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Lays of ancient Romewith Ivry and The Armada
eng, Pages 100. Reprinted in 2013 with the help of original edition published long back. This book is in black & white, Hardcover, sewing binding for longer life with Matt laminated multi-Colour Dust Cover, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, there may be some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. (Customisation is possible). Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. Original Lays of ancient Rome with Ivry and The Armada [Hardcover], Original Macaulay
- GenresPoetry
100 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 23, 2023
I bought my 1897 copy of Lord Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome" at David's bookstall in Cambridge's marketplace fifty years ago. It appealed to me because of its beautiful illustrations by J. R. Weguelin in the classical style. It travelled with me on my first journey to Ireland. I well remember the site director of the archaeological dig I was on teasing me that he was surprised I was reading such a raunchy book! The five lays it contains are on heroic themes beloved of schoolboys, and are written in an old-fashioned style, with rhymes and rhythms evoking memories of schooldays, learning poems by heart. Indeed my copy of "Horatius" has a tick against each verse, as if someone had marked them off one by one as they were committed to memory. A treasured volume which has been my companion for two thirds of my life, this book is still a pleasure to hold and to read.
June 21, 2020
Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome' are remarkable in several ways. The well-known 'Horatius' (aka 'Horatius at the Bridge') is glorious, memorable, stirring, heroic, in lovely rolling ballad-type stanzas:
Then up spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?"
Great stuff! But the second remarkable thing is how bad the rest of the material in the volume is. The poetry is uninteresting, and the pure heroism of 'Horatius' is replaced either gods winning the human battle, or by a girl being 'saved' from being despoiled by a tyrant by her father killing her when the three are together in the Forum, or by the poems deteriorating into blathery fragments.
He was wordy from an early age. The story is told of him that, uninterested in toys, he was reading avidly by the age of three, and he already talked like a book. When hot coffee was accidentally spilled on his legs and a kindly woman asked if he was all right, he replied, ‘Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.’
The third way in which this volume is remarkable is in the main Preface and in the shorter prefaces to each of the poems, especially 'Horatius'. Here Macaulay lectures in detail on a universal process of ballad creation in preliterate societies (and the value of verse for memorisation), their subsequent devaluation when higher standards of literacy come in, and finally their loss or partial recovery. He recounts the differences between two ballads of the Battle of Otterburn which have quie different outcomes for the protagonists, even though both ballads were probably written by people who were alive at the time of the battle.
And in a throw-away paragraph he inadvertently highlights the changes in education and culture that have taken place in the past 150 years: "The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin" (to these five he adds a further 23 examples, ending with) "the combat between Valerius Corvus and the gigantic Gaul, are among the many instances which will at once suggest themselves to every reader."
Well, that was then, this is now. But 'Horatius' itself has a timeless quality to it.
Then up spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?"
Great stuff! But the second remarkable thing is how bad the rest of the material in the volume is. The poetry is uninteresting, and the pure heroism of 'Horatius' is replaced either gods winning the human battle, or by a girl being 'saved' from being despoiled by a tyrant by her father killing her when the three are together in the Forum, or by the poems deteriorating into blathery fragments.
He was wordy from an early age. The story is told of him that, uninterested in toys, he was reading avidly by the age of three, and he already talked like a book. When hot coffee was accidentally spilled on his legs and a kindly woman asked if he was all right, he replied, ‘Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.’
The third way in which this volume is remarkable is in the main Preface and in the shorter prefaces to each of the poems, especially 'Horatius'. Here Macaulay lectures in detail on a universal process of ballad creation in preliterate societies (and the value of verse for memorisation), their subsequent devaluation when higher standards of literacy come in, and finally their loss or partial recovery. He recounts the differences between two ballads of the Battle of Otterburn which have quie different outcomes for the protagonists, even though both ballads were probably written by people who were alive at the time of the battle.
And in a throw-away paragraph he inadvertently highlights the changes in education and culture that have taken place in the past 150 years: "The early history of Rome is indeed far more poetical than anything else in Latin literature. The loves of the Vestal and the God of War, the cradle laid among the reeds of Tiber, the fig-tree, the she-wolf, the shepherd's cabin" (to these five he adds a further 23 examples, ending with) "the combat between Valerius Corvus and the gigantic Gaul, are among the many instances which will at once suggest themselves to every reader."
Well, that was then, this is now. But 'Horatius' itself has a timeless quality to it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews