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Part II Roedy of Coriolanus
Oe of the most popular of the ancient historians was Plutarch, a Greek as born in Chaeronea, a town about sixty miles northwest of Athens, in ad 46 In his ti passed the days of its military splendor and was utterly doht of its empire
Anxious to remind the Romans (and Greeks too) of what the Greeks had once been, Plutarch wrote a series of short biographies about ad 100 in which he dealt withcoendary unifier of the Attic peninsula under Athens, was paired with Roendary founder of Rome For this reason, the book is commonly called The Parallel Lives Plutarch's style is so pleasing that his book, with its gossipy stories about great historical figures, has remained popular ever since
It was put into English in 1579 (from a French version) by Sir Thomas North, who did it so well that his book turned out to be one of the prose e Shakespeare read it and used it as the basis for three of his plays He paid the translation the ulti its words in some cases They made almost perfect blank verse as they stood
Shakespeare wrote Coriolanus about 1608 and it was the last of his three Plutarchian plays Its subjectit first
The action opens in 494 bc (according to legend), only fifteen years after the rape of Lucrece, the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the establishe I-211) The events described in the play are therefore of extremely dubious value historically, for they take place a century before the destruction of the Roe I-204)
Nevertheless, with Plutarch's guidance, Shakespeare can draw upon a coh perhaps one that is too romantic to sound completely true
to die than to famish
Coriolanus opens in the streets of Roitation, carrying weapons So place and the men are desperate Their leader is called "First Citizen" in the play and he calls out to them:
You are all resolved
rather to die than to famish?
- Act I, scene i, lines 4-5
Only fifteen years before, King Tarquin had been driven out of Rome and the institution of the monarchy had been destroyed The Roman Republic was set up and was to last for five centuries Control was placed in the hands of the aristocracy (the "patricians"), with numerous checks and balances, to ain soand start the round of tyranny and revolt over again
That did not mean, however, that Rome had become a little corner of heaven The patricians, now that they had power in their hands, intended to keep it there They reserved to thehts, both political and economic, and yielded very little to the common people ("plebeians")
The plebeians in those days were sht the city's battles whenever duty called In the years after the first founding of the Republic, duty called frequently, for the exiled king tried to regain his position and ht for its life
As a result of those wars, though, the plebeian soldier lected, or even ravaged, and would be in need of capital to begin again The city did not consider itself economically responsible for its faret from the patricians were on harsh terms; and if they were not repaid, he and his family could be sold into slavery
Further to prevent the patricians (who had the capital for it) fro it to the plebeians at a profit, thus capitalizing on the general misfortune
It would be utterly inhuman to expect that the plebeians would sit still for all this Undoubtedly, their lot had worsened under the Republic and they found it intolerable that they were expected to give their lives for the patricians while getting nothing in return
The riotous citizens onstage are rebelling plebeians, then, and the First Citizen reminds them whom they are chiefly to blame for their misfortunes He cries out:
First you know, Caius Marcius
is chief enemy to the people
- Act I, scene i, lines 7-8
Caius Marcius is the proper naain the surname of Coriolanus under circumstances to be described later
Caius Marcius ca to Plutarch (in a passage Shakespeare quotes later in the play) he was a descendant of Ancus Marcius, the fourth king of Rome This did not , was necessarily a royalist
Roroups, in fact, with Ancus Marcius belonging to the older When he beca of a hundred of the older representatives of the various clans that roup of older men was the "Senate," so called from the Latin word for "old men" These senators were called "patricians" from the Latin word for "father," because they were, in theory, the fathers of the people The as then extended to all the old faht be drawn
According to tradition, Ancus Marcius brought in new colonists fro city could use the extra hands These, however, were not granted the political powers of the old Romans It was their descendants who became plebeians
Ancus Marcius was not succeeded by his sons, but by a king called Tarquinius Priscus ("Tarquin the Elder"), as an Etruscan from the north (The Etruscans to the north of Rome were at that time the dominant people in Italy, and the succession of Tarquinius Priscus n of Etruscan overlordship of Roends out of Roman pride)
Under Tarquinius Priscus, Ro increased at the expense of the patricians He was finally assassinated by those on the side of the old kings, but eventually the son of Tarquinius Priscus gained the throne This was the Tarquinius Superbus as expelled from Roe I-211)
Caius Marcius, by faainst the Tarquinian notion of ly pro-patrician and anti-plebeian
dog to the commonalty
When the Second Citizen, a less extreainst ai at Marcius particularly, the First Citizen replies firmly:
Against him first:
he's a very dog to the commonalty
- Act I, scene i, lines 28-29
This is the key to Marcius' character He is a "dog" to his enemies He snarls and bites Plutarch says of him: "he was so choleric and i creature, which ether unfit for any man's conversation"
That is his tragedy: the tragedy of his personality What he amed for the better qualities within hier and willfulness
It e that interested Shakespeare and made hie I-317), which he had written a year or so earlier, Shakespeare shows us a flawed hero, Mark Antony, who sacrificed honor and worldly ambition to love and to sexual passion In Coriolanus he shows us the reverse, a hero who served onlyto stand in his ith one exception)
Yet although Antony is loaded to the breaking point eaknesses, while Marcius is stuffed to the bursting point with virtues, we end by loving Antony and feeling a cold dislike for Coriolanus Surely Shakespeare is far too good a playwright to have done this by accident Might not Coriolanus be viewed as a frigid satire of the military virtues; as an example of Shakespeare's distaste for war, a distaste that shows through even the official idolatry of the English hero-king in Henry V (see page II-481)?
