Lays of Ancient Rome | Page 3

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I have made every effort to provide an accurate text. But of course I am
sure there are mistakes. Please inform me of any you find. So I can
improve the text. My email address's are David Reed of
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In some editions there are quite extensive footnotes. Forthcoming
editions will include those footnotes

Lays of Ancient Rome
By Thomas Babbington Macaulay

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