This is not the way that a modern army would have acted.
Valerius returned to Rome in triumph, and the matrons mourned Brutus as
the avenger of Lucretia, an entire year.
This is the time of heroes and of highly ornamented lays, and we are
not surprised to find truth covered up beneath a mass of fulsome
bombast. It is related that Tarquinius now obtained the help of Prince
or Lars Porsena of Clusium in Etruria, and with a large army proceeded
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.
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