to please his mother
When the Second Citizen urges in Marcius' defense that he has served his country well, the First Citizen admits that much but insists it was not done for Rome He says:
though soft-conscienced men can be content
to say it was for his country,
he did it to please his mother
- Act I, scene i, lines 37-39
There is Marcius' one weakness He loves his mother And even that weakness is, looked at superficially, another piece of nobility Why should not a man love his mother? Certainly the United States of today, with its Mother's Day and its seue that to love one's , or even a weakness
Yet it is resses that the love-of-mother in Coriolanus' case is extreme It is the clearest case of an Oedipal fixation in Shakespeare, far clearer than in the dubious case of Hamlet
According to the legend, Marcius' father died while he was very young and the boy was then brought up by hisa close relationship between the Marcius, the only thing that made him to love honor was the joy he saw hisht hear everybody praise and coht always see hiht still e down her cheeks for joy"
This sort of thing, we can see, is not calculated to endear hih side of Marcius' tongue and the harsh side of his advice on policyhe did only to please his mother Let his mother reward him, not the people, and this is what the First Citizen see
Furthermore, Marcius' attitude as described by Plutarch and as adopted by Shakespeare is that of a boy, not a rew up, except physically Emotionally he remains a boy, not only with respect to hiselse If we are to understand the play, this point otten
To th'Capitol
While the citizens talk, there are shouts fro The First Citizen cries out impatiently:
Why slay we prating here?
To th'Capitol!
- Act I, scene i, lines 48-49
The city of Rome eventually spread out over seven hills One of the earliest to be occupied was the Capitoline Hill This had steep sides in soe temple to Jupiter was built upon it which could also serve as a last-ditch fortress
The na "head," and the legend arose that a head or skull was uncovered when the foundations of the te The Senate met in the Capitol fortress and so it was the center of the city's politics; in that sense the hill was the head (or most important part) of the city, and perhaps that is how the name really arose
Naturally, the plebeians would want to storm the Capitol and seize control of it
Worthy Menenius Agrippa
But now a patrician steps on the scene who is not assaulted He is a very unusual patrician; one who can speak to the people bluffly and pleasantly and make himself liked by therippa, and the Second Citizen identifies him at once as:
Worthy Menenius Agrippa,
one that hath always loved the people
- Act I, scene i, lines 52-53
Even the extremist First Citizen says, rather churlishly:
He's one honest enough;
would all the rest were so!
- Act I, scene i, lines 54-55
Menenius Agrippa's role in history (even the legendary history of the times before 390 bc, as purveyed by Livy and Plutarch) is confined to the one incident that is about to be related Nothing else is known of hi else about him in this play is Shakespeare's own invention
In the actual tale told by Livy and Plutarch, the occasion is not a brawl in the street but, in a way, so ether If Ro, she is not a true mother and the plebeians willhill and prepare to found a city of their own
This is a deadly danger for the patricians, for they need plebeian hands on the farms and in the arhboring city that is bound to becoht back and, for a wonder, the Senate tried persuasion and gentleness They sent Menenius Agrippa, a patrician with a reputation for good humor and with no record of animosity toward the plebeians
A pretty tale
Menenius urges the citizens to desist, saying the shortage of food is the fault of the gods, not of the patricians The First Citizen answers bitterly that the patricians have cornered the food rind the faces of the poor for their own profit We are strongly tempted to believe the First Citizen, for all he speaks in prose where Menenius orates La gentle pentameters, especially since Menenius drops the subject and decides to be more indirect He says:
/ shall tell you A pretty tale;
it may be you have heard it;
- Act I, scene i, lines 90-91
The tale he tells is the fable of the organs of the body rebelling against the belly The organs coets all the food The belly answers that it is his function to digest the food and send it out to all the body Without the belly, all the rest of the organs would weaken and die The Senate and the patricians are then coement of the commonwealth, the patricians distribute benefits to all
The fable may sound well, but surely to the plebeians of the ti, since it was precisely their co benefits to all the co them for themselves
Plutarch says of the tale, "These persuasions pacified the people conditionally" Note the word "conditionally" Words alone were not enough The people deot it
let me use my sword
Before Shakespeare gets to these refor on Marcius and display hies Menenius' greetings in the briefest possible way, and grates out harshly to the citizens:
What's the ues
That, nibbing the poor itch of your opinion,
Make yourself scabs?
- Act I, scene i, lines 165-67
Menenius is attended because he speaks gently Does Marcius think he can get anywhere by scolding? It doesn't matter whether he does or not, for there is no other way he can act, and the First Citizen indicates that by his dryly ironic rejoinder:
We have ever your good word
- Act I, scene i, line 167b
Marcius continues to rail, denouncing them as utterly untrustworthy He says:
Trust ye?
With every e a mind,
And call him noble that was now your hate,
Hiarland
- Act I, scene i, lines 182-85
This is, of course, a standard coainst the co This dates back to the Greek historians, who showed that the Athenian dees in its policies and that Athenian politicians suffered drastic changes in fortune at the hand of the fickle public-in contrast to the steady policies of Sparta, which was certainly no democracy (And yet ould prefer the death-in-life of Sparta to the brilliance of Athens?)
Rous ("fickle multitude") and about half a century after Shakespeare's death this was abbreviated to "erous and disorderly crowd of people Had Shakespeare had the use of the word it would undoubtedly have appeared somewhere in this speech
In Elizabethan England, with its strong oligarchy, the view of the public by "gentlemen" was very much like the view of the Roman patricians Shakespeare himself was born of a prosperous middle-class family and certainly held himself superior to those he considered plebeian Furthermore, he was patronized by the aristocracy and liked to identify himself with them
When, therefore, he had occasion to speak of the common people, he was rarely kind or syreasi-ness, and bad breath And he is never quite as unkind to them as in this play This is one reason why Coriolanus is not one of Shakespeare's more popular plays in modern times His social views embarrass mid-twentieth-century America
It may be that Shakespeare is antiplebeian in this play partly because of the conditions in England at the ti, Jalish throne now as Jaainst hiainst Jaainst his contention that decisions in religion were entirely in the hand of the King Those voices were to grow louder until (a generation after Shakespeare's death) they led England into revolution and James's son to the headsman's ax
If Shakespeare riting with at least part of his attention fixed on securing the approval of the aristocratic portion of his audience, on whose approval so much depended froainst the commons The application would be seen
The aainst the commons which Shakespeare possesses, for both personal and economic reasons, he does not therefore rity as a writer and his hatred of war forces Shakespeare to display Marcius' reaction to the commons as an overreaction, and the patrician champion loses us at the very start
His response to the cry of the people for food, to their protest that they are starving, is:
Would the nobility lay aside their ruth,
And let me use my sword, I'd make a quarry
With thousands of these quartered slaves, as high
As I could pick my lance
- Act I, scene i, lines 198-201
We are acquainted, of course, with people who think the proper answer to the protesting poor is the policeun Such people are difficult to like, and Marcius is one of them
Five tribunes
But then Marcius rumble forth the news that the patricians have not done as he would have liked theranted the plebeians a new kind of officer Marcius describes them as:
Five tribunes to defend their vulgar wisdoms,
Of their own choice One's Junius Brutus-
Sicinius Velutus, and-I know not
'Sdeath! The rabble should have first unroofed the city,
Ere so prevailed with me
- Act I, scene i, lines 216-20
It was the grant of the tribunes, rather than Menenius' fable, that brought the plebeians back to Rome The tribunes were officials drawn from the plebeian ranks and elected by the plebeians only Their purpose was to safeguard the interests of the plebeians and to keep the patricians fro laws they felt would be unfair to the coained the power of stopping laws they disapproved of byout "Veto!" ("I forbid!") Not all the power of the governainst a tribune's veto
Actually, the institutions of the Republic developed only gradually and received their familiar form only by 367 bc However, later Roman historians tended to push back several of the features into the undocuive them the added sanctity of extra ancient-ness The history of the tribunate during the fifth century bc is quite obscure and the supposed first tribunes listed by Plutarch (he names only two out of the five and Shakespeare follows him in this) make no mark in actual history
Is Junius Brutus a descendant or relative of the Lucius Junius Brutus who helped found the Republic (see page I-210)? From the name one would suppose so, yet if he were, he would be a patrician and it is of the essence that the tribunes are plebeians Or was there soendmakers that since a Junius Brutus was one of the first two consuls of the Republic, a Junius Brutus ought also to be one of the first two tribunes?
