This week, and for four more weeks, I will be covering the long poem Horatius, by Lord Macaulay. I have chosen this poem because it is a tale of heroic resistance to overwhelming odds, and it is easy to draw parallels with the present day. This week’s stanzas tell of the Etruscans’ advance on Rome and the consternation of the Romans.
But by the yellow Tiber
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay (1800—1859)
Was tumult and affright:
Poem 365. Horatius, stanzas XIII to XXVI (The Etruscans advance on Rome)
XIII
But by the yellow Tiber
Was tumult and affright:
From all the spacious champaign
To Rome men took their flight.
A mile around the city,
The throng stopped up the ways;
A fearful sight it was to see
Through two long nights and days.
XIV
For aged folks on crutches,
And women great with child,
And mothers sobbing over babes
That clung to them and smiled,
And sick men borne in litters
High on the necks of slaves,
And troops of sun-burned husbandmen
With reaping-hooks and staves,
XV
And droves of mules and asses
Laden with skins of wine,
And endless flocks of goats and sheep,
And endless herds of kine,
And endless trains of waggons
That creaked beneath the weight
Of corn-sacks and of household goods,
Choked every roaring gate.
XVI
Now, from the rock Tarpeian,
Could the wan burghers spy
The line of blazing villages
Red in the midnight sky.
The Fathers of the City,
They sat all night and day,
For every hour some horseman came
With tidings of dismay.
XVII
To eastward and to westward
Have spread the Tuscan bands;
Nor house, nor fence, nor dovecote
In Crustumerium stands.
Verbenna down to Ostia
Hath wasted all the plain;
Astur hath stormed Janiculum,
And the stout guards are slain.
XVIII
I wis, in all the Senate,
There was no heart so bold,
But sore it ached, and fast it beat,
When that ill news was told.
Forthwith up rose the Consul,
Up rose the Fathers all;
In haste they girded up their gowns,
And hied them to the wall.
XIX
They held a council standing,
Before the River-Gate;
Short time was there, ye well may guess,
For musing or debate.
Out spake the Consul roundly:
‘The bridge must straight go down;
For, since Janiculum is lost,
Nought else can save the town.’
XX
Just then a scout came flying,
All wild with haste and fear:
‘To arms! to arms! Sir Consul:
Lars Porsena is here.’
On the low hills to westward
The Consul fixed his eye,
And saw the swarthy storm of dust
Rise fast along the sky.
XXI
And nearer fast and nearer
Doth the red whirlwind come;
And louder still and still more loud,
From underneath that rolling cloud,
Is heard the trumpet’s war-note proud,
The trampling, and the hum.
And plainly and more plainly
Now through the gloom appears,
Far to left and far to right,
In broken gleams of dark-blue light,
The long array of helmets bright,
The long array of spears.
XXII
And plainly and more plainly,
Above that glimmering line,
Now might ye see the banners
Of twelve fair cities shine;
But the banner of proud Clusium
Was highest of them all,
The terror of the Umbrian,
The terror of the Gaul.
XXIII
And plainly and more plainly
Now might the burghers know,
By port and vest, by horse and crest,
Each warlike Lucumo.
There Cilnius of Arretium
On his fleet roan was seen;
And Astur of the four-fold shield,
Girt with the brand none else may wield,
Tolumnius with the belt of gold,
And dark Verbenna from the hold
By reedy Thrasymene.
XXIV
Fast by the royal standard,
O’erlooking all the war,
Lars Porsena of Clusium
Sat in his ivory car.
By the right wheel rode Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name;
And by the left false Sextus,
That wrought the deed of shame.
XXV
But when the face of Sextus
Was seen among the foes,
A yell that rent the firmament
From all the town arose.
On the house-tops was no woman
But spat towards him and hissed,
No child but screamed out curses,
And shook its little fist.
XXVI
But the Consul’s brow was sad,
And the Consul’s speech was low,
And darkly looked he at the wall,
And darkly at the foe.
