The Rise of Rome (Penguin Classics)

by Plutarch

  His first action was to go home, where his mother and his wife greeted him with tears and lamentations. He took them in his arms, told them that they must bear this blow of fate with patience, and, without any further delay, set off for the city gates. Although the entire body of patricians turned out to escort him, Marcius took no possessions with him into exile, nor did he utter a single request, but merely walked out of the city, accompanied by three or four of his clients. For a few days he stayed alone at a country estate, while a host of conflicting impulses crowded his brain, urged on by his anger: none of these was inspired by any praiseworthy or constructive purpose, but simply by the desire to revenge himself on the Roman people. Finally, he decided to incite one of the neighbouring countries to wage a destructive war against them, and the people whom he chose to approach first were the Volscians. He knew that they had great resources both in money and in fighting men, and he was confident that the recent defeats that they had suffered had not so much weakened their power as increased their hostility, and made them long to renew their quarrel with the Romans.

  22. There was at Antium a man named Tullus Aufidius,61 who, because of his wealth, his courage and his noble birth, enjoyed the position and respect almost of a king among the Volscian people. Marcius knew that this man hated him more bitterly than any other Roman. They had often hurled threats and challenges at one another in the battles they had fought, and out of the rivalry and boasting which ambition often provokes among young warriors, a private and personal animosity had grown up between them which went far beyond the hostility that prevailed between their respective peoples. At the same time, Marcius sensed that Tullus possessed a certain magnanimity, and also that there was no other Volscian who was so passionately determined to revenge himself on the Romans. In short, Marcius acted as a living illustration of that famous saying: ‘It is hard to fight with anger, for whatever it wants, it will pay the price, even at the cost of life itself.’62 So Marcius dressed himself in clothes which completely transformed his normal appearance, and like Odysseus, ‘Into the enemy’s city he stole disguised …’63

  23. It was evening when he arrived in the town, and although many people passed him in the streets, none of them recognized him. When he had found his way to Tullus’ house, he quickly entered, took his place by the hearth in silence and, covering his head, seated himself there without uttering a word. The people of the house were astonished at his behaviour but did not venture to disturb him – for there was an air almost of majesty about his bearing and his silence – but they told Tullus, who was at supper, of this mysterious event. Tullus rose from the table, walked over to the stranger and asked who he was and why he had come. At this Marcius uncovered his face and after a moment’s pause said: ‘If you do not recognize me even now, Tullus, or if you cannot believe your own eyes, then I must act as my own accuser. I am Gaius Marcius, the man who has done you and the Volscian people more harm than any other, and the name of Coriolanus which I bear makes it impossible to deny the fact. This title is the one and only reward I have received for all the toils and perils I have endured, and it is a badge of my enmity to your country. This at least can never be taken away, but everything else has been stripped from me by the jealousy and insolence of the people, and the cowardice and treachery of the magistrates and the members of my own class. I have been driven out of Rome as an exile, and now I sit as a suppliant at your hearth. But I have not come to ask for safety or protection – for why should I have come here if I were afraid to die – but to take revenge on the men who have banished me, and already I have made a beginning by putting myself in your hands. Noble Tullus, if you are eager to fight your enemies again, take advantage of my disgrace and make my misfortune the Volscian people’s good fortune. I shall fight even better for you than I have fought against you, because the most dangerous opponents of all are those who know their enemies’ secrets. But if you are tired of war, I have no desire to live, nor will there be any advantage in saving the life of a man who has for so long been your implacable enemy, but who now, when he offers you his services, turns out to be useless to you.’

  When Tullus heard these words he was overjoyed, and giving him his right hand he said: ‘Rise up, Marcius, and take courage. In offering yourself to us, you have brought us a great gift, in return for which you may expect a still greater one from the Volscian people.’ Then he entertained Marcius at his table with every mark of kindness, and they spent the next few days discussing plans for the coming war.

  24. Meanwhile, Rome was in a state of turmoil. Marcius’ banishment had done much to arouse a feeling of hatred for the people among the patricians, and at the same time soothsayers, priests and private individuals all reported a succession of prodigies which were too significant to ignore. One of them was as follows. There was a certain Titus Latinus, not a prominent citizen but a quiet and sensible man, who was by no means addicted to superstition nor to pretentious exaggeration of his experiences. He had a dream in which Jupiter appeared to him and commanded him to tell the senate that the dancer whom they had chosen to lead the god’s procession was a bad performer and thoroughly displeasing to him. Titus reported that the first time he saw this vision he paid little attention to it. Since then it had appeared to him a second and third time, and still he had taken no action. But not long after, he had seen his son – a boy of great promise – sicken and die, and he himself had lost the use of his limbs. He related these events to the senate after he had been brought there in a litter, and no sooner had he spoken, it is said, than he felt the strength returning to his body, and he rose to his feet and walked away without any help.64

