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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Porsena Biography PORSENA, or PORSENNA, LARS. In the early and uncertain history of Rome, a powerful King of Clusium (now Chiusi, q.v.) in Etruria. According to the legend told by Livy, when Tarquin the Proud was expelled from Rome he sought the help of his Etruscan kinsmen, in Veii and Tarquinii, against his revolted subjects; but, their efforts not proving successful, he turned to Porsena, who willingly espoused his cause, and marched with a great army against Rome. The Etruscan King seized the Janiculum, a fortified hill on the west side of the Tiber, and would have forced his way into the city across the Bridge of Wooden Piles (pons sublicius), had not a brave Roman, Horatius Cocles, kept the whole of Porsena's army at bay while his comrades behind him hewed down the bridge (see HORATH), after which he plunged into the Tiber and safely swam across it. Porsena now laid siege to Rome, and after a while the inhabitants began to suffer so severely from famine that they had recourse to a desperate expedient. Three hundred of the noblest Roman youths swore to risk their lives in an attempt to assassinate the Etruscan King. The first on whom the lot fell was C. Mucius, who stole into the camp of Porsena, but, not knowing the King, killed his secretary instead. He was instantly seized and put to torture; but the unshrinking audacity with which he thrust his hand into the fire and let it burn moved the King so much that he pardoned him, whereupon Mucius, ever afterward called Scævola (the left-handed), told him of the jeopardy in which he was placed. Porsena resolved to make peace with Rome at once, and his conditions being accepted by the sorely pressed citizens, he withdrew his forces. This version of the story is believed by many scholars to have been invented to conceal the fact of a temporary Etruscan conquest of Rome, and the evidence in favor of this view is overwhelming. Tacitus expressly affirms that Porsena conquered the city; Dionysius informs us that the Senate sent him an ivory sceptre, a golden crown, and a triumphal robe, which was the form that had been adopted by the Etruscan cities themselves of acknowledging the supremacy of the Roman King, Tarquinius Priscus; and Pliny mentions that Porsena forbade the citizens of Rome to use iron except for agricultural purposes. What seems most reasonable to believe is that a great rising of the Etruscan races against the Latin took place and that Rome was exposed to the first brunt of the war and suffered a disastrous defeat, but that shortly afterward the Etruscans themselves were decisively beaten and were forced back into their own territories; for, after the conquest of Rome, Aruns, a son of Porsena, proceeded against Aricia, under the walls of which city (according to Livy) his army was routed by the combined forces of the Latin cities: with the help of Greek auxiliaries from Cumæ. Consult: Livy, ii, 9-15; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates, v, 21-34: G. Lewis, Inquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History (London, 1855); A. Schwegler, Römische Geschichte (2d ed., 1867-73); E. Pais, Storia di Roma, vol. i (Rome, 1898-99). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XIX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 61. |