the details of the battle, it has not been thought de- 
 sirable to adhere minutely to the accounts which have come 
 down to us. Those accounts, indeed, differ widely from each 
 other, and, in all probability, differ as widely from the ancient 
 poem from which they were originally derived. 
 
 It is unnecessary to point out the obvious imitations of the 
 Iliad, which have been purposely introduced. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 This Lay narrates the last battle in the struggle between 
 Rome and her powerful rival Latium. The favor of heaven 
 was shown to Rome by the intervention in her behalf of Castor 
 and Pollux, who caused the defeat of the Latins and carried the 
 news of the glorious victory to Rome. This battle was fought 
 in the year of the city 255 or 258. Niebuhr, from whom Ma- 
 caulay borrowed so much, says of this battle: 
 / " The battle of Lake Regillus, as described by Livy, is not an 
 ^engagement between two armies; it is a conflict of heroes like 
 those in the Iliad. All the leaders encounter hand to hand, 
 and by them the victory is thrown now into one scale, now into 
 the other; while the troops fight without any effect." * 
 
 1 History of Rome, I, 546-547. 
 
96 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 This is the spirit in which Macaulay conceives the story. 
 He supposes the Lay to be sung on the anniversary of the battle, 
 in honor of Castor and Pollux, in the year of the city 451, or 
 B. C. 302. 
 
 Title. — Lake Regillus. A small lake in Latium, at the foot 
 of the Tuscan hills. 
 
 — Ides of Quintilis. July 15. 
 
 Line 2. — lictors. Attendants on a magistrate, as a token of 
 official dignity. They carried rods and axes as a sign of their 
 authority. 
 
 3. — Knights. See Macaulay's Preface to the poem. 
 
 7. — Castor in the Forum. The temple of Castor. 
 
 13. — Yellow River. The Tiber. It is called yellow on account 
 of its yellow sands. 
 
 14. — Sacred Hill. A hill three miles from Rome on the river 
 Anio, to which the plebeians repaired in their struggle for 
 liberty. 
 
 15. — Ides of Quintilis. July 15, See note on the Title. 
 
 17. — Martian Kalends. The first of March. 
 
 18. — December's Nones. December the fifth. 
 
 20. — whitest. Most noted. 
 
 25. — Parthenius. A mountain range in Arcadia. 
 
 27. — Cirrha . . . Adria. Cirrha, a town in Phocis in Greece. 
 Adria is the poetical form of Adriatic. 
 
 28. — Apennine. The well-known range of mountains in 
 Etruria. 
 
 31-32. — Lacedaemon . . . kings. Sparta, one of whose 
 kings, Tyndareus, was the father of Castor and Pollux. The 
 Heraclidae established the system of dual kingship, or govern- 
 ment by two kings. 
 
 34. — Porcian. Cato the Censor, who belonged to the Porcian 
 family, was born in Tusculum. 
 
 35. — Tusculum. An ancient city of Latium situated in the 
 Alban Hills. 
 
 42. — Come. The Corniculani mountains. 
 
 43. — Fair Fount. Apparently a name invented by Macaulay. 
 
 63-64. — Thirty Cities . . . Rome. According to Pliny, there 
 were thirty cities, or communities, in Latium. 
 
 81. — Virginius. Who, with his fellow-consul Aulus, destroyed 
 Camerium, B. C. 502. 
 
 83-84. — Aulus . . . Posthumian. See note to line 81. 
 
NOTES 97 
 
 86. — Gabii. A city of Latium, about twelve miles from Rome. 
 
 119. — Conscript Fathers. The members of the Patricians, or 
 nobles, whose names were written on the roll of the Senate. 
 
 125. — Camerium. An ancient town of Latium. 
 
 132. — axes. See note to line 2. 
 
 165. — Setia. A city of Latium, on the southern slope of the 
 Volscian mountains. 
 
 166. — Norba. — A city of Latium, about midway between Cora 
 and Setia. See notes to lines 165 and 183. 
 
 169. — Witch's Fortress. Circeii, near the promontory of that 
 name on the coast of Latium. It was so called because it was said 
 to be the haunt of the witch Circe after her flight from Greece. 
 
 171. — still glassy lake. Lake Nemus, famous because of its 
 beauty, and because of the temple of Venus on its shore. 
 
 172. — Aricia. A famous city of Latium, situated on the 
 Appian Way, at the foot of the Alban Mount. 
 
 173, ff. — A tradition variously told, but of which the sub- 
 stance is that a runaway slave became the priest by slaying his 
 predecessor, and remained priest of the grove and shrine until 
 he himself was slain. 
 
 177. — Ufens. A river of Latium, rising at the foot of the Vol- 
 scian mountains. It flows through the Pontine marshes. Hence 
 its banks are "drear," and haunted by flights of "marsh-fowl." 
 
 183. — Cora. A city of Latium, situated on the Appian Way, 
 now Cori. 
 
 185. — Laurentian. Of or belonging to Laurentum, a city of 
 Latium on the sea-coast. 
 
 187. — Anio. A famous river of Latium, and an important 
 tributary of the Tiber. 
 
 190. — Velitrae. A city of Latium, situated on the southern 
 slope of the Alban hills. 
 
 201. — land of sunrise. In the East, as in Syria. 
 
 202. — By Syria's dark-browed daughters. The choicest purple 
 garments came from Tyre in Syria. 
 
 203. — Carthage. The African city, which was the most fa- 
 mous rival of Rome. 
 
 205. — Lavinium. A city near the sea, about seventeen miles 
 south of Rome. 
 
 209-10. — false Sextus . . . deed of shame. Almost a repe- 
 tition of lines 199-200 of Horatius. In this stanza are given 
 the visions of fear which possessed "false Sextus" because of 
 the "deed of shame" which he committed against Lucretia. 
 
98 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 233. — Tibur . . . Pedum. The people of two ancient towns 
 in Latium. 
 
 235. — Ferentinum. A small town in Latium. It was so 
 solitary that the name was used to signify a solitary country. 
 
 236. — Gabii. A small town of Latium, founded by the 
 Sicilians. 
 
 237. — Volscian. The most important tribe in Latium. 
 
 241. — Mount Soracte. A high mountain in Etruria, often 
 spoken of in Latin literature, and famous because it is mentioned 
 by Horace in a famous Ode (Ode 9, Book I). 
 
 250. — Apulian. Apulia was a province in lower Italy. 
 
 263. — Pomptine. The Pontine marshes extended over the 
 low-lying portions of Latium. 
 
 278. — Digentian. The Digentia was a small stream which 
 flowed past Horace's villa and fell into Anio river. 
 
 280. — Bandusia. A fountain celebrated by Horace in one of 
 his famous Odes (Ode 3, Book III). 
 
 288. — Fidenae. An ancient city of Latium near Rome. 
 
 294. — Calabrian. Calabria is a province in the south of 
 Italy. 
 
 299. — Lavinian. A city of Latium, near the sea-coast. 
 
 331-332. — Men say, etc. A heroic incident perhaps borrowed 
 from the English ballad, as for instance, Johnny Armstrong, 
 who fights even after his legs are hewn to the knees. 
 
 362. — Velian. An elevated part of the Palatine Hill in Rome. 
 
 399. — play the men. Show yourselves to be brave men. 
 
 419. — Cossus. A famous Roman name. 
 
 459-460. — Beneath . . . well. This, of course, refers to the 
 noble story, as Macaulay tells it in Horatius. 
 
 466. — Crest of Flame. The shining crest of the Latin hero. 
 
 480. — Aufidus . . . Po. This means the whole region of 
 Central Italy, as these rivers enclose that territory on the south 
 and north, respectively. 
 
 603. — Samothracia. An island near the coast of Thrace, in 
 Greece. 
 
 604. — Cyrene. An important city in north Africa. 
 
 605. — Tarentum. A powerful city in Lower Italy. 
 
 607. — Syracuse. A famous city in Sicily. 
 
 609. — Eurotas. This is the same thing as saying that Sparta 
 was their native home. Sparta was situated on the river Eu- 
 rotas. 
 
 619. — Ardea. A city of Latium. 
 
NOTES 99 
 
 623.— Vesta. The goddess of the hearth and its fire; hence 
 the goddess of the household. 
 
 624 —Golden Shield. The divine shield of Mars, which, ac- 
 cording to the Roman tradition, fell from heaven. On its pres- 
 ervation the safety of the city depended. 
 
 645-646 — Po . . . Celtic. The region of the Po was occu- 
 pied by people of Celtic blood. Pliny says that the name is 
 
 Celtic. , . . « 
 
 648.— Adrian main. The Adriatic Sea. 
 649 —Sire Quirinus. The name of Romulus after his dein- 
 
 Ca 6 1 60.'— Lanuvium. A town in Latium near the Appian Way, 
 twenty miles from Rome. 
 
 661.— Nomentum. A Sabine city, about fourteen miles from 
 
 6*73 — Arpinum. A famous Volscian city, the birthplace of 
 
 ("Mppro 
 
 676.— Anxur. A city of Latium, near the sea. It was known 
 to the Romans by the name of Tarracina. 
 
 679.— Laurentum. See note to line 185. 
 
 690.— Eastern Gate. That is, the eastern gate of the city ot 
 
 Rome. -r, 
 
 697.— Sergius, the High Pontiff. The Roman term was Pon- 
 
 tifex Maximus. _ . ,. 
 
 721— great Asylum. A place of refuge on the Capitohne 
 Hill, where fugitives could find safety, said to have been opened 
 bv Romulus to attract population to the city. 
 
 747.— the well. The Pool, or Lake, of Juturna, situated be- 
 tween the temple of Vesta and the temple of Castor. 
 
 760 —Dorians. An important Greek tribe of Lacedaemon, 
 who conquered the whole Peloponnesus, including Sparta. 
 
 774.— stately dome. The temple of Castor and Pollux, bee 
 note on line 7. 
 
 VIRGINIA 
 
 macaulat's preface 
 
 A collection consisting exclusively of war-songs would give 
 an imperfect, or rather an erroneous, notion of the spirit ot tne 
 old Latin ballads. The Patricians, during more than a century 
 after the expulsion of the Kings, held all the high military com- 
 
100 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 mands. A Plebeian, even though, like Lucius Siccius, he were 
 distinguished by his valor and knowledge of war, could serve 
 only in subordinate posts. A minstrel, therefore, who wished 
 to celebrate the early triumphs of his country, could hardly 
 take any but Patricians for his heroes. The warriors who are 
 mentioned in the two preceding lays, Horatius, Lartius, Her- 
 minius, Aulus Posthumius, iEbutius Elva, Sempronius Atra- 
 tinus, Valerius Poplicola, were all members of the dominant 
 order; and a poet who was singing their praises, whatever his 
 own political opinions might be, would naturally abstain from 
 insulting the class to which they belonged, and from reflecting 
 on the system which had placed such men at the head of the 
 legions of the Commonwealth. 
 
 But there was a class of compositions in which the great 
 families were by no means so courteously treated. No parts of 
 early Roman history are richer with poetical coloring than 
 those which relate to the long contest between the privileged 
 houses and the commonalty. The population of Rome was, 
 from a very early period, divided into hereditary castes, which, 
 indeed, readily united to repel foreign enemies, but which re- 
 garded each other, during many years, with bitter animosity. 
 Between those castes there was a barrier hardly less strong than 
 that which, at Venice, parted the members of the Great Coun- 
 cil from their countrymen. In some respects, indeed, the line 
 which separated an Icilius or a Duilius from a Posthumius or 
 a Fabius was even more deeply marked than that which sep- 
 arated the rower of a gondola from a Contarini or a Morosini. 
 At Venice the distinction was merely civil. At Rome it was 
 both civil and religious. Among the grievances under which 
 the Plebeians suffered, three were felt as peculiarly severe. 
 They were excluded from the highest magistracies, they were 
 excluded from all share in the public lands; and they were 
 ground down to the dust by partial and barbarous legislation 
 touching pecuniary contracts. The ruling class in Rome was 
 a monied class; and it made and administered the laws with a 
 view solely to its own interest. Thus the relation between 
 lender and borrower was mixed up with the relation between 
 sovereign and subject. The great men held a large portion of 
 the community in dependence by means of advances at enor- 
 mous usury. The law of debt, framed by creditors, and for the 
 protection of creditors, was the most horrible that has ever 
 been known among men. The liberty, and even the life, of the 
 
NOTES 101 
 
 insolvent were at the mercy of the Patrician money-lenders. 
 Children often became slaves in consequence of the misfortunes 
 of their parents. The debtor was imprisoned, not in a public 
 gaol under the care of impartial public functionaries but in a 
 private workhouse belonging to the creditor. Frightful stories 
 were told respecting these dungeons. It was said that torture 
 and brutal violation were common; that tight stocks, heavy 
 chains, scanty measures of food, were used to punish wretches 
 guilty of nothing but poverty; and that brave soldiers, whose 
 breasts were covered with honorable scars, were often marked 
 still more deeply on the back by the scourges of high-born 
 i miliars 
 
 The Plebeians were, however, not wholly without constitu- 
 tional rights. From an early period they had been admitted 
 to some share of political power. They were enrolled each in 
 his century, and were allowed a share, considerable though not 
 proportioned to their numerical strength, in the disposal ol 
 those high dignities from which they were themselves excluded 
 Thus their position bore some resemblance to that of the Irish 
 Catholics during the interval between the year 1792 and the 
 vear 1829. The Plebeians had also the privilege of annually 
 appointing officers, named Tribunes, who had no active share 
 in the government of the Commonwealth, but who, by degrees, 
 acquired a power formidable even to the ablest and most reso- 
 lute Consuls and Dictators. The person of the Tribune was 
 inviolable; and though he could directly effect little, he could 
 obstruct everything. 
 
 During more than a century after the institution of the lrib- 
 uneship, the Commons struggled manfully for the removal of 
 the grievances under which they labored; and, in spite ^ ol 
 many checks and reverses, succeeded in wringing concession 
 after concession from the stubborn aristocracy. At length in 
 the year of the city 378, both parties mustered their whole 
 strength for their last and most desperate conflict. The pop- 
 ular and active Tribune, Caius Licinius, proposed the three 
 memorable laws which are called by his name, and which were 
 intended to redress the three great evils of which the Plebeians 
 complained. He was supported with eminent ability and firm- 
 ness by his colleague, Lucius Sextius. The struggle appears to 
 have been the fiercest that ever in any community terminated 
 without an appeal to arms. If such a contest had raged in any 
 Greek city, the streets would have run with blood. But, even 
 
102 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 in the paroxysms of faction, the Roman retained his gravity, 
 his respect for law, and his tenderness for the lives of his fellow- 
 citizens. Year after year Licinius and Sextius were re-elected 
 Tribunes. Year after year, if the narrative which has come 
 down to us is to be trusted, they continued to exert, to the full 
 extent, their power of stopping the whole machine of govern- 
 ment. No curule magistrates could be chosen; no military 
 muster could be held. We know too little of the state of Rome 
 in those days to be able to conjecture how, during that long 
 anarchy, the peace was kept, and ordinary justice administered 
 between man and man. The animosity of both parties rose to 
 the greatest height. The excitement, we may well suppose, 
 would have been peculiarly intense at the annual election of 
 Tribunes. On such occasions there can be little doubt that 
 the great families did all that could be done, by threats and 
 caresses, to break the union of the Plebeians. That union, how- 
 ever, proved indissoluble. At length the good cause triumphed. 
 The Licinian laws were carried. Lucius Sextius was the first 
 Plebeian Consul, Caius Licinius the third. 
 
 The results of this great change were singularly happy and 
 glorious. Two centuries of prosperity, harmony, and victory 
 followed the reconciliation of the orders. Men who remem- 
 bered Rome engaged in waging petty wars almost within sight 
 of the Capitol lived to see her the mistress of Italy. While 
 the disabilities of the Plebeians continued, she was scarcely 
 able to maintain her ground against the Volscians and Her- 
 nicans. When those disabilities were removed, she rapidly be- 
 came more than a match for Carthage and Macedon. 
 
 During the great Licinian contest the Plebeian poets were, 
 doubtless, not silent. Even in modern times songs have been 
 by no means without influence on public affairs; and we may 
 therefore infer that, in a society where printing was unknown, 
 and where books were rare, a pathetic or humorous party-ballad 
 must have produced effects such as we can but faintly conceive. 
 It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from 
 a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from 
 the seat of government, and took little part in the strife of fac- 
 tions, gave vent to their petty local animosities in coarse Fes- 
 cennine verse. The lampoons of the city were doubtless of a 
 higher order; and their sting was early felt by the nobility. 
 For in the Twelve Tables, long before the time of the Licinian 
 laws, a severe punishment was denounced against the citizen 
 
NOTES 103 
 
 who should compose or recite verses reflecting on another. 
 Satire is, indeed, the only sort of composition in which the Latin 
 poets, whose works have come down to us, were not mere imi- 
 tators of foreign models; and it is therefore the only sort of 
 composition in which they have never been rivalled. It was 
 not, like their tragedy, their comedy, their epic and lyric poetry, 
 a hothouse plant which, in return for assiduous and skilful cult- 
 ure, gave only scanty and sickly fruits. It was hardy and full 
 of sap; and in all the various juices which it yielded might be 
 distinguished the flavor of the Ausonian soil. "Satire," says 
 Quinctilian, with just pride, "is all our own." Satire sprang, 
 in truth, naturally from the constitution of the Roman govern- 
 ment and from the spirit of the Roman people; and, though at 
 length subjected to metrical rules derived from Greece, retained 
 to the last an essentially Roman character. Lucilius was the 
 earliest satirist whose works were held in esteem under the 
 Caesars. But many years before Lucilius was born, Naevius 
 had been flung into a dungeon, and guarded there with circum- 
 stances of unusual rigor, on account of the bitter lines in which 
 he had attacked the great Caecilian family. The genius and 
 spirit of the Roman satirist survived the liberty of their country, 
 and were not extinguished by the cruel despotism of the Julian 
 and Flavian Emperors. The great poet who told the story of 
 Domitian's turbot was the legitimate successor of those for- 
 gotten minstrels whose songs animated the factions of the in- 
 fant Republic. 
 
