Horatius at the Bridge

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Then out 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,

…Cincinnatus,” the French traveller Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville wrote after visiting George Washington at Mount Vernon in 1788. “The comparison is doubtless just. The celebrated General is nothing more at present than a good farmer, constantly occupied in the care of his farm and the improvement of cultivation.”1

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7 thoughts on “Horatius at the Bridge”

    1. George Washington is the single greatest leader who ever lived. In the history of the world, he is the GOAT.

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  2. Simon, when I look at this post on the feed, it just says “Test.” But then when I click on it, the post comes up and the word “Test” is nowhere to be found. This seems a little strange? Just a heads up.

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  3. I just encountered this poem very recently. What a coinky -dink!
    I don’t know what I read that pointed me toward two videos. One was Aleksandr Dugin, speaking about the importance of diversity—cep’n he meant that cultures from different areas of the world ARE diverse— and they should stay that way. In other words he’s anti-multiculturalism.
    In the other lecture, a British professor quoted this poem, by way of saying kinda the same thing: why would people fight, except in defense of their homes and the culture which produced them? What else is worth it, in individual terms?
    I think this poem is one “every schoolboy” used to have to read, or memorize, or at least they’d know the basic outlines of how Horatius held the Tuscans from crossing a bridge across the Tiber into Rome, standing there with just 2 companions, until the Romans could destroy the bridge from the other side. Then of course he fell into the Tiber, with a spear in one buttock, in full armor, but STILL managed to swim back to the Roman side! It was like “The boy stood on the burning deck..” and I don’t eVen know, I’ll hafta trace down the poem which opens with those lines.
    So test or not, thank you for this!

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    1. And PS I did look it up. One word to the wise:Don’t. It’ll make you 😢 . See,the boy is waiting for his father’s word to abandon ship, but dad is already dead belowdecks. So the poor kid stands there and burns to death. “Casabianca”, Felicia Hermans, 1826.

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    2. Not a test. Current events in America make me long for our own national heroes such as Rome’s Horatius. George Washington comes to mind, but we can’t look up to him because, you know, slavery.

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