yet for all that, Menenius is the candidate’s most active electioneering agent. When his sagacity so neglects its own suggestions, it is perhaps not wonderful that Volumnia’s narrower intellect should ignore everything but her visions of glory for herself and her son. And yet she might have laid to heart his sincere remonstrance:
Know, good mother,
I had rather been their servant in my way,
Than sway with them in theirs.
(iI. i. 218.)
She cannot be acquitted of driving him into the false position.
And she is equally responsible for the fiasco and disaster in which his attempted submission ends. Observe that this is not the only course he might have adopted. Cominius, entering in the middle of the discussion, suggests two others:
I have been i’ the market-place; and, sir, ’tis fit
You make strong party, or defend yourself
By calmness or by absence.