From the standpoint of the play, of course, it doesn't matter
the Volsces "
In any case, civil broils er hurries on the scene asking for Marcius He says:
The news is, sir, the Volsces are in arms
- Act I, scene i, line 225
At this early stage in their history, the Ro for the control of Latium, that section of west-central Italy that occupies a hundred miles of the coast southeast of Roe
The Volscians were the tribes occupying the southeastern half of Latiu with the other Latin tribes had been part of a loose confederacy headed by Rome, and it may be that all were more or less under Etruscan control With the expulsion of the Ro of the Etruscan hold, the Latin tribes squabbled ahout the fifth century bc and were in the end defeated In Marcius' ti,
A deputation of senators comes to see Marcius now He is their best warrior and they need his help Marcius has no illusions that the fight will be an easy one, for the Volscians have a gallant leader, Tullus Aufidius A senator says:
Then, worthy Marcius,
Attend upon Cominius to these wars
- Act I, scene i, lines 238-39
Cominius is one of the two consuls of Rome at this ti replaced the office of the ousted king The consuls were elected for a one-year term, since the Romans felt that one year was insufficient for any consul to build up a large enough personal following to serve in
Two consuls were chosen, rather than one, since the rule was that no action could be taken without agreement between them It seemed reasonable to suppose that neither consul could take any real steps toward tyranny without the other jealously stepping in to stop him
The chief duties of the consuls were to be in charge of the armed forces of Rome and to lead the Roman armies in warfare Cominius, as consul, was to be the army leader, and Marcius, as not a consul, would have to be a subordinate officer
The senators are clearly not at all certain that Marcius will agree to this; a commentary on his sullen spirit of self-absorption Cominius says hastily:
It is your former promise
- Act I, scene i, line 239
This tiives in at once and all sweep off the stage, leaving behind only the tly appointed tribunes, Sicinius and Brutus They had come in with the senators but had remained silent Left alone, they make it clear that they resent Marcius' pride and his harsh taunts
Sicinius wonders that Marcius can bear to serve as an underling with Coests a cynical interpretation, saying that Marcius shrewdly schemes to avoid responsibility in case of disaster:
For what miscarries
Shall be the general's fault, though he perform
To th'utiddy censure
Will then cry out of Marcius "O, if he
Had borne the business!"
- Act I, scene i, lines 267-71
Nowhere in the play, however, is Marcius given credit for so devious a nature Brutus is si his own style of shrewdness into Marcius' mind What is much more likely is that Marcius doesn't care who commands and who does not, whom Rome praises and whoht so that, in any office, he can win his mother's praise
to guard Corioles
The fast Roman response to the Volscian threat forces the Volscians to hasten their own plans Tullus Aufidius is consulting with the Volscian council and one of the Volscian senators says:
Noble Aufidius,
Take your commission; hie you to your bands:
Let us alone to guard Corioles
- Act I, scene ii, lines 25-27
This council of war is taking place in Corioli (or Corioles), a tohose location is now uncertain, and this, in itself, is one of the signs that the story of Coriolanus is legendary At the time of the traditional date of this war, 493 bc (a year after the plebeian uprising, although Shakespeare, in the interest of speeding the action, makes it take place immediately afterward), what records we have indicate that Corioli was not a Volscian city but was in alliance with that portion of Latium which was under Roman leadership
It is very likely that the tales of Coriolanus that were dimly remembered had to be adjusted to account for the name Why should Marcius be remembered as Coriolanus unless he had played a key role in the conquest of that city? So the conquest was assumed
And as Marcius eventually given the name of Coriolanus if it was not because of the conquest of the city? No one will ever know For that matter, can we be certain that such a man as Coriolanus ever existed at all?
