His nature is too noble for the world:
He would not flatter Neptune for his trident.
Or Jove for’s power to thunder.
(iII. i. 255.)
And he is entitled to this consciousness of his worth, for it is not merely individual. It collects in a focus the most valued traits of various social fellowships that are greater and wider than himself. He is—he has been taught to consider himself and to become—the peculiar representative of the great family of the great aristocracy of the great city of Rome. If he transcends the dimensions of ordinary human power and human error, this consideration enables us to see how he has come to do so, and brings him back to our ordinary human sympathies. These are the three concentric orbits in which his universe revolves, the three well-heads that feed the current of his life. They give impetus to his love of honour and volume to his pride.
His civic patriotism he lives to abjure, but at first it is eager and intense. It is this feeling that is affronted by the retreat of his townsmen before Corioli and that boils over in curses and abuse: he is wroth with them because they are “shames of Rome.” The climax to his appeal for volunteers is to ask if any thinks “that his country’s dearer than himself” (i. vi. 72): and in the moment of triumph he classes himself unreservedly among all his comrades who have been actuated by his own and the only right motive, love for the patria.
I have done
What you have done; that’s what I can: induced
As you have been; that’s for my country:
He that hath but effected his good will