 These minstrels, as Niebuhr has remarked, appear to have 
 generally taken the popular side. We can hardly be mistaken 
 in supposing that, at the great crisis of the civil conflict, they 
 employed themselves in versifying all the most powerful and 
 virulent speeches of the Tribunes, and in heaping abuse on the 
 leaders of the aristocracy. Every personal defect, every do- 
 mestic scandal, every tradition dishonorable to a noble house, 
 would be sought out, brought into notice, and exaggerated. 
 The illustrious head of the aristocratical party, Marcus Furius 
 Camillus, might perhaps be, in some measure, protected by his 
 venerable age and by the memory of his great services to the 
 State. But Appius Claudius Crassus enj oyed no such immunity. 
 He was descended from a long line of ancestors distinguished by 
 their haughty demeanor, and by the inflexibility with which they 
 had withstood all the demands of the Plebeian order. While 
 the political conduct and the deportment of the Claudian nobles 
 
104 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 drew upon them the fiercest public hatred, they were accused 
 of wanting, if any credit is due to the early history of Rome, a 
 class of qualities which, in the military commonwealth, is suffi- 
 cient to cover a multitude of offences. The chiefs of the family 
 appear to have been eloquent, versed in civil business, and 
 learned after the fashion of their age; but in war they were 
 not distinguished by skill or valor. Some of them, as if con- 
 scious where their weakness lay, had, when filling the highest 
 magistracies, taken internal administration as their department 
 of public business, and left the military command to their col- 
 leagues. 1 One of them had been intrusted with an army, and 
 had failed ignominiously. 2 None of them had been honored 
 with a triumph. None of them had achieved any martial ex- 
 ploit, such as those by which Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, 
 Titus Quinctius Capitolinus, Aulus Cornelius Cossus, and, above 
 all, the great Camillus, had extorted the reluctant esteem of 
 the multitude. During the Licinian conflict, Appius Claudius 
 Crassus signalized himself by the ability and severity with which 
 he harangued against the two great agitators. He would nat- 
 urally, therefore, be the favorite mark of the Plebeian satirists; 
 nor would they have been at a loss to find a point on which he 
 was open to attack. 
 
 His grandfather, called, like himself, Appius Claudius, had 
 left a name as much detested as that of Sextus Tarquinius. 
 This elder Appius had been Consul more than seventy years 
 before the introduction of the Licinian laws. By availing him- 
 self of a singular crisis in public feeling, he had obtained the 
 consent of the Commons to the abolition of the Tribuneship, 
 and had been the chief of that Council of Ten to which the 
 whole direction of the State had been committed. In a few 
 months his administration had become universally odious. It 
 had been swept away by an irresistible outbreak of popular fury; 
 and its memory was still held in abhorrence by the whole city. 
 The immediate cause of the downfall of this execrable govern- 
 ment was said to have been an attempt made by Appius Clau- 
 dius upon the chastity of a beautiful young girl of humble birth. 
 The story ran that the Decemvir, unable to succeed by bribes 
 and solicitations, resorted to an outrageous act of tyranny. A 
 vile dependent of the Claudian house laid claim to the damsel 
 as his slave. The cause was brought before the tribunal of 
 
 1 In the years of the city 260, 304, and 330. 
 
 2 In the year of the city 280 
 
NOTES 105 
 
 Appius. The wicked magistrate, in defiance of the clearest 
 proofs, gave judgment for the claimant. But the girl's father, 
 a brave soldier, saved her from servitude and dishonor by 
 stabbing her to the heart in the sight of the whole Forum. That 
 blow was the signal for a general explosion. Camp and city 
 rose at once; the Ten were pulled down; the Tribuneship was 
 re-established; and Appius escaped the hands of the execu- 
 tioner only by a voluntary death. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that a story so admirably adapted 
 to the purposes both of the poet and of the demagogue would 
 be eagerly seized upon by minstrels burning with hatred against 
 the Patrician order, against the Claudian house, and especially 
 against the grandson and namesake of the infamous Decemvir. 
 
 In order that the reader may judge fairly of these fragments 
 of the lay of Virginia, he must imagine himself a Plebeian who 
 has just voted for the re-election of Sextius and Licinius. All 
 the power of the Patricians has been exerted to throw out the 
 two great champions of the Commons. Every Posthumius, 
 iEmilius, and Cornelius has used his influence to the utmost. 
 Debtors have been let out of the workhouses on condition of 
 voting against the men of the people : clients have been posted 
 to hiss and interrupt the favorite candidates: Appius Claudius 
 Crassus has spoken with more than his usual eloquence and 
 asperity: all has been in vain; Licinius and Sextius have a fifth 
 time carried all the tribes: work is suspended: the booths are 
 closed : the Plebeians bear on their shoulders the two champions 
 of liberty through the Forum. Just at this moment it is an- 
 nounced that a popular poet, a zealous adherent of the Trib- 
 unes, has made a new song which will cut the Claudian nobles 
 to the heart. The crowd gathers round him, and calls on him 
 to recite it. He takes his stand on the spot where, according 
 to tradition, Virginia, more than seventy years ago, was seized 
 by the pandar of Appius, and he begins his story. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 This Lay deals with the wicked deed of Appius Claudius 
 Crassus. The events with which it deals led to the re-establish- 
 ment of the Tribuneship, and after the repeated election of Sex- 
 tius and Licinius as Tribunes, or representatives of the common 
 people, the popular cause triumphed in the passing of the Li- 
 cinian laws, which secured the rights of the common people. 
 
106 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 The long line in which Virginia is written may be reduced to 
 the line of the other Lays by the simple process of dividing each 
 one in the middle. 
 
 Title — Fragments. The lay purports to be only fragments. 
 The breaks in the text and the apparent incompleteness at the 
 end are indications by Macaulay that this is but a series of frag- 
 ments. 
 
 —Year of the City CCCLXXXH. B. C. 371. 
 
 Lines 4-6. — Grecian fable, etc. This probably refers to a 
 story of Dionysus, told in the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus, 
 maids with snaky tresses. The Furies, sailors turned to swine. 
 Circe in Homer's Odyssey, turned her victims to swine. 
 
 10. — wicked Ten. The Council of Ten, which was established 
 after the abolition of the Tribuneship, by Appius Claudius, 
 grandfather of the Appius Claudius of the Lay. 
 
 14. — Twelve axes. That is, twelve lictors bearing rods and 
 axes as a sign of their authority. 
 
 20. — Marcus. See Macaulay's Preface to the poem, where he 
 is called "a vile dependent of the Claudian house." 
 
 24. — Licinius. See Macaulay's Preface to the poem. Li- 
 cinius and Sextius were Tribunes who maintained the rights of 
 the common people. 
 
 35. — Sacred Street. The famous Via Sacra, in Rome. 
 
 36. — She warbled gaily, etc. Macaulay represents Virginia as 
 singing " the good old song" of the rape of Lucrece, or Lucretia. 
 
 46. — Seven Hills. Rome was built on seven hills. 
 
 53. — tablets. The waxen writing-tablets used by the school 
 children of Rome. 
 
 63-66. — Crispus, Hanno, Muraena, Volero. Macaulay gives 
 names to the leading figures in the crowd, for the sake of vivid- 
 ness. Flesher, butcher, a term still used in Scotland. 
 
 64. — Punic. Carthaginian, or from Carthage. 
 
 83. — Sextius. See note to line 24 and Macaulay's Preface to 
 the poem. 
 
 87. — Icilius. The young man to whom Virginia was betrothed. 
 
 95. — Servius. Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome, a tra- 
 ditional reformer of the constitution. 
 
 97. — false sons. The two sons of Brutus who headed a con- 
 spiracy and were beheaded by order of their father. 
 
 98. — Scaevola. Mucius Scaevola went to the Etruscan camp 
 to kill Lars Porsena. He was discovered and held his right 
 
NOTES 107 
 
 hand in the fire to show that he was not dismayed. Hence he 
 was called Scaevola or "Left-handed." 
 
 104. — Marcian fury. This refers to the banishment of Corio- 
 lanus, who joined the Volscians to humble the city. 
 
 — Fabian pride. The soldiers of Caeso Fabius refused to obey 
 his orders and thereby deprived him of a victory. 
 
 105. — Quinctius. He was banished from Rome by the com- 
 mon people. 
 
 106. — Claudius . . . fasces. Claudius was mobbed in the 
 streets of Rome. The fasces are the rods and axes of the lictors. 
 
 115. — fillets. Bands worn on the hair by the priests. 
 
 — purple gown. The purple gown was worn by the consul and 
 knights on public occasions. 
 
 116. — curule chair. The chair of state. 
 
 132. — cars. The chariots, in which noble Romans rode in 
 triumphs. 
 
 133. — Corinthian mirrors. Corinth was noted for its luxuries. 
 A mirror was a luxury to an early Roman. 
 
 134. — Capuan odors . . . Spanish gold. The city of Capua 
 was celebrated for its luxurious mode of life. The mines of 
 Spain were famous for their precious metals. 
 
 150. — whittle. A large butcher's knife, or cleaver. 
 
 228. — Pincian Hill . . . Latin Gate. The North and South- 
 east gates, respectively. 
 
 249. — Caius of Corioli. Better known as Coriolanus. 
 
 251. — Furius. His full name was Marcus Furius of Tuscu- 
 lum. He freed Rome from the invasions of the Gauls. 
 
 257-8. — Cossus . . . Fabius. The names of families famous 
 for their bravery. 
 
 277. — Calabrian. Calabria is a region in the southern end 
 of Italy. 
 
 278. — Thunder-Cape. Acroceraunia, a rocky promontory on 
 the coast of Greece opposite the Italian city of Brundusium, or 
 Brindisi. 
 
 THE PROPHECY OF CAPYS 
 
 macaulay's preface 
 
 It can hardly be necessary to remind any reader that, accord- 
 ing to the popular tradition, Romulus, after he had slain his 
 grand-uncle Amulius, and restored his grandfather Numitor, 
 determined to quit Alba, the hereditary domain of the Sylvian 
 
108 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 princes, and to found a new city. The Gods, it was added, 
 vouchsafed the clearest signs of the favor with which they re- 
 garded the enterprise, and of the high destinies reserved for the 
 young colony. 
 
 This event was likely to be a favorite theme of the old Latin 
 minstrels. They would naturally attribute the project of Rom- 
 ulus to some divine intimation of the power and prosperity 
 which it was decreed that his city should attain. They would 
 probably introduce seers foretelling the victories of unborn Con- 
 suls and Dictators, and the last great victory would generally 
 occupy the most conspicuous place in the prediction. There is 
 nothing strange in the supposition that the poet who was em- 
 ployed to celebrate the first great triumph of the Romans over 
 the Greeks might throw his song of exultation into this form. 
 
 The occasion was one likely to excite the strongest feelings 
 of national pride. A great outrage had been followed by a great 
 retribution. Seven years before this time, Lucius Posthumius 
 Megellus, who sprang from one of the noblest houses of Rome, 
 and had been thrice Consul, was sent ambassador to Tarentum, 
 with charge to demand reparation for grievous injuries. The 
 Tarentines gave him audience in their theatre, where he ad- 
 dressed them in such Greek as he could command, which, we 
 may well believe, was not exactly such as Cineas would have 
 spoken. An exquisite sense of the ridiculous belonged to the 
 Greek character: and closely connected with this faculty was a 
 strong propensity to flippancy and impertinence. When Post- 
 humius placed an accent wrong, his hearers burst into a laugh. 
 When he remonstrated, they hooted him, and called him bar- 
 barian; and at length hissed him off the stage as if he had been 
 a bad actor. As the grave Roman retired, a buffoon, who, from 
 his constant drunkenness, was nicknamed the Pint pot, came 
 up with gestures of the grossest indecency, and bespattered the 
 senatorial gown with filth. Posthumius turned round to the 
 multitude, and held up the gown, as if appealing to the univer- 
 sal law of nations. The sight only increased the insolence of 
 the Tarentines. They clapped their hands, and set up a shout 
 of laughter which shook the theatre. "Men of Tarentum," 
 said Posthumius, "it will take not a little blood to wash this 
 gown." 
 
 Rome, in consequence of this insult, declared war against the 
 Tarentines. The Tarentines sought for allies beyond the Ionian 
 Sea. Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, came to their help with a large 
 
NOTES 109 
 
 army; and, for the first time, the two great nations of antiquity 
 were fairly matched against each other. 
 
 The fame of Greece in arms, as well as in arts, was then at 
 the height. Half a century earlier, the career of Alexander had 
 excited the admiration and terror of all nations from the Ganges 
 to the Pillars of Hercules. Royal houses, founded by Mace- 
 donian captains, still reigned at Antioch and Alexandria. That 
 barbarian warriors, led by barbarian chiefs, should win a pitched 
 battle against Greek valor guided by Greek science, seemed as 
 incredible as it would now seem that the Burmese or the Siam- 
 ese should, in the open plain, put to flight an equal number of 
 the best English troops. The Tarentines were convinced that 
 their countrymen were irresistible in war; and this conviction 
 had emboldened them to treat with the grossest indignity one 
 whom they regarded as the representative of an inferior race. 
 Of the Greek generals then living, Pyrrhus was indisputably 
 the first. Among the troops who were trained in the Greek 
 discipline, his Epirotes ranked high. His expedition to Italy 
 was a turning-point in the history of the world. He found there 
 a people who, far inferior to the Athenians and Corinthians in 
 the fine arts, in the speculative sciences, and in all the refine- 
 ments of life, were the best soldiers on the face of the earth. 
 Their arms, their gradations of rank, their order of battle, their 
 method of intrenchment, were all of Latian origin, and had all 
 been gradually brought near to perfection, not by the study of 
 foreign models, but by the genius and experience of many gen- 
 erations of great native commanders. The first words which 
 broke from the king, when his practised eye had surveyed the 
 Roman encampment, were full of meaning: — "These bar- 
 barians," he said, "have nothing barbarous in their military 
 arrangements." He was at first victorious; for his own talents 
 were superior to those of the captains who were opposed to 
 him; and the Romans were not prepared for the onset of the 
 elephants of the East, which were then for the first time seen in 
 Italy — moving mountains, with long snakes for hands. 1 But 
 the victories of the Epirotes were fiercely disputed, dearly pur- 
 chased, and altogether unprofitable. At length, Manius Curius 
 Dentatus, who had in his first Consulship won two triumphs, 
 was again placed at the head of the Roman Commonwealth, 
 and sent to encounter the invaders. A great battle was fought 
 near Beneventum. Pyrrhus was completely defeated. He 
 
 1 Anguimanus is the old Latin epithet for an elephant. Lucretius, ii. 
 538, v. 1302. 
 
110 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 repassed the sea; and the world learned, with amazement, that 
 a people had been discovered, who, in fair fighting, were superior 
 to the best troops that had been drilled on the system of Par- 
 menio and Antigonus. 
 
 The conquerors had a good right to exult in their success; 
 for their glory was all their own. They had not learned from 
 their enemy how to conquer him. It was with their own nation- 
 al arms, and in their own national battle-array, that they had 
 overcome weapons and tactics long believed to be invincible. 
 The pilum and the broadsword had vanquished the Macedonian 
 spear. The legion had broken the Macedonian phalanx. Even 
 the elephants, when the surprise produced by their first appear- 
 ance was over, could cause no disorder in the steady yet flexible 
 battalions of Rome. 
 
 It is said by Florus, and may easily be believed, that the 
 triumph far surpassed in magnificence any that Rome had pre- 
 viously seen. The only spoils which Papirius Cursor and Fabius 
 Maximus could exhibit were flocks and herds, wagons of rude 
 structure, and heaps of spears and helmets. But now, for the 
 first time, the riches of Asia and the arts of Greece adorned a 
 Roman pageant. Plate, fine stuffs, costly furniture, rare ani- 
 mals, exquisite paintings and sculptures, formed part of the 
 procession. At the banquet would be assembled a crowd of 
 warriors and statesmen, among whom Manius Curius Dentatus 
 would take the highest room. Caius Fabricius Luscinus, then, 
 after two Consulships and two triumphs, Censor of the Common- 
 wealth, would doubtless occupy a place of honor at the board. 
 In situations less conspicuous probably lay some of those who 
 were, a few years later, the terror of Carthage; Caius Duilius, 
 the founder of the maritime greatness of his country; Marcus 
 Atilius Regulus, who owed to defeat a renown far higher than 
 that which he had derived from his victories; and Caius Lu- 
 tatius Catulus, who, while suffering from a grievous wound, 
 fought the great battle of the Agates, and brought the first 
 Punic war to a triumphant close. It is impossible to recount 
 the names of these eminent citizens, without reflecting that 
 they were all, without exception, Plebeians, and would, but 
 for the ever-memorable struggle maintained by Caius Licinius 
 and Lucius Sextius, have been doomed to hide in obscurity, or 
 to waste in civil broils, the capacity and energy which prevailed 
 against Pyrrhus and Hamilcar. 
 
 On such a day we may suppose that the patriotic enthusiasm 
 of a Latin poet would vent itself in reiterated shouts of lo tri- 
 
NOTES 111 
 
 umphe, such as were uttered by Horace on a far less exciting 
 occasion, and in boasts resembling those which Virgil put into 
 the mouth of Anchises. The superiority of some foreign nations, 
 and especially of the Greeks, in the lazy arts of peace, would 
 be admitted with disdainful candor; but pre-eminence in all 
 the qualities which fit a people to subdue and govern mankind 
 would be claimed for the Romans. 
 
 The following lay belongs to the latest age of Latin ballad- 
 poetry. Naevius and Livius Andronicus were probably among 
 the children whose mothers held them up to see the chariot of 
 Curius go by. The minstrel who sang on that day might pos- 
 sibly have lived to read the first hexameters of Ennius, and to 
 see the first comedies of Plautus. His poem, as might be ex- 
 pected, shows a much wider acquaintance with the geography, 
 manners, and productions of remote nations, than would have 
 been found in compositions of the age of Camillus. But he 
 troubles himself little about dates, and having heard travellers 
 talk with admiration of the Colossus of Rhodes, and of the struc- 
 tures and gardens with which the Macedonian kings of Syria 
 had embellished their residence on the banks of the Orontes, 
 he has never thought of inquiring whether these things existed 
 in the age of Romulus. 
 
 NOTES 
 
 As Macaulay explains in his Preface, the poem is a vision of 
 the future glory of Rome which is put into the mouth of the 
 blind seer and poet Capys, and is delivered to encourage Romu- 
 lus just as he is leaving Alba Longa to found the city of Rome. 
 It is a series of pictures in which the long and glorious history 
 of the City is presented. Macaulay may have derived the main 
 idea of the poem from the sixth book of VergiPs Aeneid, lines 
 756, following, in which Vergil tells how Anchises leads his son 
 Aeneas and the Sibyl likewise amid the assembled murmurous 
 throng of the underworld, and mounts a hillock whence he 
 might scan all the long ranks and learn their countenances as 
 they come. Then comes a long list of names famous in the 
 history of Rome. 
 
