undisturbed quite up to the Janiculum Hill on his march to Rome. There
he found himself separated from the object of his long struggle only by
the wooden bridge. We may picture to ourselves the city stirred to its
centre by the fearful prospect before it. The bridge that had been of
so much use, that the pontifices had so carefully built and preserved,
must be cut away, or all was lost. At this critical juncture, the brave
Horatius Cocles, with one on either hand, kept the enemy at bay while
willing arms swung the axes against the supports of the structure, and
when it was just ready to fall uttered a prayer to Father Tiber,
plunged into the muddy torrent, fully armed as he was, and swam to the
opposite shore amid the plaudits of the rejoicing people, as related in
the ballad of Lord Macaulay. Then it was, too, that the people
determined to erect a bridge which could be more readily removed in
case of necessity. Baffled in this attempt to enter Rome, the enemy
laid siege to the city, and as it was unprepared, it soon suffered the
distress of famine. Then another brave man arose, Caius Mucius by name,
and offered to go to the camp of the invaders and kill the hated king.
He was able to speak the Etruscan language, and felt that a little
audacity was all that he needed to carry his mission out safely. Though
he went boldly, he killed a secretary dressed in purple, instead of his
master, and was caught and threatened with torture. Putting his right
hand into the fire on the altar near by, he held it there until it was
destroyed, [Footnote: Mucius was after this called Scævola, the left-
handed.] and said that suffering had no terrors for him, nor for three
hundred of his companions who had all vowed to kill the king. The Roman
writers say that, thereupon Porsena took hostages from them and made
peace. It is true that peace was made, but Rome was forced to agree not
to use iron except in cultivating the earth, and she lost ten of her
thirty "regions," being all the territory that the kings had conquered
on the west bank of the Tiber. [Footnote: See Niebuhr's