Hector's forehead
Now, at last, Marcius' ilia Virgilia is, however, a shrinking girl, much dominated by her mother-in-laho is pictured as the ideal Roman matron She is a most formidable creature and we cannot help but wonder if Marcius' little-boy love for her is not interled with more than some little-boy fear
Shakespearethat is his , she tells her daughter-in-law proudly, all she could think of was how honor (that is, lory) would become him She says:
To a cruel war I sent him,
from whence he returned,
his brows bound with oak
- Act I, scene iii, lines 14-16
(An oak wreath was the reward granted a soldier who had saved the life of a fellow soldier)
Virgilia tiht have been killed, but Volurimly:
I had rather had eleven die nobly
for their country than one voluptuously
surfeit out of action
- Act I, scene iii, lines 25-27
And when Virgilia gets a little queasy over Volumnia's later reference to possible blood on Marcius' brow, Volumnia then says, in scorn at the other's weakness:
Away, you fool! It [blood] more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy The breasts of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier
Than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood
- Act I, scene iii, lines 42-46
In later centuries the Roend to the effect that they were descended froe I-20), and it is natural to read this back into early Roine that the early Roe I-81) was Troy's greatest fighter
a gilded butterfly
Volule-minded approach to the notion of military honor makes it plain why Marcius, trained by her, is what he is But can it be that Shakespeare approves of this sort ofto be admirable? Let's see what follows immediately!
Valeria, a friend of the fa she has observed that involves Marcius' young son She says:
1 saw hiilded butterfly;
and when he caught it, he let it go again;
and after it again; and over and over he comes,
and up again; catched it again;
or whether his fall enraged him, or hoas,
he did so set his teeth, and tear it
- Act I, scene iii, lines 63-68
The pro child, in other words, plays cat-and-e But why a butterfly? Surely nothing can be as pretty, harmless, and helpless as a butterfly It isn't possible that we can feel sympathetic for a child that would deliberately and sadistically kill one And this is clearly the product of Volu up
But can we really apply the unreasoning action of a young child to the behavior of the adult Marcius? Surely we can, for Shakespeare makes certain that we do What does he have Volumnia say to Valeria's tale? She says, calmly:
One on's father's moods
- Act I, scene iii, line 70
It seems reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare admires neither Volumnia's philosophy nor the individuals it produces
another Penelope
Valeria wants Virgilia to coilia will not Like a loyal wife, she will stay at home till her husband is back from the wars Valeria says, cynically:
You would be another Penelope;
yet, they say, all the yarn she spun in
Ulysses' absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths
- Act I, scene iii, lines 86-88
Penelope is the very byword of the faithful wife Married to Ulysses (see page I-90) but a couple of years when he went forth to Troy, she remained faithful for twenty years in his home island of Ithaca, till he returned In the last several years, he was rumored dead and many suitors clamored for her hand She put the that she wanted first to finish a shroud she eaving for Ulysses' aged father, Laertes Every day she wove and every night she ripped out what she had woven, keeping it up a long tiht The story of Penelope and the suitors makes up a major portion of Homer's Odyssey
to Cato's wish
The Roman forces under Marcius and Titus Lartius (another valiant Roe to Corioli They are met with Volscian resolution and are beaten back at the first assault Marcius, yelling curses at his soldiers in his usual ates, which close behind him He is alone in an enemy city
Titus Lartius, co up now, hears the news, and speaks of hiood-as-dead Marcius:
Thou wast a soldier
Even to Cato's wish, not fierce and terrible
Only in strokes; but with thy grim looks and
The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds
Thou mad'st thine enemies shake
- Act I, scene iv, lines 57-61
This is taken alrapher describes Marcius as a soldier after Cato's heart The Cato referred to is Marcus Porcius Cato, often called Cato the Censor (an office which he held with vigor), for he was a model of old-fashioned Roman virtue He was completely honest and completely bound to duty, but he was cold, cruel, sour, miserly, and narrow-minded He was heartless to his slaves and lacked any tender feelings for his wife and children As censor, he was perfectly capable of fining a Ro his oife in the presence of their children
