The Junior Classics, Volume 3: Tales from Greece and Rome
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 3: Tales from Greece and Rome
Children's literature; Mythology, Classical -- Juvenile literature
him to die.” Then again he besought them that they should not leave him
desolate and bereaved of his children, he who but the day before had
had so fair a stock. Afterward, throwing his arms about the young man,
he stretched out his hands to the spoils of the Curiatii, crying, “Will
ye endure, men of Rome, to see him bound under the gallows and beaten
with stripes whom ye beheld but yesterday adorned with these spoils and
rejoicing in his victory? Not so. Surely the men of Alba themselves had
not borne to see such a sight. Go, lictor, bind his hands, though but
yesterday they won so great a dominion for the people of Rome. Go, cover
the head of him that made this people free; hang him upon the accursed
tree; scourge him, whether within the walls, so that thou do it among the
spoils of them that he slew, or without the walls, so that it be near
to the sepulchers of the champions of Alba. Whither can ye take this
youth that the memorials of his valor shall not save him from so foul
a punishment?” And when the people saw the tears of the old man, and
bethought them also what great courage the youth had shown in danger,
they could not endure to condemn him; but regarding his valor rather than
the goodness of his cause, let him go free. Only, because the deed had
been so manifest, a command was laid upon the father that he should make
a trespass offering for his son at the public charge. Then the father,
having made certain sacrifices of expiation—which are performed to this
day in the house of Horatius—set up a beam across the way and covered his
son’s head, and led him beneath it. As for the maiden, they built her
tomb of hewn stone in the place where she was slain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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