Lays of Ancient Rome

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


XLVII

On Astur's throat Horatius
Right firmly pressed his heel,
And thrice and four times tugged amain,
Ere he wrenched out the steel.
"And see," he cried, "the welcome,
Fair guests, that waits you here!
What noble Lucomo comes next
To taste our Roman cheer?"

XLVIII

But at his haughty challenge
A sullen murmur ran,
Mingled of wrath, and shame, and dread,
Along that glittering van.
There lacked not men of prowess,
Nor men of lordly race;
For all Etruria's noblest
Were round the fatal place.

XLIX

But all Etruria's noblest
Felt their hearts sink to see
On the earth the bloody corpses,
In the path the dauntless Three:
And, from the ghastly entrance
Where those bold Romans stood,
All shrank, like boys who unaware,
Ranging the woods to start a hare,
Come to the mouth of the dark lair
Where, growling low, a fierce old bear
Lies amidst bones and blood.

L

Was none who would be foremost
To lead such dire attack;
But those behind cried, "Forward!"
And those before cried, "Back!"
And backward now and forward
Wavers the deep array;
And on the tossing sea of steel
To and frow the standards reel;
And the victorious trumpet-peal
Dies fitfully away.

LI

Yet one man for one moment
Strode out before the crowd;
Well known was he to all the Three,
And they gave him greeting loud.
"Now welcome, welcome, Sextus!
Now welcome to thy home!
Why dost thou stay, and turn away?
Here lies the road to Rome."

LII

Thrice looked he at the city;
Thrice looked he at the dead;
And thrice came on in fury,
And thrice turned back in dread:
And, white with fear and hatred,
Scowled at the narrow way
Where, wallowing in a pool of blood,
The bravest Tuscans lay.

LIII

But meanwhile axe and lever
Have manfully been plied;
And now the bridge hangs tottering
Above the boiling tide.
"Come back, come back, Horatius!"
Loud cried the Fathers all.
"Back, Lartius! back, Herminius!
Back, ere the ruin fall!"

LIV

Back darted Spurius Lartius;
Herminius darted back:
And, as they passed, beneath their feet
They felt the timbers crack.
But when they turned their faces,
And on the farther shore
Saw brave Horatius stand alone,
They would have crossed once more.

LV

But with a crash like thunder
Fell every loosened beam,
And, like a dam, the mighty wreck
Lay right athwart the stream:
And a long shout of triumph
Rose from the walls of Rome,
As to the highest turret-tops
Was splashed the yellow foam.

LVI

And, like a horse unbroken
When first he feels the rein,
The furious river struggled hard,
And tossed his tawny mane,
And burst the curb and bounded,
Rejoicing to be free,
And whirling down, in fierce career,
Battlement, and plank, and pier,
Rushed headlong to the sea.

LVII

Alone stood brave Horatius,
But constant still in mind;
Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
And the broad flood behind.
"Down with him!" cried false Sextus,
With a smile on his pale face.
"Now yield thee," cried Lars Porsena,
"Now yield thee to our grace."

LVIII

Round turned he, as not deigning
Those craven ranks to see;
Nought spake he to Lars Porsena,
To Sextus nought spake he;
But he saw on Palatinus
The white porch of his home;
And he spake to the noble river
That rolls by the towers of Rome.

LVIX

"Oh, Tiber! Father Tiber!
To whom the Romans pray,
A Roman's life, a Roman's arms,
Take thou in charge this day!"
So he spake, and speaking sheathed
The good sword by his side,
And with his harness on his back,
Plunged headlong in the tide.

LX

No sound of joy or sorrow
Was heard from either bank;
But friends and foes in dumb surprise,
With parted lips and straining eyes,
Stood gazing where he sank;
And when above the surges,
They saw his crest appear,
All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry,
And even the ranks of Tuscany
Could scarce forbear to cheer.

LXI

But fiercely ran the current,
Swollen high by months of rain:
And fast his blood was flowing;
And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armor,
And spent with changing blows:
And oft they thought him sinking,
But still again he rose.

LXII

Never, I ween, did swimmer,
In such an evil case,
Struggle through such a raging flood
Safe to the landing place:
But his limbs were borne up bravely
By the brave heart within,
And our good father Tiber
Bare bravely up his chin.

LXIII

"Curse on him!" quoth false Sextus;
"Will not the villain drown?
But for this stay, ere close of day
We should have sacked the town!"
"Heaven help him!" quoth Lars Porsena
"And bring him safe to shore;
For such a gallant feat of arms
Was never seen before."