It was perfectly proper for Plutarch to quote Cato in this connection, for he lived over three centuries after Cato Shakespeare, however, is guilty of negligence in placing the re the necessaryanachronisend, in 493 bc, and Cato wasn't born till 243 bc, two and a half centuries later (and didn't become censor till 184 bc)
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
But Marcius is not dead If the tale were not a legend, , even if we allow a kernel of truth, he would undoubtedly be dead Perhaps this part of the tale of Marcius was inspired by a similar incident in the life of Alexander the Great
In 326 bc Alexander was conducting his last ion which is now part of Pakistan They laid siege to a town called Multan, which is located about 175 miles southwest of Lahore, on one of the chief tributaries of the Indus In a fever of exciteed to cli to see whether the ar or not
For a while, he was alone in the ed to join him and when Alexander was struck down and seriously wounded they protected him until the army made its way into the city Alexander survived, but it was a very near thing
Marcius does better than that, however No one joins hi, but not seriously wounded Only now does the rest of the army, in a fever of enthusiasm, storm the city and take it
Marcius then leads part of the arether they defeat the Volscians under Tullus Aufidius
Now the ars with praises for Marcius, but when Titus Lartius tries to put those praises into words, Marcius says, gruffly:
Pray now, no more My mother,
Who has a charter to extol her blood,
When she does praise rieves me
- Act I, scene ix, lines 13-15
This sounds like modesty, like superhuman modesty, but is it? Marcius is a loner His universe consists of hi to enter Corioli alone, to fight alone against an army; the soldiers under his command are but a source of annoyance to him
Why, then, should he want their praise? Who are they to praise hiht rather be interpreted as the sign of a ht to praise him and even that is not entirely acceptable to him In the remark, further, he naively reveals the fact that he places his ht of praise is concerned) above Rome
Nevertheless, he is not to get aithout soives hi:
from this time,
For what he did before Corioles, call him,
With all th'applause and clamor of the host,
Caius Marcius Coriolanus
- Act I, scene ix, lines 62-65
It was a Ronal victory over soive him an additional name taken from the conquered place or people Sometimes the individual was thereafter known by his new title almost exclusively
The most renowned case of this in Roman history is that of Publius Cornelius Scipio Scipio was the final conqueror of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, the greatest and reatness, and certainly one of the most remarkable captains in the lamentable history of warfare The battle in which Scipio finally overcaht at Zama in 202 bc, a city in northern Africa As a consequence, the title "Africanus" was added to Scipio's name
"Coriolanus" is formed in the same fashion From this point on in the play, his speeches are marked "Coriolanus" rather than "Marcius" and it is the foredy itself
Lycurguses
Back at Ro for news from the army The two tribunes, Brutus and Sicinius, cannot help but hope for a little bad news, since that would weaken the position of Marcius (they don't yet know his new title)
Menenius, the friend of Marcius and one who, because of his age, considers hier e and rails wittily at the uncoility to stand up to him Menenius is particularly annoyed because the tribunes call Marcius proud, and at one point he says to them:
Meeting such wealsmen as you are-
I cannot call you Lycurguses
- Act II, scene i, lines 54-56
"Wealsmen" are statesmen, a ter but that And lest their denseness allow them to mistake his remark for a compliment, he specifically denies that they can be cous
Lycurgus, according to tradition, was a Spartan leader of the ninth century bc who devised the social, economic, and political system under which the Spartans lived in ancient times The Spartan aristocracy devoted theime that made even the Roman system look pallid (Actually it was developed in the seventh century bc and ive it greater authority)
It was a narrow, constricted, miserable way of life that won the Spartans ained them much praise by those who valued victories for themselves and who did not have to live in Sparta at the ti else but military victory, and in the end the narrow and inflexible outlook it gave them cost them victory as well
Nevertheless, Lycurgus reiver
Menenius groordier and more articulate with each speech as the tribunes become more and more beaten down Finally, he makes the direct comparison:
Yet youMarcius is proud;
who, in a cheap estimation,
is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion
- Act II, scene i, lines 92-94
Deucalion was the sole e I-164) and from him all later men were considered to be descended
in Galen
