Chapter 2

"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:--

"Old men that knowen the grounde well yenoughe Call it the battell of Otterburn: At Otterburn began this spurne Upon a monnyn day. Ther was the dougghte Doglas slean: The Perse never went away."

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

"Thys fraye bygan at Otterborne Bytwene the nyghte and the day: Ther the Doglas lost hys lyfe, And the Percy was lede away."

It is by no means unlikely that there were two old Roman lays about the defence of the bridge; and that, while the story which Livy has transmitted to us was preferred by the 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,

"Hanc spectare manum Porsena non potuit."

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,--

"Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenæ dextram;"

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.

Horatius

A Lay Made About the Year Of The City CCCLX

I

Lars Porsena of Closium By the Nine Gods he swore That the great house of Tarquin Should suffer wrong no more. By the Nine Gods he swore it, And named a trysting day, And bade his messengers ride forth, East and west and south and north, To summon his array.

II

East and west and south and north The messengers ride fast, And tower and town and cottage Have heard the trumpet's blast. Shame on the false Etruscan Who lingers in his home, When Porsena of Clusium Is on the march for Rome.

III

The horsemen and the footmen Are pouring in amain From many a stately market-place, From many a fruitful plain, From many a lonely hamlet, Which, hid by beech and pine, Like an eagle's nest, hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine;

IV

From lordly Volaterræ, Where scowls the far-famed hold Piled by the hands of giants For godlike kings of old; From seagirt Populonia, Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky;

V

From the proud mart of Pisæ, Queen of the western waves, Where ride Massilia's triremes Heavy with fair-haired slaves; From where sweet Clanis wanders Through corn and vines and flowers; From where Cortona lifts to heaven Her diadem of towers.

VI

Tall are the oaks whose acorns Drop in dark Auser's rill; Fat are the stags that champ the boughs Of the Ciminian hill; Beyond all streams Clitumnus Is to the herdsman dear; Best of all pools the fowler loves The great Volsinian mere.

VII

But now no stroke of woodman Is heard by Auser's rill; No hunter tracks the stag's green path Up the Ciminian hill; Unwatched along Clitumnus Grazes the milk-white steer; Unharmed the water fowl may dip In the Volsminian mere.

VIII

The harvests of Arretium, This year, old men shall reap; This year, young boys in Umbro Shall plunge the struggling sheep; And in the vats of Luna, This year, the must shall foam Round the white feet of laughing girls Whose sires have marched to Rome.

IX

There be thirty chosen prophets, The wisest of the land, Who alway by Lars Porsena Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Thirty Have turned the verses o'er, Traced from the right on linen white By mighty seers of yore.

X

And with one voice the Thirty Have their glad answer given: "Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena; Go forth, beloved of Heaven; Go, and return in glory To Clusium's royal dome; And hang round Nurscia's altars The golden shields of Rome."

XI

And now hath every city Sent up her tale of men; The foot are fourscore thousand, The horse are thousands ten. Before the gates of Sutrium Is met the great array. A proud man was Lars Porsena Upon the trysting day.

XII

For all the Etruscan armies Were ranged beneath his eye, And many a banished Roman, And many a stout ally; And with a mighty following To join the muster came The Tusculan Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name.

XIII

But by the yellow Tiber Was tumult and affright: From all the spacious champaign To Rome men took their flight. A mile around the city, The throng stopped up the ways; A fearful sight it was to see Through two long nights and days.

XIV

For aged folks on crutches, And women great with child, And mothers sobbing over babes That clung to them and smiled, And sick men borne in litters High on the necks of slaves, And troops of sun-burned husbandmen With reaping-hooks and staves,

XV

And droves of mules and asses Laden with skins of wine, And endless flocks of goats and sheep, And endless herds of kine, And endless trains of wagons That creaked beneath the weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, Choked every roaring gate.

XVI

Now, from the rock Tarpeian, Could the wan burghers spy The line of blazing villages Red in the midnight sky. The Fathers of the City, They sat all night and day, For every hour some horseman come With tidings of dismay.

XVII

To eastward and to westward Have spread the Tuscan bands; Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote In Crustumerium stands. Verbenna down to Ostia Hath wasted all the plain; Astur hath stormed Janiculum, And the stout guards are slain.

XVIII

I wis, in all the Senate, There was no heart so bold, But sore it ached, and fast it beat, When that ill news was told. Forthwith up rose the Consul, Up rose the Fathers all; In haste they girded up their gowns, And hied them to the wall.

XIX

They held a council standing, Before the River-Gate; Short time was there, ye well may guess, For musing or debate. Out spake the Consul roundly: "The bridge must straight go down; For, since Janiculum is lost, Nought else can save the town."

