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Updated: May 1, 2025
They took Janiculum; but Horatius Cocles, with two companions, posted himself at the entrance of the bridge, and kept the place, Horatius remaining until the bridge had been torn away behind him. He then, with his armor on, leaped into the river, and swam back to the shore. The town was hard pressed by the enemy and by famine. Mucius Scaevola went into Porsena's camp, resolved to kill him.
Cocles remained in M. Morrel's service, and a most singular change had taken place in his position; he had at the same time risen to the rank of cashier, and sunk to the rank of a servant.
The side-walls he painted in his own manner; one with figures of Fabius Maximus, Socrates, Numa Pompilius, F. Camillus, Pythagoras, Trajan, L. Sicinius, the Spartan Leonidas, Horatius Cocles, Fabius, Sempronius, the Athenian Pericles, and Cincinnatus.
Him thou couldst espy like one who chafes and like one who threatens, because Cocles dared to tear down the bridge, and Cloelia broke her bonds and swam the river. Highest of all Manlius, warder of the Tarpeian fortress, stood with the temple behind him and held the high Capitoline; and the thatch of Romulus' palace stood rough and fresh.
We fancied, too, that we could discern, a little farther down the river, the ruined and almost submerged piers of the Sublician bridge, which Horatius Cocles defended. The Tiber here whirls rapidly along, and Horatius must have had a perilous swim for his life, and the enemy a fair mark at his head with their arrows.
I took the book, and found in the legends of Brutus, and Cocles, and Scaevola, and the retreat to the Mons Sacer, and the Gladiator's war, what The Cause was, and forgot awhile in those tales of antique heroism and patriotic self-sacrifice my own selfish longings and sorrows.
I will speak of the oldest things first, as I was earnest to see something of Rome in its very early days, if possible; for example the Sublician Bridge, defended by Cocles when the infant republic, like their favourite Hercules in his cradle, strangled the serpent despotism: and of this bridge some portion may yet be seen when the water is very low.
Never was more honorable surname than his, of Cocles, or the one-eyed; and though his lameness prevented him from ever being a Consul, or leading an army, he was so much beloved and honored by his fellow citizens, that in the time of a famine each Roman, to the number of 300,000, brought him a day's food, lest he should suffer want.
He was, however, the same Cocles, good, patient, devoted, but inflexible on the subject of arithmetic, the only point on which he would have stood firm against the world, even against M. Morrel; and strong in the multiplication-table, which he had at his fingers' ends, no matter what scheme or what trap was laid to catch him.
On the approach of the enemy, they all withdrew for protection from the country into the city, and protected the city itself with military garrisons. Some parts seemed secured by the walls, others by the Tiber between. The Sublician bridge well-nigh afforded a passage to the enemy, had it not been for one man, Horatius Cocles: in him the protecting spirit of Rome on that day found a defence.
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