For I dare so far free him—made him fear’d,
So hated, and so banish’d.
(iV. vii. 35.)
But, lastly, not only are the three objective ethical principles that give Coriolanus his moral equipment, inadequate in so far as their range is largely selfish and their origin largely natural; he misplaces the order in which they should come. In the case of Volumnia, despite all her maternal preference and patrician prejudice, Rome is the grand consideration, as her deeds unequivocally prove. Nor is she singular; she is only the most conspicuous example among others of her caste. Cominius, too, postpones the family to the state:
I do love
My country’s good with a respect more tender,
More holy and profound, than mine own life,
My dear wife’s estimate, her womb’s increase,
And treasure of my loins.
(iII. iii. 111.)