atius, Lartius, and Herminius--guarding
the bridge while their fellow-citizens were fleeing across it, three men
against a whole army. At last the weapons of Lartius and Herminius were
broken down, and Horatius bade them hasten over the bridge while it
could still bear their weight. He himself fought on till he was wounded
in the thigh, and the last timbers of the bridge were falling into the
stream. Then spreading out his arms, he called upon Father Tiber to
receive him, leapt into the river and swam across amid a shower of
arrows, one of which put out his eye, and he was lame for life. A statue
of him "halting on his thigh" was set up in the temple of Vulcan, and he
was rewarded with as much land as one yoke of oxen could plough in a
day, and the 300,000 citizens of Rome each gave him a day's provision of
corn.

Porsena then blockaded the city, and when the Romans were nearly
starving he sent them word that he would give them food if they would
receive their old masters; but they made answer that hunger was better
than slavery, and still held out. In the midst of their distress, a
young man named Caius Mucius came and begged leave of the consuls to
cross the Tiber and go to attempt something to deliver his country. They
gave leave, and creeping through the Etruscan camp he came into the
king's tent just as Porsena was watching his troops pass by in full
order. One of his counsellors was sitting beside him so richly dressed
that Mucius did not know which was king, and leaping towards them, he
stabbed the counsellor to the heart. He was seized at once and dragged
before the king, who fiercely asked who he was, and what he meant by
such a crime.

The young man answered that his name was Caius Mucius, and that he was
ready to do and dare anything for Rome. In answer to threats of torture,
he quietly stretched out his right hand and thrust it into the flame
that burnt in a brazier close by, holding it there without a sign of
pain, while he bade Porsena see what a Roman thought of suffering.

Porsena was so struck that he at once gave the daring man his life, his
freedom, and even his dagger; and Mucius then told him that three
hundred youths like himself had sworn to have his life unless he left
Rome to her liberty. This was false, but both the lie and the murder
were for Rome's sake; they were both admired by the Romans, who held
that the welfare of their city was their very first duty. Mucius could
never use his right