No More Learning

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!