Historical Tales Volume Xi Part 3

"Back!" cried Horatius to his comrades, and they hastily retreated; but he stood unmoving, still boldly facing the foe.

"Fly! It is about to fall!" was the shout.

"Let it," cried Horatius, without yielding a step.

And there he stood alone, defying the whole army of the Etruscans. From a distance they showered their javelins on him, but he caught them on his s.h.i.+eld and stood unhurt. Furious that they should be kept from their prey by a single man, they gathered to rush upon him and drive him from his post by main force; but just then the creaking beams gave way, and the half of the bridge behind him fell with a mighty crash into the stream below.

The Etruscans paused in their course at this cras.h.i.+ng fall, and gazed, not without admiration, at the stalwart champion who had stayed an army in its victorious career. He was theirs now; he could not escape; his life should pay the penalty for their failure.

But Horatius had no such thought. He looked down on the stream, and prayed to the G.o.d of the river, "O Father Tiber, I pray thee to receive these arms and me who bear them, and to let thy waters befriend and save me."

Then, with a quick spring, he plunged, heavy with armor, into the swift-flowing stream, and struck out boldly for the sh.o.r.e. The foemen rushed upon the bridge and poured their darts thick about him; yet none struck him, and he swam safely to the sh.o.r.e, where his waiting friends drew him in triumph from the stream.

For this grand deed of heroism the Romans set up a statue to Horatius in the comitium, and gave him in reward as much land as he could drive his plough round in the s.p.a.ce of a whole day. Such deeds cannot be fitly told in halting prose, and Lord Macaulay, in his "Lays of Ancient Rome,"

has most ably and picturesquely told

"How well Horatius kept the bridge In the brave days of old."

But though Rome was saved from capture by a.s.sault, the war was not ended, and other deeds of Roman heroism were to be done. Porsenna pressed the siege of the city so closely that hunger became his ally, and the Romans suffered greatly. Then another patriot devoted his life to his city's good. This man, a young n.o.ble named Caius Mucius, went to the senate and offered to go to the Etruscan camp and slay Lars Porsenna in the midst of his men.

His proposal acceded to, he crossed the stream by stealth and slipped covertly into the camp, through which he made his way, seeking the king.

At length he saw a man dressed in a scarlet robe and seated on a lofty seat, while many were about him, coming and going. "This must be King Porsenna," he said to himself, and he glided stealthily through the crowd until he came near by, when, drawing a concealed dagger from beneath his cloak, he sprang upon the man and stabbed him to the heart.

But the bold a.s.sa.s.sin had made a sad mistake. The man he had slain was not the king, but his scribe, the king's chief officer. Being instantly seized, he was brought before Porsenna, where the guards threatened him with sharp torments unless he would truly answer all their questions.

"Torments!" he said. "You shall see how little I care for them."

And he thrust his right hand into the fire that was burning on the altar, and held it there till it was completely consumed.

King Porsenna looked at him with an admiration that subdued all anger.

Never had he seen a man of such fort.i.tude.

"Go your way," he cried, "for you have harmed yourself more than me. You are a brave man, and I send you back to Rome free and unhurt."

"And you are a generous king," said Caius, "and shall learn more from me for your kindness than tortures could have wrung from my lips. Know, then, that three hundred n.o.ble youths of Rome have bound themselves by oath to take your life. I am but the first; the others will in turn lie in wait for you. I warn you to look well to yourself."

He was then set free, and went back to the city, where he was afterwards known as Scaevola, the left-handed.

The warning of Caius moved King Porsenna to offer the Romans terms of peace, which they gladly accepted. They were forced to give up all the land they had conquered on the west bank of the Tiber, and to agree not to use iron except to cultivate the earth. They were also to give as hostages ten n.o.ble youths and as many maidens. These were sent; but one of the maidens, Cloelia by name, escaped from the Etruscan camp, and, bidding the other maidens to follow, fled to the river, into which they all plunged and swam safely across to Rome.

They were sent back by the Romans, whose way it was to keep their pledges; but King Porsenna, admiring the courage of Cloelia, set her free, and bade her choose such of the youths as she wished to go with her. She chose those of tenderest age, and the king set them free.