  The senators were astonished at his story and made an inquiry into the circumstances. They discovered that a certain householder had handed over one of his servants to his fellow-slaves with orders that he should be flogged through the market-place and then put to death. While they were carrying out this punishment and torturing the wretched man, whose pain made him writhe and twist his body into all kinds of hideous contortions, it so happened that the sacred procession in honour of Jupiter65 came up behind. Many of those who took part in it were roused to indignation by this inhuman spectacle and the agonized movements of the victim, but nobody came to his rescue: all they did was to utter reproaches and abuse against a master who could inflict such a cruel punishment. In those days the Romans in general treated their slaves with great kindness; the masters worked and even took their meals side by side with them, and because they knew them so well were more considerate towards them. For example, if a slave had committed a fault, it was considered a severe punishment for him to be made to take up the piece of wood which supports the pole of a wagon and carry it round the neighbourhood. Any slave who was seen undergoing this punishment was disgraced and was no longer trusted either in his own or the neighbouring households. Henceforward he was known as a furcifer,66 for what the Greeks call a prop or support is rendered in Latin by the word furca.

  25. So when Latinus described his dream to the senators, and they were completely at a loss to identify this bad or unpleasing dancer who had headed the procession, some of them, because of the unusual nature of the punishment, remembered the slave who had been flogged through the forum and afterwards executed. Accordingly, after the agreement of the priests had been obtained, the slave’s master was punished, and the procession and the public ceremonies in honour of the god were enacted a second time.67

  This incident illustrates the foresight of Numa,68 who in general showed the greatest wisdom in specifying the correct procedure for religious ceremonies, and who very properly laid down the following regulation to ensure the people’s reverent attention. Whenever the magistrates or priests perform any religious function, a herald goes before them crying out in a loud voice, ‘Hoc age’. The phrase means ‘mind this’, and it is intended to remind the people to give their whole attention to the sacred rites and not to allow any pressure of business or worldly preoccupations to disturb them, the implication bein
g that men’s attention is seldom fixed, and most of their duties are, in a sense, extorted from them and effected under constraint. The Romans are also well accustomed to repeating sacrifices and processions, not only for the kind of reason I have described, but on far more trivial grounds. For example, if one of the horses which pull the sacred vehicles (which are known as tensae69) should become exhausted and stumble, or if the charioteer should take hold of the reins with his left hand, they decree that the procession must begin again. And at later periods of their history they have been known to perform a single sacrifice thirty times over, because some omission or mistake was believed to have taken place. Such is the piety and reverence of the Roman people in religious matters.

  26. All this while Marcius and Tullus were secretly conferring with the leading men of Antium, and urging them to go to war with Rome while the city was still torn by party strife. At first the Volscians’ sense of honour restrained them from seizing this advantage, because they had only recently concluded a truce and accepted a cessation of hostilities for two years. But then the Romans themselves provided a pretext by issuing at the public games a proclamation – prompted apparently by some suspicion or slanderous report – to the effect that all Volscians must leave the city before sunset. Some authorities maintain that Marcius himself tricked the Romans into this action by sending a man to the consuls in Rome to plant the false rumour that the Volscians had laid a plot to attack the Romans during the public games and set fire to the city.70 At any rate, this proclamation made the Volscian people more hostile than ever towards the Romans. Tullus did his utmost to magnify the incident and stir up the people’s anger, and finally he persuaded them to send ambassadors to Rome with the demand that the territory and the cities annexed from the Volscians in the late war should be restored to them. When they heard these proposals the Romans became angry in their turn, and retorted that the Volscians might be the first to take up arms, but the Romans would be the last to lay them down. Thereupon Tullus summoned a general assembly, and after the people had voted for war he advised them to call in the help of Marcius. He urged them not to bear him any grudge for the harm he had done them, but to rest assured that he would be even more valuable as an ally than he had been deadly as an enemy.

  27. Accordingly, Marcius was summoned and proceeded to address the people. His speech demonstrated that he was just as formidable an orator as his exploits had already proved him to be a soldier, and he convinced them that in the art of war his intelligence was no less remarkable than his courage. They therefore appointed him joint commander with Tullus and gave him full powers to conduct the campaign. But as he feared that the Volscians would take so long to mobilize and equip themselves that he would lose the most favourable moment to attack, he left instructions for the magistrates and other principal citizens to raise troops and collect supplies. Meanwhile, without waiting for the formalities of enlistment, he recruited a band of volunteers from among the most adventurous spirits and made a sudden raid upon Roman territory. He achieved complete surprise and secured so much plunder that the Volscians could neither use it up in their camp nor carry it away with them.

  However, to Coriolanus the quantity of supplies which he captured and the damage or destruction which he inflicted upon the enemy’s territory were the least important results of the expedition: its principal consequence, and indeed his main purpose in undertaking it, was to blacken the reputation of the patricians in the eyes of the Roman people. For while he despoiled and devastated all other properties, he took the strictest precautions to guard the estates of the patricians, and would allow no damage to be done nor anything to be carried away from them. This led to bitter recriminations and clashes between the rival factions in the capital: the patricians accused the people of having unjustly banished a man of great ability, while the people retorted with the charge that their opponents were trying to get their revenge by encouraging Marcius to attack his own country, and were now revelling in the spectacle of others being made to suffer from the enemy’s depredations, while their own properties and sources of wealth outside the city were left completely untouched. After Marcius had achieved his purpose of sowing fresh dissensions among the Romans, and at the same time greatly increased the confidence of the Volscians and taught them to despise their enemies, he brought his troops safely back to their base.

