III.
ROMAN INUNDATIONS.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 12, 1871. Also reprinted in "Fors Clavigera," 1873, Letter 33, p. 23.]
A KING'S FIRST DUTY.
To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."
Sir: May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation of the Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with Horace rather than to smile with him?
In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself he thought of his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of violent and scanty waters:
"Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus,
Et qua, pauper aquæ, Daunus agrestium
Regnavit populorum."[104]
Now the anger and power of that "tauriformis Aufidus" is precisely because "regna Dauni præfluit"—because it flows past the poor kingdoms which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure instead of ruin. And so also with Tiber and Eridanus. They are so much gold, at their sources—they are so much death, if they once break down unbridled into the plains.