HISTORICAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES TO CANTO II.
For the incidents from ancient Spanish history with which this Canto opens, the reader is referred to Livy (lib. xxi. et Epit.) or to Ferguson’s Roman Republic, where a full account will be found of the ever-memorable Sieges of Saguntum and Numantia. The ruins of Saguntum (Liv. loc. cit.) or Sagunthus (Sil. Ital. lib. i.) are still visible on the sea coast, a little to the north of Valencia. The site of Numantia, having a much more central position, a few miles north of Soria, capital of the small province of that name in the eastern part of Old Castile, is more conjectural than that of Sagunthus. The name of Numantia is erroneously spelled “Numantium” in Mr. Lockhart’s Ancient Spanish Ballads, a work of extraordinary merit, notwithstanding a few inaccuracies. The particulars of the siege of Numantia are to be found in the 57th Epitome of Livy’s lost books. The Moorish invasion under Tarik, the fall of Roderick, and the struggles of Pelayo, are described or alluded to by Byron, Scott, and Southey. The scene in the Vale of Covadonga is one of the finest passages in the latter’s poem of Roderick, where huge masses of rock are hurled down on the advancing Moorish host at the signal of the following words pronounced by the heroine:
—“In the name
Of God! For Spain and vengeance!”
Southey, Roderick. book xxiii.
The fight at Roncesvalles is the most memorable in the entire range of Romantic History, and has been alluded to, amongst other poets, by Pulci, Ariosto, Milton, Scott, and Lockhart. The siege of Zaragoza will be found described in detail in a succeeding canto. The ferocity displayed by the Moors in their invasion appears to have been not at all exaggerated by the Spanish chroniclers, and it is curious that this fierceness of aspect should have been noticed many centuries before by Horace:
Acer et Mauri peditis cruentum
Vultus in hostem.