Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep
To take the one the other, by some chance,
Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends
And interjoin their issues. So with me:
My birth-place hate I, and my love’s upon
This enemy town.
(iV. iv. 12.)
Here he acknowledges that his change of sides has the most trivial occasion. Friends fall out on a dissension of a doit while foes are reconciled for some trick not worth an egg; and he applies this principle to his own case: “So with me.” After all he has infinitely more in common with the Romans than he can ever have in common with the Volscians, infinitely more reason for hating this enemy town than he can ever have for hating his own birth-place.
Or again, when on the point of dismissing Menenius, he says:
That we have been familiar