left school. Niebuhr seems also to have forgotten that Martial has fellow culprits to keep him in countenance. Horace has committed the same decided blunder; for he gives us, as a pure iambic line,

"Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenæ manus. ""

Silius Italicus has repeatedly offended in the same way, as when he says,

"Cernitur effugiens ardentem Porsena dextram ;"

and again,

"Clusinum vulgus, cum, Porsena magne, jubebas." A modern writer may be content to err in such company. Niebuhr's supposition that each of the three defenders of the bridge was the representative of one of the three patrician tribes is both ingenious and probable, and has been adopted in the following poem.

HORATIUS.

A LAY MADE ABOUT THE YEAR OF THE CITY CCCLX.

1.

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.

2.

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.

3.

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 beach and pine,
Like an eagle's nest hangs on the crest
Of purple Apennine ;

4.

From lordly Volaterræ,

Where scowls the far-famed hold

Piled by the hands of giants

For god-like kings of old;

From seagirt Populonia,

Whose sentinels descry Sardinia's snowy mountain-tops Fringing the southern sky;

5.

From the proud mart of Pisa,
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.

6.

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.

7.

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.

8.

The harvests of Arretium

This old men shall reap;
year

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.

9.

There be thirty chosen prophets,

The wisest of the land,

Who alway by Lars Porsena

Both morn and evening stand: Evening and morn the Thirty Have turned the verses o'er, Traced from the right on linen white By mighty seers of yore.

10.

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.'

For aged folk 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.

15.

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 wagons

That creaked beneath their weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, Choked every roaring gate.

16.

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.

17.

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.

18.

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,

Uprose the Fathers all;

In haste they girded up their gowns, And hied them to the wall.