Lays of Ancient Rome(古罗马方位)

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Lays of Ancient Rome

By Thomas Babbington Macaulay

Lays of Ancient Rome

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.

Lays of Ancient Rome

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 tedious and in the most superficial modern works

on the early times of Rome. It enlivens the dulness of the Universal

History, and gives a charm to the most meagre abridgements of

Goldsmith.

Even in the age of Plutarch there were discerning men who rejected

the popular account of the foundation of Rome, because that account

appeared to them to have the air, not of a history, but of a romance or a

drama. Plutarch, who was displeased at their incredulity, had nothing

better to say in reply to their arguments than that chance sometimes turns

poet, and produces trains of events not to be distinguished from the most

elaborate plots which are constructed by art. But though the existence of a

poetical element in the early history of the Great City was detected so

many ages ago, the first critic who distinctly saw from what source that

Lays of Ancient Rome

poetical element had been derived was James Perizonius, one of the most

acute and learned antiquaries of the seventeenth century. His theory, which

in his own days attracted little or no notice, was revived in the present

generation by Niebuhr, a man who would have been the first writer of his

time, if his talent for communicating truths had borne any proportion to

his talent for investigating them. That theory has been adopted by several

eminent scholars of our own country, particularly by the Bishop of St.

David's, by Professor Malde, and by the lamented Arnold. It appears to be

now generally received by men conversant with classical antiquity; and

indeed it rests on such strong proofs, both internal and external, that it will

not be easily subverted. A popular exposition of this theory, and of the

evidence by which it is supported, may not be without interest even for

readers who are unacquainted with the ancient languages.

The Latin literature which has come down to us is of later date than

the commencement of the Second Punic War, and consists almost

exclusively of works fashioned on Greek models. The Latin metres, heroic,

elegiac, lyric, and dramatic, are of Greek origin. The best Latin epic poetry

is the feeble echo of the Iliad and Odyssey. The best Latin eclogues are

imitations of Theocritus. The plan of the most finished didactic poem in

the Latin tongue was taken from Hesiod. The Latin tragedies are bad

copies of the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides. The Latin

philosophy was borrowed, without alteration, from the Portico and the

Academy; and the great Latin orators constantly proposed to themselves as

patterns the speeches of Demosthenes and Lysias.

But there was an earlier Latin literature, a literature truly Latin, which

has wholly perished, which had, indeed almost wholly perished long

before those whom we are in the habit of regarding as the greatest Latin

writers were born. That literature abounded with metrical romances, such

as are found in every country where there is much curiosity and

intelligence, but little reading and writing. All human beings, not utterly

savage, long for some information about past times, and are delighted by

narratives which present pictures to the eye of the mind. But it is only in

very enlightened communities that books are readily accessible. Metrical

composition, therefore, which, in a highly civilized nation, is a mere

Lays of Ancient Rome

luxury, is, in nations imperfectly civilized, almost a necessary of life, and

is valued less on account of the pleasure which it gives to the ear, than on

account of the help which it gives to the memory. A man who can invent

or embellish an interesting story, and put it into a form which others may

easily retain in their recollection, will always be highly esteemed by a

people eager for amusement and information, but destitute of libraries.

Such is the origin of ballad-poetry, a species of composition which

scarcely ever fails to spring up and flourish in every society, at a certain

point in the progress towards refinement. Tacitus informs us that songs

were the only memorials of the past which the ancient Germans possessed.

We learn from Lucan and from Ammianus Marcellinus that the brave

actions of the ancient Gauls were commemorated in the verses of Bards.

During many ages, and through many revolution, minstrelsy retained its

influence over both the Teutonic and the Celtic race. The vengeance

exacted by the spouse of Attila for the murder of Siegfried was celebrated

in rhymes, of which Germany is still justly proud. The exploits of

Athelstane were commemorated by the Anglo-Saxons and those of Canute

by the Danes, in rude poems, of which a few fragments have come down

to us. The chants of the Welsh harpers preserved, through ages of darkness,

a faint and doubtful memory of Arthur. In the Highlands of Scotland may

still be gleaned some relics of the old songs about Cuthullin and Fingal.

