The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P Part 45

1.--Page 243, stanza xlviii.

_Pa.s.s from the spear-storm to The Golden Hall!_

Walhalla.

2.--Page 243, stanza xlix.

_Were cross'd by SKULDA, in the baleful skein._

Skulda, the Norna, or Destiny, of the Future.

3.--Page 243, stanza xlix.

_Of him who dares 'The Choosers of the Slain.'_

The Valkyrs, the Choosers of the Slain, who ride before the battle, and select its victims; to whom, afterwards (softening their character), they administer in Walhalla.

4.--Page 245, stanza lx.

_When Caesar bridged with marching steel the Rhine._

Plut. _in vit. Caes._--CaeS. _Comment._ lib. iv.

5.--Page 246, stanza lxxi.

_So bloom'd the Hours, when from the heaving sea._

Hom. _Hymn_.

6.--Page 246, stanza lxxii.

_Or shy Napaeae, startled from their sleep._

Napaeae, the most bashful of all the rural nymphs; their rare apparition was supposed to produce delirium in the beholder.

7.--Page 247, stanza lxxv.

_A wise Etrurian chief, forewarn'd ('twas said) By his dark Caere, from the danger fled._

Caere of the twelve cities in the Etrurian league (though not originally an Etrurian population), imparted to the Romans their sacred mysteries: hence the word Caeremonia. This holy city was in close connection with Delphi. An interesting account of it under its earlier name "Agylla," will be found in Sir W. Gell's "Topography of Rome and its vicinity." The obscure pa.s.sage in Plutarch's life of Sylla, which intimates that the Etrurian soothsayers had a forewarning of the declining fates of their country, is well known to scholars; who have made more of it than it deserves.

I may as well observe that the adjective _Lartian_ is derived from _Lars_ (or lord), in contradistinction to the adjective _Larian_ derived from _Lar_ (or household G.o.d).

8.--Page 248, stanza lx.x.xi.

_His rod the Augur waves above the ground, And cries, "In Tina's name I bless the soil._"

Tina was the Jove of the Etrurians. The mode in which this people (whose mysterious civilization so tasks our fancy and so escapes from our researches) appropriated a colony, is briefly described in the text. The Augur made lines in the air due north, south, east, and west, marked where the lines crossed upon the earth; then he and the chiefs a.s.sociated with him sate down, covered their heads, and waited some approving omen from the G.o.ds. The Etrurian Augurs were celebrated for their power over the electric fluid. The vulture was a popular bird of omen in the founding of colonies. See NIEBUHR, MULLER, &c.

9.--Page 248, stanza lx.x.xiv.

_Tombs only speak the Etrurian's language;--hurl'd._

The Etrurian language perished between the age of Augustus and that of Julian.--LEITCH'S _Muller on Ancient Art_.

10.--Page 248, stanza lx.x.xiv.

_To dust the shrines of Naith;--the serpents hiss._

Naith, the Egyptian G.o.ddess.

11.--Page 249, stanza lx.x.xix.

_The Hister's lyre still thrill'd with Camsee's lays._

Hister, the Etruscan minstrel.--CAMSEE, CAMESE, or CAMOESE, the mythological sister of Ja.n.u.s (a national deity of the Etrurians), whose art of song is supposed to identify her with the Camoena or muse of the Latin poets.--ARRETIUM, celebrated for the material of the Etruscan vases.

12.--Page 249, stanza xciii.

_and all the honours of the race Lend their last bloom to smile in aegle's face._

The Etrurians paid more respect to women than most of the cla.s.sical nations, and admitted females to the throne. The Augur (a purely Etruscan name and office) was the highest power in the state. In the earlier Etruscan history, the Augur and the king were unquestionably united in one person. Latterly, this does not appear to have been necessarily (nor perhaps generally) the case. The king (whether we call him lars or luc.u.mo), as well as the augur, was elected out of a certain tribe, or clan; but in the strange colony described in the poem, it is supposed that the rank has become hereditary in the family of the chief who headed it, as would probably have been the case even in more common-place settlements in another soil. Thus, the first Etrurian colonist, Tarchun, no doubt had his successors in his own lineage.

I cannot a.s.sert that aegle is a purely Etruscan name; it is one common both with the Greeks and Latins. In Apollodorus (ii. 5) it is given to one of the Hesperides, and in Virgil (Eclog. vi. l. 20) to the fairest of the Naiads, the daughter of the sun; but it is not contrary to the conformation of the Etruscan language, as, by the way, many of the most popular Latinized Etruscan words are, such as _Luc.u.mo_, for Lauchme; and even Porsena, or, as Virgil (contrary to other authorities) spells and p.r.o.nounces it, Pors[~e]nna (a name which has revived to fresh fame in Mr. Macaulay's n.o.ble "Lays") is a sad corruption; for, as both Niebuhr and Sir William G. remark, the Etruscans had no _o_ in their language. Pliny informs us that they supplied its place by the _v_. I apprehend that an Etrurian would have spelt Porsena _Pvrsna_.[B]

13.--Page 250, stanza xcvii.

_The G.o.ds had care of their Tagetian child!_

Tages--the tutelary genius of the Etrurians. They had a n.o.ble legend that Tages appeared to Tarchun, rising from a furrow beneath his plough, with a man's head and a child's body; sung the laws destined to regulate the Etrurian colonist, then sunk, and expired. In Ovid's Metamorphoses (xvi. 533) Tages is said to have first taught the Etrurians to foretell the future.

14.--Page 250, stanza c.

_The fane of Mantu form'd the opposing bound._

MANTU, or MANDU, the Etrurian G.o.d of the Shades.

15.--Page 251, stanza ciii.

_He leaves the bright hall where the aesars dwell._

aesars, the name given _collectively_ to the Etrurian deities.--SUET.

AUG. 97. DIO. Ca.s.s. xxvi. p. 589.

16.--Page 251, stanza cv.

_Of that bright Wanderer from the Olympian sky._