Nor men of lordly race;
For all Etruria’s noblest
Were ’round the fatal place.”
From the same shore captive Clelia plunged into the river on horseback, and swam over to the city. A short distance above our halting-place the Cloaca Maxima, a huge, arched opening upon the brink, debouches into the river, still doing service as the chief sewer of Rome.
Macaulay does well to tell us that the current of Father Tiber was “swollen high by mouths of rain” when recounting the exploit of Horatius Coccles. The ramparts from which the Romans frowned upon their foes exist no longer, but the low-lying river gives no exalted estimate of their altitude when
“To the highest turret-tops
Was splashed the yellow foam.”
“In point of fact,” as the Average Briton would say, the Tiber is a lazy, muddy water-course, not half as wide, I should say, as the Thames, and less lordly in every way. At its best, i. e., its fullest, it is never grand or dignified; a sulky, unclean parent Rome should be ashamed to claim.
“How dirty Horatius’ clothes must have been when he got out!” said Boy, seriously, eying with strong disfavor the “tawny mane,” sleek to oiliness in the calm afternoon light.
Dredging-boats moor fast to the massive piers of the Pons Sublicius, better known to us as the Horatian Bridge. They were always at work upon the oozy bed of the river, to what end, we could never discover.