 Title. — For an explanation of the supposed occasion of the 
 Lay, see Macaulay's Preface to the poem, expecially pp. 107, 
 109, 111. 
 
112 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 —The Year of the City CCCCLXXIX. B. C. 274. 
 
 Lines 1-2. — Amulius . . . Sylvian. Amulius was the great- 
 uncle of Romulus and Remus. He usurped the kingdom of 
 their grandfather Numitor, and was slain by them. 
 
 3-4. — Alba Longa . . . Aventine. Aventinus was an early 
 king of the city of Alba Longa, or the mother-city of Rome. 
 Hence it is said that the Roman throne is the throne of Aventine. 
 
 5-6. — Camers. . . . words of doom. The pontiff who de- 
 clared that the children of Rhea Sylvia, Romulus and Remus, 
 were to be thrown into the Tiber and that she should be buried 
 alive. According to Vergil she was cast into the river and was 
 saved by the river god. 
 
 9. — Alba's lake. A famous lake on the Alban mount, now 
 called Lago di Albano. 
 
 86. — Rhea's boys. Romulus and Remus. 
 
 110. — Tartessian mine. Of or from Tartessus, a town of 
 Spain, noted for its mines. 
 
 116. — Sidon. A celebrated city of Phoenicia, the mother- 
 city of Tyre. It was famous for its purple. See note to line 
 171. 
 
 123. — War-god's loins. Romulus and Remus were the sons 
 of Mars. 
 
 130. — Vesta's sacred fire. Vesta was the goddess of flocks and 
 herds and of the household in general. The fire sacred to her 
 was kept burning by the Vestal virgins, of whom Rhea was one. 
 
 149. — Pomona. The goddess of fruit and fruit-trees. 
 
 150. — Liber. A Roman deity, who presided over planting 
 and the vine. His common name is Bacchus. 
 
 151. — Pales. The deity of shepherds and cattle. 
 
 153. — Venus. The goddess of love. 
 
 169. — Campanian. The Campania was a fertile district to 
 the south of Rome, and because of its richness was supposed to 
 lead to luxurious habits of life. 
 
 171. — Tyre. A celebrated city of Phoenicia, famous for its 
 purple. 
 
 173. — Carthage. The famous African rival city of Rome. 
 It was celebrated for its commerce and shipping. 
 
 175. — Nymphs. Demi-goddesses, who inhabit the sea, woods, 
 mountains, fields, and fountains. 
 
 177-184. — pilum, etc. The pilum is the heavy Roman jave- 
 lin. The other details of this stanza are the special glories of 
 Rome in the arts of war. 
 
NOTES 113 
 
 185. Volscian. The most important tribe in Latium, con- 
 quered by Rome. With this line begins the long list of Roman 
 victories and triumphs. 
 
 187. Capua. The chief city of Campania in Southern Italy, 
 
 celebrated for its wealth and luxurious life. It was conquered 
 
 by Rome. 
 
 189. Lucumoes. This refers to the conquest of the Etrus- 
 cans by Rome. Lucumo is an Etruscan word for chief, or 
 
 leader. 
 
 191 # Samnite. Samnium was an ancient country near 
 
 Latium, inhabited by a race famous for its hardiness and 
 
 193. Gaul. The Romans conquered the Gauls, under the 
 
 leadership of Marcus Furius. See note to line 251 of Virginia. 
 
 197-205.— Greek . . . Epirotes. Pyrrhus came with his 
 army from Epirius in Greece. He used elephants in this war 
 (11. 199-204). 
 
 207.— Tarentum. A city of Sicily. False, because though 
 it was an Italian city it furnished aid to the Greek invaders. 
 See pp. 108, 109. 
 
 230. Red King. Pyrrhus. The Greek form of the name 
 
 means " Red-headed." 
 
 232.— Is not the gown washed white? See Macaulay s Pref- 
 ace to this poem, p. 108. 
 
 249 —Manius Curius. See Macaulay's Preface to this poem, 
 
 pp. 109, 110. 
 
 257 .—Rosea. A fertile district in Italy, noted for its agri- 
 culture. 
 
 259—Mevania. A city in Umbria. Its modern name is 
 
 Bevagna. 
 
 266.— Suppliant's Grove. The grove attached to the lemple 
 of Jove on the Capitoline Hill. It was in the hollow between 
 the two summits of the Hill. < 
 
 268.— Capitolian Jove. The great statue of Jove in the Tem- 
 ple of Jove. . 
 
 270.— Corinth. The city is situated on the isthmus of Corinth 
 and overlooks the bays of Corinth and Salamis. 
 
 271-2. King of Day . . . Rhodes. The gigantic statue at 
 
 Rhodes, dedicated to the sun. It was one of the seven wonders 
 of the world. . . 
 
 273_ orontes. Antioch, the famous ancient city of Syria, 
 was situated on the river Orontes, a famous river of Syria. 
 
114 LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME 
 
 280.— Byrsa. The citadel of Carthage. It is identified with 
 the Biblical Bozra. 
 
 283.— morning-land. The East. 
 
 285. — Atlas. The mountains of North-western Africa. The 
 mountains are named after the giant Atlas, who is said to have 
 stood near the straits of Gibraltar when he supported the world. 
 
INDEX TO PREFACES AND NOTES 
 
 Adria, 96, 99 
 
 Adrian main, 96, 99 
 
 ager publicus, 89 
 
 Alba's lake, 112 
 
 Alba Longa, 112 
 
 Albinia, 89 
 
 Algidus, 90 
 
 Alvernus, 90 
 
 Amulius, 112 
 
 Anio, 97 
 
 Anxur, 99 
 
 Apennine, 96 
 
 Appius Claudius Crassus, 103-105 
 
 Apulian, 98 
 
 Ardea, 98 
 
 Aricia, 97 
 
 Arpinum, 99 
 
 Arretium, 87 
 
 Astur, 88, 89 
 
 Asylum, 99 
 
 Atlas, 113 
 
 Aufidus, 98 
 
 Aulus, 96 
 
 Aunus, 89 
 
 Auser, 87 
 
 Aventine, 112 
 
 axes, 96, 97, 106 
 
 Bandusia, 98 
 Byrsa, 113 
 
 Caius of Corioli, 107 
 Calabrian, 98, 107 
 Camerium, 97 
 Camers, 112 
 Campania, 89 
 Campanian, 112 
 Capitolian Jove, 113 
 Capua, 113 
 Capuan odors, 107 
 Capys, 111 
 cars, 107 
 Carthage, 97, 112 
 Castor, 96 
 