But now the three woilia, and Valeria-with news that Marcius is returning in victory They have letters and there is one for Menenius
The voluble old rand tale that there is a letter for him, that he throws his cap in the air and declares it is the best medicine he could have He says:
The n prescription
in Galen is but empiricutic [quackish],
and, to this preservative,
of no better report than a horse-drench
- Act II, scene i, lines 119-21
This is an evenanachronism than the reference to Cato Galen was a Greek physician who practiced in Roes and into early modern times, were considered the last word in medical theory and practice The only trouble is that he was at the height of his career about ad 180, nearly seven centuries after the time of Menenius
the repulse of Tarquin
Menenius and Volu of wounds and scars on Marcius' body Volumnia says:
He received in the repulse
of Tarquin seven hurts i'th'body
- Act II, scene i, lines 154-55
After the eviction of Tarquin (see page I-211), the ex-King ain power, first with the aid of the Etruscans and then with the aid of other Latin cities He was defeated at each atteillus in 496 bc, only two years before the date of the opening scene of Coriolanus
I warrant him consul
Coriolanus himself comes now, and his new title is announced to the entire city He kneels first of all to his mother, and only after her reminder does he address his wife The city is wild over him and it is clear he can receive whatever honor or office it can bestow on him Volumnia states, with satisfaction, what is in many minds:
Only
There's one thing wanting, which I doubt not but
Our Rome will cast upon thee
- Act II, scene i, lines 206-8
It is the consulship itself obviously, and Voluhts
The two tribunes are also aware of the waiting consulship, and they are worried Sicinius says:
On the sudden,
I warrant him consul
- Act II, scene i, lines 227-28
Fro could be worse Coriolanus' reactionary beliefs are well known He would have killed the plebeians rather than compromise with them in the ht cancel that compromise As Brutus says:
Then our office may,
During his power, go sleep
- Act II, scene i, lines 228-29
Their only hope is that Coriolanus, through his own pride, will ruin his own chances
At sixteen years
We overnathered to elect the new consuls, of whom Coriolanus is odds-on favorite to be one
However, to achieve the goal, Coriolanus et the vote of the people, and the way in which this was done was to flatter and cajole them, very much as in our own time In early Roman times, it was customary for a candidate for the consulate to dress humbly, speak softly, and show the scars won in battle He did so in an unadorned white toga (hence our word "candidate," from the Latin word for "dressed in white")
The routine begins with the equivalent of a no speech fro for changes in tiht ins:
At sixteen years,
When Tarquin made a head for Rome,
he fought Beyond the mark of others
- Act II, scene ii, lines 88-90
If we allow Tarquin's earliest battle to regain Rome to have been in 509 bc and if Coriolanus was sixteen then, we can say he was born in 525 bc and was thirty-two years old at the taking of Corioli If the reference is to one of Tarquin's later atteer than thirty-two
Be taken from the people
The eloquent su wins over the patricians and Menenius says it remains only to speak to the people Coriolanus de their chance, at once demand that the candidate live up to the letter of the custom
Coriolanus has this to say of the custom:
It is a part
That 1 shall blush in acting, and ht well
Be taken from the people
- Act II, scene ii, lines 145-47
The tribunes could ask no better attitude than that To say baldly that he wishes to take privileges froet their vote, and the tribunes rush away to see to it that the plebeians are made aware of Coriolanus' attitude
ask it kindly
Coriolanus does put on the unifora poor Menenius in a sweat, for the oldovertih
Coriolanus cannot be so Try as hecitizens approach He asks one of them:
Well then, I pray,
your price o'th'consulship?
- Act II, scene iii, lines 77-78
To which the citizenrequested, however deserving it may be:
The price is, to ask it kindly
- Act II, scene iii, line 79
And that is precisely what Coriolanus, thanks to his s, cannot do
in free contempt
Ales to bend an absolutecitizens, that he does indeed "ask it kindly" That, coreat reputation of theto vote for him
It is only afterward, by co than actual and that he did not, for instance, actually show his scars to anyone (This too sounds like ance He will not stoop to win the approval of anyone He wants it as his right and without question)
The tribunes are disgusted that the plebeians have been so easily fooled, and Brutus demands impatiently:
Did you perceive
He did solicit you in free contempt
When he did need your loves; and do you think
That his conte to you