The Romans rewarded Caius by a gift of land, and had a statue made of Cloelia, which was set up in the highest part of the Sacred Way. And King Porsenna led his army home, with Tarquin still dethroned.

_THE BATTLE OF LAKE REGILLUS._

A third time Tarquin the Proud marched against Rome, this time in alliance with the Latins, whose thirty cities had joined together and declared war against the Romans. But as many of the Romans had married Latin wives, and many of the Latins had got their wives from Rome, it was resolved that the women on both sides, who preferred their native land to their husbands, might leave their new homes and take with them their virgin daughters. And, as the legend tells, all the Latin women but two remained in Rome, while all the Roman women returned with their daughters to their fathers' homes.

The two armies met by the side of Lake Regillus, and there was fought a battle the story of which reads like a tale from the Iliad of Homer; for we are told not of how the armies fought, but of how their champions met and fought in single combats upon the field. King Tarquin was there, now h.o.a.ry with years, yet sitting his horse and bearing his lance with the grace and strength of a young man. And there was t.i.tus his son, leading into battle all the banished band of the Tarquins. And with them was Octavius Mamilius, the leader of the Latins, who swore to seat Tarquin again on his throne and to make the Romans subjects of the Latins.

On the Roman side were many true and tried warriors, among them t.i.tus Herminius, one of those who fought on the bridge by the side of Horatius Cocles, when that champion fought so well for Rome.

It is too long to tell how warrior rode against warrior with levelled lances, and how this one was struck through the breast and that one through the arm, and so on in true Homeric style. The battle was a series of duels, like those fought on the plain of Troy. But at length the Tarquin band, under the lead of t.i.tus, charged so fiercely that the Romans began to give way, many of their bravest having been slain.

At this juncture Aulus, the leader of the Romans, rode up with his own chosen band, and bade them level their lances and slay all, friend or foe, whose faces were turned towards them. There was to be no mercy for a Roman whose face was turned from the field. This onset stopped the flight, and Aulus charged fiercely upon the Tarquins, praying, as he did so, to the divine warriors Castor and Pollux, to whom he vowed to dedicate a temple if they would aid him in the fight. And he promised the soldiers that the two who should first break into the camp of the enemy should receive a rich reward.

Then suddenly, at the head of the chosen band, appeared two unknown hors.e.m.e.n, in the first bloom of youth and taller and fairer than mortal men, while the horses they rode were white as the driven snow. On went the charge, led by these two n.o.ble strangers, before whom the enemy fled in mortal terror, while t.i.tus, the last of the sons of King Tarquin, fell dead from his steed. The camp of the Latins being reached, these two hors.e.m.e.n were the first to break into it, and soon the whole army of the enemy was in disorderly flight and the battle won.

Aulus now sought the two strange hors.e.m.e.n, to give them the reward he had promised; but he sought in vain; they were not to be found, among either the living or the dead, and no man had set eyes upon them since the camp was won. They had vanished as suddenly as they had appeared.

But on the hard black rock which surrounds the lake was visible the mark of a horse's hoof, such as no earthly steed could ever have made. For ages afterwards this mark remained.

But the strangers appeared once again. It was known in Rome that the armies were joined in battle, and the longing for tidings from the field grew intense. Suddenly, as the sun went down behind the city walls, there were seen in the Forum two hors.e.m.e.n on milk-white steeds, taller and fairer than the tallest and fairest of men. Their horses were bathed in foam, and they looked like men fresh from battle.

Alighting near the Temple of Vesta, where a spring of water bubbles from the ground, these men, whom no Romans had ever seen before, washed from their persons the battle-stains. As they did so men crowded round and eagerly questioned them. In reply, they told them how the battle had been fought and won,--though in truth the battle ended only as the sun went down over Lake Regillus. They then mounted their horses and rode from the Forum, and were seen no more. Men sought them far and wide, but no one set eyes on them again.

Then Aulus told the Romans how he had prayed to Castor and Pollux, the divine twins, and said that it could be none but they who had broken so fiercely into the enemy's camp, and had borne the news of victory with more than mortal speed to Rome. So he built the temple he had vowed to the hero G.o.ds, and gave there rich offerings as the rewards he had promised to the two who should first enter the camp of the foe.

Thus ended the hopes of King Tarquin, against whom the G.o.ds had taken arms. His sons and all his family slain, he was left ruined and hopeless, and retired to the city of c.u.mae, whence formerly the Sibyl had come to his court. Here he died, and thus pa.s.sed away the last of the Roman kings.

_THE REVOLT OF THE PEOPLE._

The overthrow of the kings of Rome did not relieve the people from all their oppression. The inhabitants of that city had long been divided into two great cla.s.ses, the Patricians, or n.o.bles, and the Plebeians, or common people, and the former held in their hand nearly all the wealth and power of the state. The senate, the law-making body, were all Patricians; the consuls, the executors of the law, were chosen from their ranks; and the Plebeians were left with few rights and little protection.

It was through the avarice of money-lending n.o.bles that the people were chiefly oppressed. There were no laws limiting the rate of interest, and the rich lent to the poor at extravagant rates of usury. The interest, when not paid, was added to the debt, so that in time it became impossible for many debtors to pay.

And the laws against debtors had become terribly severe. They might, with all their families, be held as slaves. Or if the debtor refused to sell himself to his creditor, and still could not pay his debt, he might be imprisoned in fetters for sixty days. At the end of that time, if no friend had paid his debt, he could be put to death, or sold as a slave into a foreign state. If there were several creditors, they could actually cut his body to pieces, each taking a piece proportional in size to his claim.

This cruel severity was more than any people could long endure. It led to a revolution in Rome. In the year 495 B.C., fifteen years after the Tarquins had been expelled, a poor debtor, who had fought valiantly in the wars, broke from his prison, and--with his clothes in tatters and chains clanking upon his limbs--appealed eloquently to the people in the Forum, and showed them on his emaciated body the scars of the many battles in which he had fought.

His tale was a sad one. While he served in the Sabine war, the enemy had pillaged and burned his house; and when he returned home, it was to find his cattle stolen and his farm heavily taxed. Forced to borrow money, the interest had brought him deeply into debt. Finally he had been attacked by pestilence, and being unable to work for his creditor, he had been thrown into prison and cruelly scourged, the marks of the lash being still evident upon his bleeding back.

This piteous story roused its hearers to fury. The whole city broke into tumult, as the woful tale pa.s.sed from lip to lip. Many debtors escaped from their prisons and begged protection from the incensed mult.i.tude.

The consuls found themselves powerless to restore order; and in the midst of the uproar hors.e.m.e.n came riding hotly through the gates, crying out that a hostile army was near at hand, marching to besiege the city.

Here was a splendid opportunity for the Plebeians. When called upon to enroll their names and take arms for the city's defence, they refused.

The Patricians, they said, might fight their own battles. As for them, they had rather die together at home than perish separate upon the battle-field.

This refusal left the Patricians in a quandary. With riot in the streets and war beyond the walls they were at the mercy of the commons. They were forced to promise a mitigation of the laws, declaring that no one should henceforth seize the goods of a soldier while he was in camp, or hinder a citizen from enlisting by keeping him in prison. This promise satisfied the people. The debtors' prisons were emptied, and their late tenants crowded with enthusiasm into the ranks. Through the gates the army marched, met the foe, and drove him in defeat from the soil of the Roman state.

Victory gained, the Plebeians looked for laws to sustain the promises under which they had fought. They looked in vain; the senate took no action for their redress. But they had learned their power, and were not again to be enslaved. Their action was deliberate but decided. Taking measures to protect their homes on the Aventine Hill, they left the city the next year in a body, and sought a hill beyond the Anio, about three miles beyond the walls of Rome. Here they encamped, built fortifications, and sent word to their lordly rulers that they were done with empty promises, and would fight no more for the state until the state kept its faith. All the good of their fighting came to the Patricians, they said, and these might now defend themselves and their wealth.