Praetor's Song.

In enterprise of martial kind
When there was any fighting,
He led his regiment from behind,
He found it less exciting."

—"Gondoliers."

Air: Recit. and Song (Ludwig) with Chorus in "Grand Duke."

Recit.
Behold, my friends, a Praetor much admired;
My armour's rather rusty, but it's hired.
Pray don't mistake, I'm not a wandering showman,
But kindly recollect I am a Roman.

Song.
We've been growing strong and famous
Since the days when playful Remus,
For his puerile behaviour, was irrevocably slain;
We're a race of burly fighters,
Though of course there are some blighters
Who regard this soldier business as peculiarly insane.
Aye, the men about the Tiber Are of tough and hardy fibre,
They're at home behind the rampart or when storming down a ridge.
You have heard about Horatius, If you've not, why then, good gracious,
He's at present doing six months hard for keeping someone's bridge.

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There are Caesar and Valerius,
And Rordonius Tiberius,
And the ever genial Cato, who while feeling rather bored,
Or while suffering from lumbago,
Cried "Delenda est Carthago,"
And his namesake Uticensis who descended on his sword.
And we also sail per mare,
On our galleys rowed by slaves;
O our tars are rich and tarry,
And Romannia rules the waves.
Tho' the Roman quinqueremis,
Doesn't seem the thing that steam is, Bis. second time with chorus.
Her surpassing breadth of beam is
Such a comfort on the waves.

I've no doubt you'd like to learn all
Of our State's affairs internal,
if we wield the rod of office as we wield our trusty swords;
So I'll start with poor old Gracchus,
Who, no devotee of Bacchus,
Introduced a Roman budget and was murdered by the lords.
Then our methods of election
Have not yet attained perfection,
For our memories and our purses must be uniformly long;
We must know papa or may be
Kiss ten thousand miles of baby,
See a joke or tell a story, sing the latest comic song.
As for higher education,
It's a blot on all the nation
That our youth for erudition fly to Athens, run to Greece.
Where the baby from its bottle
Takes to reading Aristotle,
And the sole uneducated are the soldiers and police.
Now the Senate is a body
Most deserving of applause;
Roman punch and whisky toddy
Smoothly alternate with laws;
Oft reformers Herculean
Start reforming by the aeon,
But a flight from Rock Tarpeian
Points the virtue of our laws. Bis. second time with chorus.

As to family relations
In this Queen of all the nations,
O, we aren't at all effusive with our "darlings" and our "pets";
But the Lares and Penates,
Are the most important parties,
And the Patria Potestas won't encourage suffragettes.
The stern papa familias
Who deems his son a silly ass
And not at all the kind of chap his father's son should be,
Or a pampered molly-coddle,
Taps him firmly on the noddle,
And the Tiber bears his corpus to the blue Tyrrhenian Sea.

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But the son whose tastes are classic
In Falernian and Massic,
And who spots a likely winner, pater couldn't do without;
An hereditas damnosa
Sets that gilded youth a poser,
How to keep the family chattels a canale (from the spout).
Now my song's been long and flowy,
And as airy as the foam,
But I havn't mentioned Chloe
And the little girls of Rome.
Yet I love to think of Pyrrha
As she sits before her mirror
Tinkling sweetly on her lyra,
And I'm going back to Rome. Bis. second time with chorus.