So we may well believe that his soldierly spirit would respond promptly and lavishly when the Volscians rallied round him. But such appreciation, however his outstripped competitor might interpret it, would have nothing in common with the arts of the sycophant and the time-server; nor is there anything else in Coriolanus’ conduct that explains or confirms ever so slightly the charge of the interested and envious Aufidius.
On the contrary he remains true, and even too true, to his original nature. It is the outrage on his self-respect that drives him to the Volscians, and his self-respect still gives the law to his life, and would forbid all petty vices, though it enjoins heroic crime. A man like this could not be expected to palliate or overlook the profanation of his cherished dignity. The passion of pride at his ear, he sets himself to rupture all weaker ties of passion or instinct. And yet he himself is half aware of his mistake, and he has to fortify himself in his obstinate perversity. This is shown in two ways: first, he has a smothered sense of the inadequacy of his justification; and, second, he cannot with all his efforts be quite consistent in his revenge.
Of his repressed feeling that the offence does not excuse the retaliation, we have repeated confessions on his part, all the more striking that they are involuntary and perhaps unconscious. Thus, just after he has sought out the enemy of his country, he soliloquises:
O world, thy slippery turns! Friends now fast sworn,
Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart,
Whose hours, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise,
Are still together, who twin, as ’twere, in love
Unseparable, shall within this hour,
On a dissension of a doit, break out
To bitterest enmity: so, fellest foes,