Lays of Ancient Rome | Page 7

national romances, neglected
by the great and the refined whose education had been finished at
Rhodes or Athens, continued, it may be supposed, during some
generations to delight the vulgar. While Virgil, in hexameters of
exquisite modulation, described the sports of rustics, those rustics were
still singing their wild Saturnian ballads. It is not improbable that, at the

time when Cicero lamented the irreparable loss of the poems mentioned
by Cato, a search among the nooks of the Appenines, as active as the
search which Sir Walter Scott made among the descendents of the
mosstroopers of Liddesdale, might have brought to light many fine
remains of ancient minstrelsy. No such search was made. The Latin
ballads perished forever. Yet discerning critics have thought that they
could still perceive in the early history of Rome numerous fragments of
this lost poetry, as the traveller on classic ground sometimes finds, built
into the heavy wall of a fort or convent, a pillar rich with acanthus
leaves, or a frieze where the Amazons and Bacchanals seem to live.
The theatres and temples of the Greek and the Roman were degraded
into the quarries of the Turk and the Goth. Even so did the ancient
Saturnian poetry become the quarry in which a crowd of orators and
annalists found the materials for their prose.
It is not difficult to trace the process by which the old songs were
transmuted into the form which they now wear. Funeral panegyric and
chronicle appear to have been the intermediate links which connected
the lost ballads with the histories now extant. From a very early period
it was the usage that an oration should be pronounced over the remains
of a noble Roman. The orator, as we learn from Polybius, was expected,
on such occasions, to recapitulate all the services which the ancestors
of the deceased had, from the earliest time, rendered to the
commonwealth. There can be little doubt that the speaker on whom this
duty was imposed would make use of all the stories suited to his
purpose which were to be found in the popular lays. There can be as
little doubt that the family of an eminent man would preserve a copy of
the speech which had been pronounced over his corpse. The compilers
of the early chronicles would have recourse to these speeches; and the
great historians of a later period would have recourse to the chronicles.
It may be worth while to select a particular story, and to trace its
probable progress through these stages. The description of the
migration of the Fabian house to Cremera is one of the finest of the
many fine passages which lie thick in the earlier books of Livy. The
Consul, clad in his military garb, stands in the vestibule of his house,
marshalling his clan, three hundred and six fighting men, all of the
same proud patrician blood, all worthy to be attended by the fasces, and
to command the legions. A sad and anxious retinue of friends

accompanies the adventurers through the streets; but the voice of
lamentation is drowned by the shouts of admiring thousands. As the
procession passes the Capitol, prayers and vows are poured forth, but in
vain. The devoted band, leaving Janus on the right, marches to its doom,
through the Gate of Evil Luck. After achieving high deeds of valor
against overwhelming numbers, all perish save one child, the stock
from which the great Fabian race was destined again to spring, for the
safety and glory of the commonwealth. That this fine romance, the
details of which are so full of poetical truth, and so utterly destitute of
all show of historical truth, came originally from some lay which had
often been sung with great applause at banquets is in the highest degree
probable. Nor is it difficult to imagine a mode in which the
transmission might have taken place. The celebrated Quintus Fabius
Maximus, who died about twenty years before the First Punic War, and
more than forty years before Ennius was born, is said to have been
interred with extraordinary pomp. In the eulogy pronounced over his
body all the great exploits of his ancestors were doubtless recounted
and exaggerated. If there were then extant songs which gave a vivid
and touching description of an event, the saddest and the most glorious
in the long history of the Fabian house, nothing could be more natural
than that the panegyrist should borrow from such songs their finest
touches, in order to adorn his speech. A few generations later the songs
would perhaps be forgotten, or remembered only by shepherds and
vinedressers. But the speech would certainly be preserved in the
archives of the Fabian nobles. Fabius Pictor would be well acquainted
with a document so interesting to his personal feelings,