LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME

By Thomas Babington Macaulay

Contents

That what is called the history of the Kings and early Consuls 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 ordinarily 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
compiled 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 Porsena and
the issue of the war with Brennus, were grossly misrepresented. 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 sons of Mars, and the husband of Egeria, as mere
mythological personages, of the same class with Perseus and Ixion. As he
draws 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 creations 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 simulated madness of Brutus, the ambiguous
reply of the Delphian oracle to the Tarquins, the wrongs of Lucretia, the
heroic actions of Horatius Cocles, of Scaevola, and of Cloelia, the battle
of Regillus won by the aid of Castor and Pollux, the defense of Cremera,
the touching story of Coriolanus, the still more touching story of
Virginia, the wild legend about the draining of the Alban lake, the combat
between Valerius Corvus and the gigantic Gaul, are among the many
instances which will at once suggest 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 the most superficial modern works
on the early times of Rome. It enlivens the dulness of the Universal
History, and gives a charm to the most meagre abridgements of Goldsmith.

Even in the age of Plutarch there were discerning men who rejected the
popular account of the foundation of Rome, because that account appeared
to them to have the air, not of a history, but of a romance or a drama.
Plutarch, who was displeased 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 ages
ago, the first critic who distinctly 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 Malde, 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 internal and external, that it
will not be easily subverted. A popular 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 philosophy was
borrowed, 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 literature 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 civilized, 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 information, 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 towards 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 Marcellinus that the
brave actions of the ancient Gauls were commemorated in the verses of
Bards. During many ages, and through many revolution, 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 exploits 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 doubtful 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 ballads composed by himself, are known in every village of
northern 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 Damel, 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 composition, by
transcendent sublimity 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 versification, 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 Gongora. The ancient lays, unjustly
despised by the learned and polite, linger for a time in the memory of the
vulgar, and are at 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 printing, 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 mischievous dog, might in a moment have
deprived the world forever 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
authority.

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 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 Pactor, 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 he 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, without 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 Fabricus.

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, sometimes with and sometimes
without instrumental music, ancient ballads in praise of men of former
times. These young performers, he observes, were of unblemished character,
a circumstance 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 poet predicts that,
under the peaceful administration of Augustus, 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 understand why the
early history of the city is unlike almost everything 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 magnificent, 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; 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
consummated. The conquered, says Horace, led captive the conquerors. It
was precisely at the time at which the Roman people rose to unrivalled
political ascendency 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 borrowed from the Iliad. The elder poet, in
the epitaph which he wrote for himself, and which is a fine specimen of
the early Roman diction and versification, plaintively boasted that the
Latin language had died with him. Thus what to Horace appeared to be the
first faint dawn of Roman literature appeared to Naevius 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, continued, it may be supposed, during some generations to delight
the vulgar. While Virgil, in hexameters of exquisite modulation, described
the sports of rustics, those rustics were still singing 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 Appenines, as active as the search which Sir Walter
Scott made among the descendents 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 acanthus 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 for 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 oration should be pronounced over the remains of a
noble Roman. The orator, as we learn from Polybius, was expected, on such
occasions, to recapitulate all the services which the ancestors of the
deceased had, from the earliest time, rendered to the commonwealth. 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 vestibule 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 adventurers
through the streets; but the voice of lamentation is drowned by the shouts
of admiring thousands. As the procession 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 highest 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 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, nothing could be more natural than that
the panegyrist should borrow 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 vinedressers. 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
forgotten poet from the dull and feeble narrative by which they were
surrounded, would retouch them with a delicate and powerful 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 supposes to have taken place in ancient times has,
beyond all doubt, taken place in modern times.

“History,” says Hume with the utmost gravity, “has preserved 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, ad which, indeed, greatly resemble, in their 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
Elfleda was substituted for her young mistress, 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 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 inventions of some
minstrel whose works were probably never committed 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 Curiatti, 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 the 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
Doña Elvira and Doña 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 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 in vain. They were
vanquished 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 examination 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 history 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 is
the fact. More than a century and a half after the death of Mariana, this
venerable ballad, of which one imperfect copy on parchment, four hundred
years old, had been preserved at Bivar, was for the first time printed.
Then it was found that every interesting circumstance of the story of the
heirs of Carrion was derived by the eloquent Jesuit from a song of which
he had never heard, and which was composed by a minstrel whose very name
had been long forgotten.

Such, or nearly such, appears to have been the process by which the lost
ballad-poetry of Rome was transformed into history. 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 person, but in
the persons of ancient minstrels who know only what Roman citizen, born
three or four hundred years before the Christian era, may be supposed to
have known, and who are in no wise above the passions and prejudices of
their age and nation. To these imaginary poets must be ascribed some
blunders which are so obvious that is unnecessary to point them out. The
real blunder would have been to represent 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 mourning 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 dramatic
propriety. The old Romans had some great virtues, fortitude, 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 borrowed, 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 judgment 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.

