ons and Bacchanals seem to live. The theatres and
temples of the Greek and the Roman were degraded into the
quarries of the Turk and the Goth. Even so did the ancient
Saturnian poetry become the quarry in which a crowd of orators
and annalists found the materials for their prose.

It is not difficult to trace the process by which the old songs
were transmuted into the form which they now wear. Funeral
panegyric and chronicle appear to have been the intermediate
links which connected the lost ballads with the histories now
extant. From a very early period it was the usage that an oration
should be pronounced over the remains of a noble Roman. The
orator, as we learn from Polybius, was expected, on such
occasions, to recapitulate all the services which the ancestors
of the deceased had, from the earliest time, rendered to the
commonwealth. There can be little doubt that the speaker on whom
this duty was imposed would make use of all the stories suited to
his purpose which were to be found in the popular lays. There can
be as little doubt that the family of an eminent man would
preserve a copy of the speech which had been pronounced over his
corpse. The compilers of the early chronicles would have recourse
to these speeches; and the great historians of a later period
would have recourse to the chronicles.

It may be worth while to select a particular story, and to trace
its probable progress through these stages. The description of
the migration of the Fabian house to Cremera is one of the finest
of the many fine passages which lie thick in the earlier books of
Livy. The Consul, clad in his military garb, stands in the
vestibule of his house, marshalling his clan, three hundred and
six fighting men, all of the same proud patrician blood, all
worthy to be attended by the fasces, and to command the legions.
A sad and anxious retinue of friends accompanies the adventurers
through the streets; but the voice of lamentation is drowned by
the shouts of admiring thousands. As the procession passes the
Capitol, prayers and vows are poured forth, but in vain. The
devoted band, leaving Janus on the right, marches to its doom,
through the Gate of Evil Luck. After achieving high deeds of
valor against overwhelming numbers, all perish save one child,
the stock from which the great Fabian race was destined again to
spring, for the safety and glory of the commonwealth. That this
fine romance, the details of which are so full of poetic