Lays of Ancient Rome Free online reading

Lays of Ancient Rome is an 1842 collection of narrative poems by Thomas Babington Macaulay. Four of these: Horatius, The Battle of Lake Regillus, Virginia and The Prophecy of Capys cover heroic episodes from early Roman history. They have brief introductions that treat the legends from a scholarly perspective.

Two others deal with more recent historical events: Ivry, a Song of the Huguenots, deals with French history, and The Armada: A Fragment, is about the Spanish fleet sent to subdue England. They became immensely popular in Victorian England, and were standard reading in British public schools for more than a century.