  28. Meanwhile, the Volscians had mobilized their entire strength with great speed and enthusiasm. The army they had raised turned out to be so large that they decided to leave some of the troops to garrison their cities, while the main body marched against the Romans. Marcius now left Tullus to decide which of these armies he wished to command. Tullus’ reply was that as Marcius was clearly as brave a man as himself, and had always enjoyed better fortune in his battles, he should lead the army that was to take the field, while Tullus remained behind to guard the Volscian cities and provide the supplies for the fighting troops. So Marcius, this time with a larger force under his command, opened his campaign by attacking Circeii,71 a town which was a colony of Rome. Here the people surrendered without resistance and he did them no harm. He then proceeded to ravage the region of Latium, as he expected that the Romans would risk a battle to defend the Latins, who were their allies and had dispatched a succession of envoys imploring their help. But at Rome the people showed no desire to fight, the consuls were reluctant to risk a campaign during the few weeks which remained of their term of office, and so the Latins’ appeal was dismissed. Marcius then led his troops against the various Latin cities. Those which offered resistance, namely Tolerium, Lavicum, Pedum and, later on, Bola,72 he captured by assault, enslaved their inhabitants and plundered their property. But he showed great consideration for the cities which came over to his side of their own accord, and to make sure that his troops inflicted no damage upon them against his orders, he pitched his camp at a distance from them and kept away from their territory.

  29. When he finally captured the town of Bovillae,73 which is no more than 100 stades74 from Rome, great quantities of treasure fell into his hands, and he put almost the whole adult population to the sword. After this success, even the Volscians who had been detailed to garrison their own cities refused to remain any longer at their posts, seized their arms and flocked to join Marcius, declaring that he was their only general and that they would recognize no other commander. His name and fame spread throughout the whole of Italy, and people asked one another with amazement how the valour of a single man could, by the mere act of changing sides, bring about such an extraordinary transformation in the fortunes of two peoples.

  Meanwhile, in Rome, affairs were in utter disorder. The people refused to fight and spent all their time in devising party intrigues, making seditious speeches and blaming one another, until the news came that the enemy had besieged Lavinium.75 It was here that the sacred relics of the ancestral gods of the Romans were stored, and it was indeed the birthplace of the Roman nation, being the first city ever founded by Aeneas. The news produced a complete and astonishing change of heart among the people, and an equally remarkable and unexpected one among the patricians. The people were now anxious to revoke the sentence of banishment against Marcius and invite him to return, but the senate, after they had met and debated this proposal, decided to reject it. It is possible that they were determined out of sheer spite to oppose any measure which the people put forward, or that they did not wish Marcius to owe his recall to the people’s favour. Or it may have been that their anger had turned against Marcius himself, because he had now proved that he was the enemy of every class, in spite of the fact that he had been injured only by one, and was well aware that the most powerful and influential men in Rome sympathized and had suffered with him. When this resolution was made known to the people, they were helpless to proceed further, since they had no power to enact a law without a previous decree by the senate.76

  30. The news of the senate’s actions served only to make Marcius more resentful than ever. In his anger he immediately
raised the siege of Lavinium, marched upon Rome and pitched his camp at the so-called Fossae Cluiliae,77 which are only 40 stades78 outside the city. Although the sight of his army spread dismay and panic among the citizens, it at least put an end to their quarrels, since nobody, whether consul or senator, dared to oppose the people’s desire to recall Marcius. On the contrary, when the Romans saw their womenfolk running distractedly through the streets and the old men prostrating themselves as they wept and prayed before the shines of the gods, and knew that there was not a man in the city who was capable of inspiring them with courage or devising a plan of defence, then everybody agreed that the people had been right to attempt a reconciliation with Marcius, and the senate utterly wrong to give vent to its anger and its memories of past wrongs at the very moment when it would have been wise to put such emotions aside. Accordingly, it was unanimously resolved to send a delegation to Marcius to offer him the right to return to his country and implore him to put an end to the war.

  The men whom the senate chose to make this appeal were all connected with Marcius either as friends or as kinsmen, and they expected at their first interview to be warmly welcomed by a man whom they knew well or who at least was a relative. Nothing of the kind happened. After being led through the enemy’s camp, they were brought before him as he was seated in high state surrounded by the leading men of the Volscians, where he greeted them with an intolerably stern and arrogant expression. He then ordered them to explain the purpose of their visit, which they did in courteous and reasonable language and in a suitably conciliatory manner. When they had finished, he answered them harshly. He began by pouring out his bitter resentment at the injustices he had suffered; then, in his capacity as commander of the Volscians, he demanded that the Romans should restore the cities and the territory which they had annexed in the recent war, and at the same time pass a decree granting the Volscians the same civil rights as had recently been conceded to the Latins.79 Finally, he told them that there could be no lasting peace between the two nations unless it were based upon just and equal rights. He gave them thirty days to consider these terms, and as soon as the envoys had departed he withdrew his troops from Roman territory.