HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
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The Riverside Press, Cambridge

Educ T 853.260,464

COLLEGE

HARVARD
OCT 25 1919

LIBRARY

Copyright, 1890,
BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass, U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

MACA

ACAULAY'S Lays of Ancient Rome is something more than a bit of pastime of a famous writer, though it partakes of this character. Macaulay, like other Englishmen of his class and training, was steeped in a knowledge of classic literature and history, which he read with his eye on English history and politics. Scholarship, since his day, has become more specialized, and it is not common to find a man of letters so conversant with Roman life that he would turn easily from his ordinary work of writing modern history, for example, or literary essays, to the half-serious, half-entertaining task of composing imaginary ancient ballads. With Macaulay, Latin literature was a familiar field for recreation, and, his mind having been turned to questions upon the historic basis of early Roman legends, a subject much discussed in his day, threw off these Lays, and accompanied them with introductory essays intended to establish his position upon grounds of scholarship. The entire body of Lays is, in effect, a long essay with poetic illustrations; but the illustrations appeal so directly to the imagination, and to the love of poetic narrative, that frequently they are printed separately without comment.

- he

In preparing an edition for the use of American school-boys and school-girls, many of whom will be in

terested without having had any training in the classics,
it has been thought best to give the prose introductions,
not in full, since they contain matter incidental to the
theme rather than essential, but so far forth as they serve
to explain Macaulay's position, and to account for the ac-
tion of the stories. In one or two instances the editor
has supplemented these introductions, enclosing his ad-
ditions in brackets []. He has also furnished a few
explanatory notes, and in preparing them he has been
under obligation to an edition for schools, edited by
Sir G. W. Cox, and published in London in 1884. The
reader will notice that many passages which might
otherwise require annotation will be made clear by an
attentive study of Macaulay's introductions.

LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME.

THAT

INTRODUCTION.

HAT what is called the history of the kings and early consuls of Rome is to a great extent fabulous, few scholars have, since the time of Beaufort, ventured to deny. It is certain that, more than three hundred and sixty years after the date ordinarily assigned for the foundation of the city, the public records were, with scarcely an exception, destroyed by the Gauls. It is certain that the oldest annals of the commonwealth were compiled more than a century and a half after the destruction of the records. It is certain, therefore, that the great Latin writers of a later period did not possess those materials without which a trustworthy account of the infancy of the republic could not possibly be framed. They own, indeed, that the chronicles to which they had access were filled with battles that were never fought, and consuls that were never inaugurated; and we have abundant proof that, in those chronicles, events of the greatest importance, such as the issue of the war with Porsena, and the issue of the war with Brennus, were grossly misrepresented. Under these circumstances a wise man will look with great suspicion on the legend which has come down to us. He will, perhaps, be inclined to regard the princes who