Macaulay’s “Lays of Ancient Rome,” of which this is the first, deal only with the legends that Rome in her greatness liked to tell concerning her early beginnings. Unfortunately there is no similar group of poems treating of Imperial Rome, the centre of a world-empire; but children must please not think of the Mistress of the World purely as a little riverside town which could free itself from outside trouble by chopping down a wooden bridge.
Horatius
Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the Nine Gods he swore
That the great house of Tarquin
Should suffer wrong no more.
By the Nine Gods he swore it,
And named a trysting day,