THE following poem is supposed to hav duced about ninety years after the lay o Some persons mentioned in the lay o make their appearance again, and son tions and epithets used in the lay o have been purposely repeated: for, in ballad-poetry, it scarcely ever fails that certain phrases come to be a to certain men and things, and are applied to those men and things by

strel. Thus we find, both in the Hom and in Hesiod, βίη Ηρακληείη, περικλ γυήεις, διάκτορος Αργειφόντης, ἑπτάπ Ἑλένης ἕνεκ' ήυκόμοιο. Thus, too, i

national songs, Douglas is almost always the doughty Douglas: England is merry England: all the gold is red; and all the ladies are gay.

The principal distinction between the lay of Horatius and the lay of the Lake Regillus is that the former is meant to be purely Roman, while the latter, though national in its general spirit, has a slight tincture of Greek learning and of Greek superstition. The story of the Tarquins, as it has come down to us, appears to have been compiled from the works of several popular poets; and one, at least, of those poets appears to have visited the Greek colonies in Italy, if not Greece itself, and to have had some acquaintance with the works of Homer and Herodotus. Many of the most striking adventures of the house of Tarquin, before Lucretia makes her appearance, have a Greek character. The Tarquins themselves are represented as Corinthian nobles of the great house of the Bacchiadæ, driven from their country by the tyranny of that Cypselus, the tale of whose strange escape Herodotus has related with incomparable simplicity and live

stratagem by which the town of Gabii i under the power of the Tarquins is, a viously copied from Herodotus. ‡ The of the young Tarquins to the oracle at just such a story as would be told by a p head was full of the Greek mythology ambiguous answer returned by Apollo exact style of the prophecies which, to Herodotus, lured Croesus to de Then the character of the narrative From the first mention of Lucretia to tl of Porsena nothing seems to be borro

* Herodotus, v. 92. Livy, i. 34. Dionysius, ii Livy, i. 54. Dionysius, iv. 56.

Herodotus, iii. 154. Livy, i. 53.

L

foreign sources.

The villany of Sextus, the suicide of his victim, the revolution, the death of the sons of Brutus, the defence of the bridge, Mucius burning his hand, Cloelia swimming through Tiber, seem to be all strictly Roman. But when we have done with the Tuscan war, and enter upon the war with the Latines, we are again struck by the Greek air of the story. The Battle of the Lake Regillus is in all respects a Homeric battle, except that the combatants ride astride on their horses, instead of driving chariots. The mass of fighting men is hardly mentioned. The leaders single each other out, and engage hand to hand. The great object of the warriors on both sides is, as in the Iliad, to obtain possession of the spoils and bodies of the slain; and several circumstances are related which forcibly remind us of the great slaughter round the corpses of Sarpedon and Patroclus.

*M. de Pouilly attempted, a hundred and twenty years ago, to prove that the story of Mucius was of Greek origin; but he was signally confuted by the Abbé Sallier. See the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, vi. 27.66.

BATTLE OF THE LAKE REGILLUS.

83

But there is one circumstance which deserves especial notice. Both the war of Troy and the war of Regillus were caused by the licentious passions of young princes, who were therefore peculiarly bound not to be sparing of their own persons in the day of battle. Now the conduct of Sextus at Regillus, as described by Livy, so exactly resembles that of Paris, as described at the beginning of the third book of the Iliad, that it is difficult to believe the resemblance accidental. Paris appears before the Trojan ranks, defying the bravest Greek to encounter him:

Τρωσὶν μὲν προμάχιζεν ̓Αλέξανδρος θεοειδὴς,
̓Αργείων προκαλίζετο πάντας ἀρίστους,

ἀντίβιον μαχέσασθαι ἐν αἰνῇ δηϊοτῆτι.

Livy introduces Sextus in a similar manner; "Ferocem juvenem Tarquinium, ostentantem se in prima exsulum acie." Menelaus rushes to meet Paris. A Roman noble, eager for vengeance, spurs his horse towards Sextus. Both the guilty princes are instantly terror-stricken: