And the most noble mother of the world
Leave unsaluted: sink, my knee, i’ the earth:
Of thy deep duty more impression show
Than that of common sons.
(V. iii. 48.)
Evidently, his love for his wife, intense though it be, is a thing apart, a sanctuary of his most inmost feeling, and is quite out of relation with the affairs of the jostling world. In them his mother has supreme sway, and Virgilia’s unobtrusive graciousness does not exercise even an indirect influence on his ingrained principles and prejudices. She is no makeweight against the potent authority of Volumnia.
CHAPTER V
THE GREATNESS OF CORIOLANUS. AUFIDIUS
In the atmosphere then of Volumnia’s predominance we are to imagine young Marcius growing up from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to youth, environed by all the most inspiring and most exclusive traditions of an old Roman family of the bluest blood. After the expulsion of the Tarquins, we must suppose that there was no more distinguished gens than his. The tribune Brutus gives the long bead-roll of his ancestry, the glories of which, as has already been shown, are even exaggerated in his statement through Shakespeare’s having made a little mistake in regard to Plutarch’s account, and having included representatives of later among those of former generations. But Volumnia is not the mother to let him rest on the achievements of his predecessors; he must make them his own by equalling or excelling them. He begins as a boy, and already in his maiden fight his exploits rouse admiration. Plutarch describes the circumstance:
The first time he went to the warres, being but a strippling, was when Tarquine surnamed the prowde ... dyd come to Rome with all the ayde of the Latines, and many other people of Italie.... In this battell, wherein were many hotte and sharpe encounters of either partie, Martius valliantly fought in the sight of the Dictator; and a Romaine souldier being throwen to the ground even hard by him, Martius straight bestrid him, and slue the enemie with his owne handes that had overthrowen the Romaine. Hereupon, after the battell was wonne, the Dictator dyd not forget so noble an acte, and therefore first of all he crowned Martius with a garland of oken boughs.
This furnishes Cominius with the prologue to his eulogy: