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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 Praetor 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 Porsenae 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 Volaterrae,
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 Pisae,
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.