LXIV

And now he feels the bottom;
Now on dry earth he stands;
Now round him throng the Fathers;
To press his gory hands;
And now, with shouts and clapping,
And noise of weeping loud,
He enters through the River-Gate
Borne by the joyous crowd.

LXV

They gave him of the corn-land,
That was of public right,
As much as two strong oxen
Could plough from morn till night;
And they made a molten image,
And set it up on high,
And there is stands unto this day
To witness if I lie.

LXVI

It stands in the Comitium
Plain for all folk to see;
Horatius in his harness,
Halting upon one knee:
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,
How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

LXVII

And still his name sounds stirring
Unto the men of Rome,
As the trumpet-blast that cries to them
To charge the Volscian home;
And wives still pray to Juno
For boys with hearts as bold
As his who kept the bridge so well
In the brave days of old.

LXVIII

And in the nights of winter,
When the cold north winds blow,
And the long howling of the wolves
Is heard amidst the snow;
When round the lonely cottage
Roars loud the tempest's din,
And the good logs of Algidus
Roar louder yet within;

LXIX

When the oldest cask is opened,
And the largest lamp is lit;
When the chestnuts glow in the embers,
And the kid turns on the spit;
When young and old in circle
Around the firebrands close;
When the girls are weaving baskets,
And the lads are shaping bows;

LXX

When the goodman mends his armor,
And trims his helmet's plume;
When the goodwife's shuttle merrily
Goes flashing through the loom;
With weeping and with laughter
Still is the story told,
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.






The Battle of the Lake Regillus


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 Bacchiadae, 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:--

3 lines from the Iliad, in Greek, probably those
translated by Pope as:

...to the van, before the sons of fame
Whom Troy sent forth, the beauteous Paris came:

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:--

3 more lines in Greek, Pope's translation being:

...[Menelaus] approaching near,
The beauteous champion views with marks of fear,
Smit with a conscious sense, retires behind,
And shuns the fate he well deserv'd to find.

"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.






The Battle of the Lake Regillus


A Lay Sung at the Feast of Castor and Pollux on the Ides of
Quintilis in the year of the City CCCCLI.

I

Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note!
Ho, lictors, clear the way!
The Knights will ride, in all their pride,
Along the streets to-day.
To-day the doors and windows
Are hung with garlands all,
From Castor in the Forum,
To Mars without the wall.
Each Knight is robed in purple,
With olive each is crowned;
A gallant war-horse under each
Paws haughtily the ground.
While flows the Yellow River,
While stands the Sacred Hill,
The proud Ides of Quintilis
Shall have such honor still.
Gay are the Martian Kalends,
December's Nones are gay,
But the proud Ides, when the squadron rides,
Shall be Rome's whitest day.

II

Unto the Great Twin Brethren
We keep this solemn feast.
Swift, swift, the Great Twin Brethren
Came spurring from the east.
They came o'er wild Parthenius
Tossing in waves of pine,
O'er Cirrha's dome, o'er Adria's foam,
O'er purple Apennine,
From where with flutes and dances
Their ancient mansion rings,
In lordly Lacedaemon,
The City of two kings,
To where, by Lake Regillus,
Under the Porcian height,
All in the lands of Tusculum,
Was fought the glorious fight.

III

Now on the place of slaughter
Are cots and sheepfolds seen,
And rows of vines, and fields of wheat,
And apple-orchards green;
The swine crush the big acorns
That fall from Corne's oaks.
Upon the turf by the Fair Fount
The reaper's pottage smokes.
The fisher baits his angle;
The hunter twangs his bow;
Little they think on those strong limbs
That moulder deep below.
Little they think how sternly
That day the trumpets pealed;
How in the slippery swamp of blood
Warrior and war-horse reeled;
How wolves came with fierce gallops,
And crows on eager wings,
To tear the flesh of captains,
And peck the eyes of kings;
How thick the dead lay scattered
Under the Porcian height;
How through the gates of Tusculum
Raved the wild stream of flight;
And how the Lake Regillus
Bubbled with crimson foam,
What time the Thirty Cities
Came forth to war with Rome.

IV

But Roman, when thou standest
Upon that holy ground,
Look thou with heed on the dark rock
That girds the dark lake round.
So shalt thou see a hoof-mark
Stamped deep into the flint:
It was not hoof of mortal steed
That made so strange a dint:
There to the Great Twin Brethren
Vow thou thy vows, and pray
That they, in tempest and in flight,
Will keep thy head alway.