Horatius

There can be little doubt that among those parts of early Roman history
which had a poetical origin was the legend of Horatius Cocles. We have
several versions of the story, and these versions differ from each other
in points of no small importance. Polybius, there is reason to believe,
heard the tale recited over the remains of some Consul or Prætor descended
from the old Horatian patricians; for he introduces it as a specimen of
the narratives with which the Romans were in the habit of embellishing
their funeral oratory. It is remarkable that, according to him, Horatius
defended the bridge alone, and perished 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 probably that the memory of the war of Porsena was preserved by
compositions much resembling the two ballads which stand first in the
Relics of Ancient English Poetry. In both those ballads the English,
commanded by 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 shot through the heart by a Northumbrian bowman; in the
latter he is taken and exchanged for the Percy. Yet both the ballads
relate to the same event, and that event which probably took place within
the memory of persons who were alive when both the ballads were made. One
of the Minstrels says:—

The other poet sums up the event in the following lines:

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 multitude, 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 plebeian; 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 Camullus, after the taking of Veii, were regarded.

The penultimate syllable of the name Porsena has been shortened in spite
of the authority of Niebuhr, who pronounces, without assigning any ground
for his opinion, that Martial was guilty of a decided blunder in the line,

It is not easy to understand how any modern scholar, whatever his
attainments may be,—and those of Niebuhr were undoubtedly immense,—can
venture to pronounce that Martial did not know the quantity of a word
which he must have uttered, and heard uttered, a hundred times before he
left school. Niebuhr seems also to have forgotten that Martial has fellow
culprits to keep him in countenance. Horace has committed the same decided
blunder; for he give us, as a pure iambic line,—

Silius Italicus has repeatedly offended in the same way, as when he says,—”Clusinum
vulgus, cum, Porsena magne, jubebas.” A modern writer may be content to
err in such company.

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.

The Battle of the Lake Regillus

The following poem is supposed to have been produced about ninety years
after the lay of Horatius. Some persons mentioned 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 applied to
those men and things by every minstrel. Thus we find, both in the Homeric
poems and in Hesiod, [several examples of common phrases, in Greek]. 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.

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 superstition. The story of the Tarquins, as it
has come down to us, appears to have been compiled from the works of
several popular 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 Bacchiadæ,
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 exactly 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 Croesus to destruction.
Then the character of the narrative changes. From the first mention of
Lucretia to the retreat of Porsena nothing seems to be borrowed from
foreign sources. The villainy of Sextus, the suicide of his victim, the
revolution, the death of the sons of Brutus, the defence of the bridge,
Musius burning his hand, Cloelia swimming through Tiber, seem to be all
strictly Roman. But when we have done with the Tuscan wars, 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 possession of
the spoils and bodies of the slain; and several circumstances are related
which forcibly remind us of the great slaughter round the corpses of
Sarpedon and Patroclus.

But there is one circumstance which deserves especial notice. Both the war
of Troy and the war of Regillus were caused by the licentious passions of
young princes, who were therefore peculiarly bound not to be sparing of
their own persons on the day of battle. Now the conduct of Sextus at
Regillus, as described by Livy, so exactly resembles that of Paris, as
described at the beginning of the third book of the Iliad, that it is
difficult to believe the resemblance accidental. Paris appears before the
Trojan ranks, defying the bravest Greek to encounter him:—

Livy introduces Sextus in a similar manner: “Ferocem juvenem Tarquinium,
ostentantem se in prima exsulum acie.” Menelaus rushes to meet Paris. A
Roman noble, eager for vengeance, spurs his horse towards Sextus. Both the
guilty princes are instantly terror-stricken:—

“Tarquinius,” says Livy, “retro in agmen suorum infenso cessit hosti.” If
this be a fortuitous coincidence, it is also one of the most extraordinary
in literature.

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 decided 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 afterwards 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 originated; nor is it at all
necessary to suppose, with Julius Frontinus, 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, logicians, jurists, and statesmen, had the face to
assert that, in one engagement against the Indians, St. 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. One of them, honest
Bernal Diaz, wrote an account of the expedition. 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 St.
James. “Nevertheless,” Bernal adds, “it may be that the person on the gray
horse was the glorious apostle St. James, and that I, sinner that I am,
was unworthy to see him.” The Romans of the age of Cincinatus were
probably quite as credulous as the Spanish subjects of Charles the Fifth.
It is therefore conceivable that the appearance of Castor and Pollux may
be 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 celestial
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
absolutely 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 reasonable men.

