This week, and for five more weeks, I will be covering the long poem Horatius, by Lord Macaulay. This week’s stanzas show us the gathering of the Etruscan army and its allies.
Shame on the false Etruscan
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay (1800—1859)
Who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome.
Poem 364. Horatius, stanzas I to XII (The gathering of the Etruscans)
I
LARS Porsena of Clusium
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 Volaterræ,
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 Pisæ,
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.
VII
But now no stroke of woodman
Is heard by Auser’s rill;
No hunter tracks the stag’s green path
Up the Ciminian hill;
Unwatched along Clitumnus
Grazes the milk-white steer;
Unharmed the water fowl may dip
In the Volsinian mere.
VIII
The harvests of Arretium,
This year, old men shall reap;
This year, young boys in Umbro
Shall plunge the struggling sheep;
And in the vats of Luna,
This year, the must shall foam
Round the white feet of laughing girls
Whose sires have marched to Rome.
IX
There be thirty chosen prophets,
The wisest of the land,
Who always by Lars Porsena
Both morn and evening stand:
Evening and morn the Thirty
Have turned the verse o’er,
Traced from the right on linen white
By mighty seers of yore.
X
And with one voice the Thirty
Have their glad answer given:
“Go forth, go forth, Lars Porsena;
Go forth, beloved of Heaven;
Go, and return in glory
To Clusium’s royal dome;
And hang round Nurscia’s altars
The golden shields of Rome.”
XI
And now hath every city
Sent up her tale of men;
The foot are fourscore thousand,
The horse are thousands ten.
Before the gates of Sutrium
Is met the great array.
A proud man was Lars Porsena
Upon the trysting day.
XII
For all the Etruscan armies
Were ranged beneath his eye,
And many a banished Roman,
And many a stout ally;
And with a mighty following
To join the muster came
The Tusculan Mamilius,
Prince of the Latian name.
This poem was one of the Lays of Ancient Rome, a series of popular poems about Roman history that Macaulay began while he was serving on the Supreme Council in India. His intention was that these poems would resemble the legends recounted in ancient times.
Publius Horatius Cocles was a legendary figure in Roman history, said to have defended the Pons Sublicus from the Etruscan king Lars Porsena’s army by standing at the narrow end of the bridge with two others and blocking the army’s advance until the bridge could be destroyed and the city saved. Whatever the truth of this story, it provided Macaulay with a subject for his most popular poem, though he employs his poetic license quite freely. The poem may have inspired Churchill’s oratory during the dark days of the Second World War and has inspired others since then.
These opening stanzas paint the picture of the Etruscan king Lars Porsena and his oath to revenge his noble house for the wrongs done to it by Rome (the city, rather than the Roman Catholic religion which has no place in this story since it is set in the 6th century BC). The king was a member of the house of Tarquin, as was Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome, deposed after a republican revolution. Lucius apparently failed to regain the throne himself and so appealed to Porsena for aid.
The king sends his messengers “East and west and south and north” to summon the Etruscan host from the lands around Clusium (in present-day Tuscany) and we see the muster of the troops from the market-places, fields, towns and villages.
Macaulay gives us a real sense of the size of the army through his long list of the places whence the armies come, but also portrays the landscape of Tuscany: the scowling hold (castle) of Volaterræ; the coastal town of Populonia with Sardinia visible across the strait; Pisæ, with its slave-powered triremes carrying Greek merchants from Massilia (now known as Marseille); the river Clanis (Chiani) meandering through the fields and the ancient town of Cortona with its walls and towers. We also see the rivers Auser and Clitumnus, the Ciminian hill (a fruitful place for stag hunting) and the Volsinian lake—now Lago di Bolsena—where waterfowl are abundant.
All these places, beloved of the Etruscan herdsmen and hunters, now revert to their natural state since the men who would normally hunt the wildlife and drive their beasts there are gone to join the armies, leaving old men, striplings and women to maintain the farms, reap the harvest, tend the sheep and press the wine.
Lars Porsena’s thirty advisers have consulted the ancient texts, considering their prophetic import and issue their blessing on his enterprise: “Go, and return in glory.” They predict his triumph and the humbling of Rome, its golden shields plundered and brought to adorn Clusium’s altars as an offering to the nine gods.
The eleventh and twelfth stanzas show us the assembled army: “the foot are fourscore thousand” (80,000) and “thousands ten” (10,000) of horse; that’s a huge army for 508 BC so it’s no wonder the king is a proud man: his army comprises his own men, banished Romans hoping to earn a return to their city, and “a mighty following” brought by the Latian prince Mamilius.
Although Lars Porsena is described as “proud”, I don’t feel as if Macaulay is suggesting any form of hubris—his version of the king appears to be honourable and his pride seems to me to be justifiable: assembling an army nearly 100,000 strong is quite an achievement, after all.
I like this part of the poem because it is so descriptive and I can see in my mind’s eye the places and people outlined.
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.