XX

Just then a scout came flying, All wild with haste and fear: "To arms! to arms! Sir Consul: Lars Porsena is here." On the low hills to westward The Consol fixed his eye, And saw the swarthy storm of dust Rise fast along the sky.

XXI

And nearer fast and nearer Doth the red whirlwind come; And louder still and still more loud, From underneath that rolling cloud, Is heard the trumpet's war-note proud, The trampling, and the hum. And plainly and more plainly Now through the gloom appears, Far to left and far to right, In broken gleams of dark-blue light, The long array of helmets bright, The long array of spears.

XXII

And plainly and more plainly, Above that glimmering line, Now might ye see the banners Of twelve fair cities shine; But the banner of proud Clusium Was highest of them all, The terror of the Umbrian, The terror of the Gaul.

XXIII

And plainly and more plainly Now might the burghers know, By port and vest, by horse and crest, Each warlike Lucumo. There Cilnius of Arretium On his fleet roan was seen; And Astur of the four-fold shield, Girt with the brand none else may wield, Tolumnius with the belt of gold, And dark Verbenna from the hold By reedy Thrasymene.

XXIV

Fast by the royal standard, O'erlooking all the war, Lars Porsena of Clusium Sat in his ivory car. By the right wheel rode Mamilius, Prince of the Latian name; And by the left false Sextus, That wrought the deed of shame.

XXV

But when the face of Sextus Was seen among the foes, A yell that rent the firmament From all the town arose. On the house-tops was no woman But spat towards him and hissed, No child but screamed out curses, And shook its little fist.

XXVI

But the Consul's brow was sad, And the Consul's speech was low, And darkly looked he at the wall, And darkly at the foe. "Their van will be upon us Before the bridge goes down; And if they once may win the bridge, What hope to save the town?"

XXVII

Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods,

XXVIII

"And for the tender mother Who dandled him to rest, And for the wife who nurses His baby at her breast, And for the holy maidens Who feed the eternal flame, To save them from false Sextus That wrought the deed of shame?

XXIX

"Haul down the bridge, Sir Consul, With all the speed ye may; I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play. In yon strait path a thousand May well be stopped by three. Now who will stand on either hand, And keep the bridge with me?"

XXX

Then out spake Spurius Lartius; A Ramnian proud was he: "Lo, I will stand at thy right hand, And keep the bridge with thee." And out spake strong Herminius; Of Titian blood was he: "I will abide on thy left side, And keep the bridge with thee."

XXXI

"Horatius," quoth the Consul, "As thou sayest, so let it be." And straight against that great array Forth went the dauntless Three. For Romans in Rome's quarrel Spared neither land nor gold, Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, In the brave days of old.

XXXII

Then none was for a party; Then all were for the state; Then the great man helped the poor, And the poor man loved the great: Then lands were fairly portioned; Then spoils were fairly sold: The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.

XXXIII

Now Roman is to Roman More hateful than a foe, And the Tribunes beard the high, And the Fathers grind the low. As we wax hot in faction, In battle we wax cold: Wherefore men fight not as they fought In the brave days of old.

XXXIV

Now while the Three were tightening Their harness on their backs, The Consul was the foremost man To take in hand an axe: And Fathers mixed with Commons Seized hatchet, bar, and crow, And smote upon the planks above, And loosed the props below.

XXXV

Meanwhile the Tuscan army, Right glorious to behold, Come flashing back the noonday light, Rank behind rank, like surges bright Of a broad sea of gold. Four hundred trumpets sounded A peal of warlike glee, As that great host, with measured tread, And spears advanced, and ensigns spread, Rolled slowly towards the bridge's head, Where stood the dauntless Three.

XXXVI

The Three stood calm and silent, And looked upon the foes, And a great shout of laughter From all the vanguard rose: And forth three chiefs came spurring Before that deep array; To earth they sprang, their swords they drew, And lifted high their shields, and flew To win the narrrow way;

XXXVII

Aunus from green Tifernum, Lord of the Hill of Vines; And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves Sicken in Ilva's mines; And Picus, long to Clusium Vassal in peace and war, Who led to fight his Umbrian powers From that gray crag where, girt with towers, The fortress of Nequinum lowers O'er the pale waves of Nar.

XXXVIII

Stout Lartius hurled down Aunus Into the stream beneath; Herminius struck at Seius, And clove him to the teeth; At Picus brave Horatius Darted one fiery thrust; And the proud Umbrian's gilded arms Clashed in the bloody dust.

XXXIX