One of their reforms was the remodelling of the equestrian order; and,
having effected this reform, they determined to give to their work a
sanction derived from religion. In the chivalrous societies of modern
times,—societies which have much more than may at first sight appear
in common with with the equestrian order of Rome,—it has been usual
to invoke the special protection of some Saint, and to observe his day
with peculiar solemnity. Thus the Companions of the Garter wear the image
of St. George depending from their collars, and meet, on great occasions,
in St. George’s Chapel. Thus, when Louis the 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 St. Louis, should attend the king to chapel, should hear mass, and
should subsequently hold their great annual assembly. There is a
considerable resemblance between this rule of the order of St. Louis 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 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 Pontiffs, 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 appearance of
the Twin Gods, and the institution of their festival. He would find
abundant materials in the ballads of his predecessors; and he would make
free use of the scanty stock of Greek learning which he had himself
acquired. He would probably introduce some wise and holy Pontiff enjoining
the magnificent 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 panegyric
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 afterwards 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 desirable 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.

Virginia

A collection consisting exclusively of war-songs would give an imperfect,
or rather an erroneous, notion of the spirit of the old Latin ballads. The
Patricians, during more than a century after the expulsion of the Kings,
held all the high military commands. 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, Herminius, Aulus Posthumius, Æbutius
Elva, Sempronius Atratinus, 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 commonality. The population of Rome
was, from a very early period, divided into hereditary castes, which,
indeed, readily united to repel foreign enemies, but which regarded 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 Council 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 separated the
rower of 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 moneyed 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 enormous usury. The law of
debt, framed by creditors, and for the protection of creditors, was the
host horrible that has ever been known among men. The liberty and even the
life of the 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 jail 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 usurers.

The Plebeians were, however, not wholly without constitutional 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 of 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 year 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
degree, acquired a power formidable even to the ablest and most resolute
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 Tribuneship, the
Commons struggled manfully for the removal of the grievances under which
they labored; and, in spite of 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 popular 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 firmness, by his colleague, Lucius Sextius. The struggle
appears to have been the fiercest that every 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 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 reëlected 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 government.
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, however, 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 remembered 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 Hernicans. When those
disabilities were removed, she rapidly became 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 factions, gave vent to
their petty local animosities in coarse Fescennine 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 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 imitators 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
culture, 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,” said Quinctilian, with just pride,
“is all our own.” Satire sprang, in truth, naturally from the constitution
of the Roman government 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, Nævius had been flung into a dungeon, and
guarded there with circumstances 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 satirists 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 forgotten minstrels whose
songs animated the factions of the infant Republic.

Those 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 domestic 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 enjoyed 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 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 a
military commonwealth, is sufficient 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 conscious 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 colleagues. One of them had been entrusted
with an army, and had failed ignominiously. None of them had been honored
with a triumph. None of them had achieved any martial exploit, 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
naturally, 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 Sextus Tarquinius. This elder Appius had been Consul
more than seventy years before the introduction of the Licinian laws. By
availing himself 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 new 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 government was
said to have been an attempt made by Appius Claudius 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 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
reëstablished; and Appius escaped the hands of the executioner 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
reëlection 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, Æmilius, 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 announced that a
great poet, a zealous adherent of the Tribunes, 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.

The Prophecy of Capys

It can hardly be necessary to remind any reader that according to the
popular tradition, Romulus, after he had slain his granduncle Amulius, and
restored his grandfather Numitor, determined to quit Alba, the hereditary
domain of the Sylvian princes, and to found a new city. The gods, it was
added, vouchsafed the clearest signs of the favor with which they regarded
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 Romulus 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 Consuls 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 employed 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
addressed 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 Posthumius placed an accent wrong, his hearers burst
into a laugh. When he remonstrated, they hooted him, and called him
barbarian; 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 universal 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. Phyrrhus, king of
Epirus, came to their help with a large 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 Macedonian 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 Siamese 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 refinements 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 Latin 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 generations 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
barbarians,” 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. But the victories of the Epirotes were fiercely
disputed, dearly purchased, 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 conquer
the invaders. A great battle was fought near Beneventum. Pyrrhus was
completely defeated. He 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
Parmenio 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 national 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 appearance 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 previously 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 animals, 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 Commonwealth,
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
Lutatius Catalus, who, while suffering from a grievous wound, fought the
great battle of the Æates, 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, 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 “Io triumphe,” 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
preëminence 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. Nævis
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 possibly have lived to read the first hexameters of Ennius, and
to see the first comedies of Plautus. His poem, as might be expected,
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 structures and gardens with which the Macedonian king 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.