To thrust the lie unto him.
First Lord. Peace, both, and hear me speak.
Coriolanus. Cut me to pieces, Volsces; men and lads,
Stain all your edges on me. Boy! false hound!
If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there,
That like an eagle in a dove-cote, I
Flutter’d your Volscians in Corioli;
Alone I did it. Boy!
The patient fools, whose children he had slain, are not patient now, and no longer tear their throats in acclaiming his glory. Their cries, “Tear him to pieces,” “He killed my son,” and the like, give the conspirators the cue, and Aufidius is presently standing on his body.
It is not, then, as a martyr to retrieved patriotism that Coriolanus perishes, but as the victim of his own passion. In truth, the victory he won over himself under the influence of his mother, though real, is very incomplete. His piety to the hearth saves him from the superlative infamy of destroying his country, which is something, and even a good deal; but it is not everything; and beyond that it has no result, public or personal. On the contrary, Coriolanus’ isolated and but partly justified act of clemency receives its comment from the motives that induced it, the troth-breach that accompanied it, and the rage in which he passed away. If, like his son with the butterfly, he did grasp honour at the close, it was disfigured by his rude handling. But at least he never belies his own great though mixed nature, and it is fitting that his death, needless but heroic, should have its cause in his nature and be such as his nature would select. Indeed, it is both his nemesis and his guerdon. For he would not be a Roman, he could not be a Volsce; what part could he have played in the years to come? Perhaps Shakespeare read in Philemon Holland’s rendering the alternative account that Livy gives of the final scene.