Lays of Ancient Rome

T >> Thomas Babbington Macaulay >> Lays of Ancient Rome

LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME

By Thomas Babbington Macaulay



Contents:

Preface

Horatius
The Lay

The Battle of the Lake Regillus
The Lay

Virginia
The Lay

The Prophecy of Capys
The Lay

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.