Lays of Ancient Rome | Page 9

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