‘Their van will be upon us
Before the bridge goes down;
And if they once may win the bridge,
What hope to save the town?’
This week we see the terrified citizens of Rome and the surrounding countryside flocking to the city in panic as the vast Etruscan army slowly advances on them. Every road into the city (and every road leads to Rome) is choked as the population takes flight for the only protection available: the walls of the city. The opening stanzas show the human cost of conflict: the aged and sick, pregnant women and harassed mothers, and the peasantry driving their beasts alongside the wagon trains carrying grain and their few possessions, all slowly congregating in the congested streets of Rome.
At nightfall, the citizens, standing on the walls, can see the fires of villages set alight by the invaders, and their rulers sit in council hour after hour as messengers continually bring them the ill tidings of the Tuscan advance and the devastation wrought by the horde: farms and houses razed to the ground, their goods plundered and ruined, and the walls on the hill of Janiculum (the second-tallest hill in the vicinity) have been overrun and occupied.
This last news is devastating since Janiculum is a key defensive redoubt for the city, and the City Fathers hasten to the walls to see the situation for themselves and there they hold a council of war to decide whether the city can be saved, and if so, how. The Consul states the bald truth that the only way to save the city now is to destroy the bridge across the Tiber.
The desperate nature of their position is highlighted by the arrival of a panicked messenger who announces that the Etruscan king’s retinue has arrived, and the city leader looks out across the fields and sees the dust of the main army as it advances on them. The dust rises as the infantry approaches and the sound of trumpets and the tramping of thousands of feet but before long, the glint of helmets and spears breaks through the swirling clouds and the immensity of the force besieging the city can be clearly seen, its banners announcing the cities whose princes have joined with Lars Porsena.
The Etruscan king’s banner flies highest of all, recalling his triumphs against the Umbrians and the Gauls in past campaigns: both redoubtable foes but reduced to ruins by Porsena’s forces. As the army draws nearer, the arms of the individual princes can be discerned: Cilnius of Arretium, Astur with his giant shield and brand (sword), a weapon so huge that none but him can wield it; the prince of Verbenna’s dark attire emphasised by the golden belt of Tolumnius, clearly visible through the dust.
Lars Porsena sits below his banner, watching the advance of his armies, accompanied by the Latian prince Mamilius and “false Sextus, who wrought the deed of shame.” Sextus is Sextus Tarquinius, son of the last king of Rome and notorious as the rapist of the virtuous Lucretia (hence “the deed of shame”) who died by her own hand after telling her husband and her father of the crime perpetrated against her. This is why he is execrated by the citizens of Rome: every woman spits at him in scorn and disdain and even children curse him.
The twenty-fourth stanza (and the last this week) returns to the Consul, who fears that the invaders will arrive at the bridge before it can be destroyed, and if they secure the bridge, the city is lost.
The opening lines of Stanza 13 are used by Kipling in Stalky & Co, when the resourceful trio at the centre of the stories are evicted from their study by their house-master and must return to the form-rooms and the tender mercies of their peers: a challenge they accept with gusto, and eventually turn back on the originator of their misfortune who is forced to restore them to their private room.
The story of Sextus and his assault on Lucretia is the subject of Shakespeare’s long poem “The Rape of Lucrece.”
I find it interesting that the poet’s admiration for Lars Porsena does not seem to be tempered by the presence of Sextus at his side—it seems an uncharacteristic failing in the Etruscan king to have such an ally if he is indeed such an honourable and decent soldier himself.
There are a couple of good performances of the poem on YouTube: one by Jake Phillips, and a group reading recorded by A Kindly Voice during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is World Poetry Day today. I hope that you have a poem or song that brings you happiness or solace and that you have been able to enjoy it today. I have so many that I enjoy that it is difficult to pick just one: any of the poems I have covered in the last five years might be my choice but I think my favourites are The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes (Loreena McKennitt’s musical version is brilliant) and Take This Pen by Tony Walsh.