 Cilnus of Arretrium, 88 
 Ciminian hill, 87 
 Circeii, 97 
 Cirrha, 96 
 Clanis, 87 
 Clitumnus, 87 
 
 Comitium, 90 
 
 Conscript Fathers, 88, 97 
 
 Consul, 88 
 
 Cora, 97, 98 
 
 Corinth, 113 
 
 Corinthian mirrors, 107 
 
 Corne, 96 
 
 corn-land, 89 
 
 Cortona, 87 
 
 Cosa, 89 
 
 Cossus, 98, 107 
 
 Crest of Flame, 98 
 
 Crustumerium, 88 
 
 curule chair, 107 
 
 Cyrene, 98 
 
 December's Nones, 96 
 Digentian, 98 
 Dorians, 99 
 
 earth-shaking beast, 113 
 Eastern Gate, 99 
 Epirotes, 113 
 Etruscan writing, 88 
 Eurotas, 98 
 
 Fabian pride, 107 
 
 Fabius, 107 
 
 Fair Fount, 96 
 
 fair-haired slaves, 87 
 
 Falerii, 89 
 
 false Sextus, 86, 89, 91, 97, 106 
 
 false sons, l06 
 
 Fathers of the City, 88, 97 
 
 Ferentinum, 98 
 
 Fidenae, 98 
 
 fillets, 107 
 
 flesher, 106 
 
 Furius, 107 
 
 Gabii, 96, 98 
 Gaul, 87, 88, 113 
 gown washed white, 108 
 Grecian fable, 106 
 
 Herminius, 89 
 High Pontiff, 99 
 holy maidens, 89 
 Horatius Codes, 85, 86 
 
 115 
 
116 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Icilius, 106 
 
 Ides of Quintilis, 92, 96 
 
 Ilva, 89 
 
 Janiculum, 88 
 Juno, 90 
 
 King of Day, 113 
 Knights, 93-95 
 
 Lacedaemon, 96 
 Lake Regillus, 96 
 land of sunrise, 97 
 Lanuvium, 99 
 Lars, 87 
 Latin Gate, 107 
 Lauren tian, 97 
 Laurentum, 99 
 Lausulus, 89 
 Lavinian, 98 
 Lavinium, 97 
 Liber, 112 
 Licinius, 106 
 lictors, 96 
 Lucumo, 88, 113 
 Luna, 87 
 
 maids' with snaky tresses, 106 
 
 Mamilius, 86, 88 
 
 Manius Curius, 109, 110 
 
 Marcian fury, 107 
 
 Marcus, 106 
 
 Martian Kalends, 96 
 
 Massilia, 87 
 
 Mevania, 113 
 
 milk-white steer, 87 
 
 morning-land, 113 
 
 must, 87 
 
 Nar, 89 
 
 Nemus, Lake, 97 
 Nequinum, 89 
 Nine Gods, the, 87 
 Nomentum, 99 
 Norba, 97 
 Nurscia, 88 
 nymphs, 112 
 
 Ocnus, 89 
 Orgo, 89 
 Orontes, 113 
 Ostia, 88 
 
 Palatinus, 90 
 
 Pales, 112 
 
 Parthenius, 96 
 
 Patres Conscripti, 88, 97 
 
 Patricians, 99-105 
 
 Pedum, 98 
 
 Picus, 89 
 
 pilum, 112 
 
 Pincian Hill, 107 
 
 Pisse, 87 
 
 play the man, 98 
 Plebeians, 99-105 
 Po, 98, 99 
 Pomona, 112 
 Pomptine marshes, 97, 98 
 Pontifex Maximus, 99 
 Populonia, 87 
 Porcian, 96 
 Posthumian, 96 
 Punic, 106 
 purple gowns, 107 
 Pyrrhus, 108-110 
 
 Quinctius, 107 
 
 Red King, 113 
 Rhea's boys, 112 
 River-Gate, 88 
 Rosea, 113 
 
 Sacred Hill, 96 
 
 Sacred Street, 106 
 
 sailors turned to swine, 106 
 
 Samnite, 113 
 
 Samothracia, 98 
 
 Scaevola, 106, 107 
 
 Senators, 88, 119 
 
 Sergius, 99 
 
 Servius Tullius, 106 
 
 Setia, 97 
 
 Seven Hills, 106 
 
 Sextius, 106 
 
 she-wolf's litter, 89 
 
 Shields, Golden, 88, 99 
 
 Sidon, 112 
 
 Sire Quirinus, 99 
 
 Soracte, Mount, 98 
 
 Spanish gold, 107 
 
 Spurius Lartius, 89 
 
 stately dome, 99 
 
 still lake, 97 
 
 strait, 89 
 
 Suppliant's Grove, 113 
 
 Sutrium, 88 
 
 Sylvian, 112 
 
 Syracuse, 98 
 
 Syria's daughters, 97 
 
 tablets, 106 
 tale, 88 
 
 Tarentum, 98, 108, 113 
 Tarpeian rock, 88 
 Tartessian mine, 112 
 Thirty Cities, 96 
 Thunder-cape, 107 
 Tiber, yellow, 88 
 Tibur, 98 
 Tifernum, 89 
 Tolumnius, 89 
 Tribunes, 89, 100-105 
 triremes, 87 
 trysting day, 87 
 Tusculum, 88, 96 
 Tyre, 112 
 
INDEX H7 
 
 Ufens.97 Vo scian. 90 98, 113 
 
 Umbrian, 88 Vo sin an. 87 
 
 Umbro, 87 \oIsmum, 89 
 
 Velian, 98 ^I^Vo 0103 * ^ 
 
 Velitra, 97 w £ll the 99 
 
 v.nnq 112 whitest, 96 
 
 v^Wna «8 whittle, 107 
 
 Vesta 99* ™ cked Ten ' l06 „-, 
 
 Vesta's sacred fire, 112 Witch's Fortress, 97 
 
 ^SffiSJS.W Yellow River, 96 
 

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