The long struggle of the Servians against the Ottoman power was recorded

in lays full of martial spirit. We learn from Herrera that, when a Peruvian

Inca died, men of skill were appointed to celebrate him in verses, which

all the people learned by heart, and sang in public on days of festival. The

feats of Kurroglou, the great freebooter of Turkistan, recounted in ballads

composed by himself, are known in every village of northern Persia.

Captain Beechey heard the bards of the Sandwich Islands recite the heroic

achievements of Tamehameha, the most illustrious of their kings. Mungo

Park found in the heart of Africa a class of singing men, the only annalists

of their rude tribes, and heard them tell the story of the victory which

Damel, the negro prince of the Jaloffs, won over Abdulkader, the

Mussulman tyrant of Foota Torra. This species of poetry attained a high

degree of excellence among the Castilians, before they began to copy

Lays of Ancient Rome

Tuscan patterns. It attained a still higher degree of excellence among the

English and the Lowland Scotch, during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and

sixteenth centuries. But it reached its full perfection in ancient Greece; for

there can be no doubt that the great Homeric poems are generically ballads,

though widely distinguished from all other ballads, and indeed from

almost all other human composition, by transcendent sublimity and

beauty.

As it is agreeable to general experience that, at a certain stage in the

progress of society, ballad-poetry should flourish, so is it also agreeable to

general experience that, at a subsequent stage in the progress of society,

ballad-poetry should be undervalued and neglected. Knowledge advances;

manners change; great foreign models of composition are studied and

imitated. The phraseology of the old minstrels becomes obsolete. Their

versification, which, having received its laws only from the ear, abounds

in irregularities, seems licentious and uncouth. Their simplicity appears

beggarly when compared with the quaint forms and gaudy coloring of

such artists as Cowley and Gongora. The ancient lays, unjustly despised

by the learned and polite, linger for a time in the memory of the vulgar,

and are at length too often irretrievably lost. We cannot wonder that the

ballads of Rome should have altogether disappeared, when we remember

how very narrowly, in spite of the invention of printing, those of our own

country and those of Spain escaped the same fate. There is indeed little

doubt that oblivion covers many English songs equal to any that were

published by Bishop Percy, and many Spanish songs as good as the best of

those which have been so happily translated by Mr. Lockhart. Eighty years

ago England possessed only one tattered copy of Childe Waters and Sir

Cauline, and Spain only one tattered copy of the noble poem of the Cid.

The snuff of a candle, or a mischievous dog, might in a moment have

deprived the world forever of any of those fine compositions. Sir Walter

Scott, who united to the fire of a great poet the minute curiosity and

patient diligence of a great antiquary, was but just in time to save the

precious relics of the Minstrelsy of the Border. In Germany, the lay of the

Nibelungs had been long utterly forgotten, when, in the eighteenth century,

it was, for the first time, printed from a manuscript in the old library of a

Lays of Ancient Rome

noble family. In truth, the only people who, through their whole passage

from simplicity to the highest civilization, never for a moment ceased to

love and admire their old ballads, were the Greeks.

That the early Romans should have had ballad-poetry, and that this

poetry should have perished, is therefore not strange. It would, on the

contrary, have been strange if these things had not come to pass; and we

should be justified in pronouncing them highly probable even if we had no

direct evidence on the subject. But we have direct evidence of

unquestionable authority.

Ennius, who flourished in the time of the Second Punic War, was

regarded in the Augustan age as the father of Latin poetry. He was, in truth,

the father of the second school of Latin poetry, the only school of which

the works have descended to us. But from Ennius himself we learn that

there were poets who stood to him in the same relation in which the author

of the romance of Count Alarcos stood to Garcilaso, or the author of the

Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode to Lord Surrey. Ennius speaks of verses

which the Fauns and the Bards were wont to chant in the old time, when

none had yet studied the graces of speech, when none had yet climbed the

peaks sacred to the Goddesses of Grecian song. ``Where,'' Cicero

mournfully asks, ``are those old verses now?''

