For the Ashes of his Fathers, and the Temples of his Gods

The second year of the newborn Roman Republic saw the banished king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, seek to restore his monarchy with the aid of Lars Porsenna, the powerful Etruscan king of Clusium. A large Etruscan army took up arms against Rome and quickly captured the Janiculum Hill, strategic high ground west of the Tiber River. From there they prepared to attack the Pons Sublicius, a wooden bridge that spanned the Tiber and led directly to the market district and Roman Forum.

Publius Horatius Cocles—bearing the nickname One-Eyed—ordered his command of men to hack and burn the bridge and render it impassable. Horatius posted himself at the other end of the bridge with two others beside him, on the far side of the Tiber, to gain precious time for his soldiers to do their work. 

The trio made a wall of their shields and held the entrance of the bridge against a volley of spears and stones. Once the bridge began to teeter beneath Roman torch and ax, Horatius sent the two men standing with him back across the bridge to safety. 

Horatius alone held the bridge, facing the entire Etruscan army, whose leaders he challenged to come forth and meet him in single combat. He insulted them as servants of arrogant kings who would steal Roman liberty as surely as they had stolen Etruscan freedom.

With the Pons Sublicius crashing into the river behind him, Horatius turned toward the Tiber and prayed to the river god “to receive these arms and this thy soldier into the propitious stream.” He leapt into the swirling Tiber, armor and all, with archers unleashing a flurry of arrows as he swam to the other bank of the river and into the arms of a cheering crowd.

The painting by Charles Le Brun, Horatius Cocles Defending the Bridge, shows Horatius bravely fending off the Etruscans on a stone ledge, while desperate Romans collapse the wooden bridge behind him. Minerva, goddess of battle, floats above him with a staff in one hand and a crowning laurel wreath in the other. A river god reclines in the foreground, spilling water from a large vessel. The scene depicted is scant moments before the bridge collapses and Horatius plunges into the Tiber.

Rome granted its hero all the public land he could plow in a day and raised a bronze statue of him in the Comitium, the Roman assembly ground. During Porsenna’s subsequent siege of Rome, citizens deprived themselves of grain to assure Horatius did not go hungry. His legend came to embody classic Roman virtus—the qualities of courage and duty.

Was the story of Horatius fact or fiction? Lars Porsenna was a real Etruscan king, and he did lead a military campaign against Rome in 508 BC. Livy wrote that Porsenna attacked Rome to restore the exiled Roman tyrant Tarquin the Proud, but the bravery of Romans like Horatius so awed him that he abandoned the fight. 

Other ancient Roman writers, like Tacitus and Pliny the Elder, believed that Porsenna conquered Rome—and not to return the old king to power, but to take the city for himself. In their telling, Porsenna forced the Romans to surrender their weapons and banned them from using iron for anything other than farming.

Modern historians characterize the heroic stand of Horatius Cocles as a legend created to mask the humiliation of losing the war. It nonetheless became one of Rome’s most famous foundational myths and is still studied in military institutions such as West Point and Annapolis, where it serves as an example of tactical self-sacrifice and asymmetric warfare. It is often taught alongside Thomas Babington Macaulay’s famous poem from his 1842 collection, Lays of Ancient Rome. 

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.”