May enter ’twixt the gap of both, and take
The one by the other.
(iII. i. 108.)
The grand mistake was the distribution of corn, for, as Plutarch puts it very clearly:
They will not thincke it is done in recompense of their service past, sithence they know well enough they have so ofte refused to goe to the warres, when they were commaunded: neither for their mutinies when they went with us, whereby they have rebelled and forsaken their countrie: neither for their accusations which their flatterers have preferred unto them, and they have receyved, and made good against the Senate: but they will rather judge we geve and graunt them this, as abasing our selves, and standing in feare of them, and glad to flatter them every waye.
These weighty arguments, which Coriolanus is quite entitled to call his “reasons,” for reasons they are, are substantially reproduced in Shakespeare:
They know the corn
Was not our recompense, resting well assured
They ne’er did service for’t: being press’d to the war,
Even when the navel of the state was touched,