Contemporary with Ennius was Quintus Fabius Pactor, the earliest of

the Roman annalists. His account of the infancy and youth of Romulus

and Remus has been preserved by Dionysius, and contains a very

remarkable reference to the ancient Latin poetry. Fabius says that, in his

time, his countrymen were still in the habit of singing ballads about the

Twins. ``Even in the hut of Faustulus,''--so these old lays appear to have

run,--``the children of Rhea and Mars were, in port and in spirit, not like

unto swineherds or cowherds, but such that men might well guess them to

be of the blood of kings and gods.''

Cato the Censor, who also lived in the days of he Second Punic War,

mentioned this lost literature in his lost work on the antiquities of his

country. Many ages, he said, before his time, there were ballads in praise

of illustrious men; and these ballads it was the fashion for the guests at

banquets to sing in turn while the piper played. ``Would,'' exclaims Cicero,

Lays of Ancient Rome

``that we still had the old ballads of which Cato speaks!''

Valerius Maximus gives us exactly similar information, without

mentioning his authority, and observes that the ancient Roman ballads

were probably of more benefit to the young than all the lectures of the

Athenian schools, and that to the influence of the national poetry were to

be ascribed the virtues of such men as Camillus and Fabricus.

Varro, whose authority on all questions connected with the antiquities

of his country is entitled to the greatest respect, tells us that at banquets it

was once the fashion for boys to sing, sometimes with and sometimes

without instrumental music, ancient ballads in praise of men of former

times. These young performers, he observes, were of unblemished

character, a circumstance which he probably mentioned because, among

the Greeks, and indeed, in his time among the Romans also, the morals of

singing boys were in no high repute.

The testimony of Horace, though given incidentally, confirms the

statements of Cato, Valerius Maximus, and Varro. The poet predicts that,

under the peaceful administration of Augustus, the Romans will, over their

full goblets, sing to the pipe, after the fashion of their fathers, the deeds of

brave captains, and the ancient legends touching the origin of the city.

The proposition, then, that Rome had ballad-poetry is not merely in

itself highly probable, but is fully proved by direct evidence of the greatest

weight.

This proposition being established, it becomes easy to understand why

the early history of the city is unlike almost everything else in Latin

literature, native where almost everything else is borrowed, imaginative

where almost everything else is prosaic. We can scarcely hesitate to

pronounce that the magnificent, pathetic, and truly national legends, which

present so striking a contrast to all that surrounds them, are broken and

defaced fragments of that early poetry which, even in the age of Cato the

Censor, had become antiquated, and of which Tully had never heard a line.

That this poetry should have been suffered to perish will not appear

strange when we consider how complete was the triumph of the Greek

genius over the public mind of Italy. It is probable that, at an early period,

Homer and Herodotus furnished some hints to the Latin Minstrels; but it

Lays of Ancient Rome

was not till after the war with Pyrrhus that the poetry of Rome began to

put off its old Ausonian character. The transformation was soon

consummated. The conquered, says Horace, led captive the conquerors. It

was precisely at the time at which the Roman people rose to unrivalled

political ascendency that they stooped to pass under the intellectual yoke.

It was precisely at the time at which the sceptre departed from Greece that

the empire of her language and of her arts became universal and despotic.

The revolution indeed was not effected without a struggle. Naevius seems

to have been the last of the ancient line of poets. Ennius was the founder

of a new dynasty. Naevius celebrated the First Punic War in Saturnian

verse, the old national verse of Italy. Ennius sang the Second Punic War in

numbers borrowed from the Iliad. The elder poet, in the epitaph which he

wrote for himself, and which is a fine specimen of the early Roman diction

and versification, plaintively boasted that the Latin language had died with

him. Thus what to Horace appeared to be the first faint dawn of Roman

literature appeared to Naevius to be its hopeless setting. In truth, one

literature was setting, and another dawning.

The victory of the foreign taste was decisive; and indeed we can

hardly blame the Romans for turning away with contempt from the rude

lays which had delighted their fathers, and giving their whole admiration

to the immortal productions of Greece. The 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

Lays of Ancient Rome

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,

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