Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
He hides on the Aventine, and the Aventine is stormed. He escapes by the Sublician bridge and the bridge is held behind him by one friend, almost as Horatius held it against an army. Yet the nobles and their hired Cretan bowmen force the way and pursue him into Furina's grove. There a Greek slave ends him, and to get more gold fills the poor head with metal and is paid in full.
Years ago, one might still distinctly see in the Tiber the remains of piers, when the water was low, at the foot of the Aventine, a little above the Ripa Grande; and those who saw them looked on the very last vestige of the Sublician Bridge, that is to say, of the stone structure which in later times took the place of the wooden one; and that last trace has been destroyed to deepen the little harbour.
The Sublician bridge well-nigh afforded a passage to the enemy, had it not been for one man, Horatius Cocles, given by fortune on that day as a defense of Rome.
On May fifteenth the Vestals were the chief figures in a solemn procession of the entire Roman hierarchy to the Sublician bridge, from which the Vestals threw into the Tiber thirty dolls made of rushes, fifteen representing men, fifteen women, each about two feet high.
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.
The blood of Vercingetorix and of Sejanus is on the rocky floor. Men say that Saint Peter was imprisoned here. But because he was not of high degree Nero's executioners led him out across the Forum and over the Sublician bridge, up to the heights of Janiculum. He was then very old and weak, so that he could not carry his cross, as condemned men were made to do.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking