Critical Examination of the Story of Coriolanus
“If we examine the particulars of the foregoing narrative,” says Wilhelm Ihne, “we find that no single feature of it can be considered historical, and that it consists altogether of baseless fictions of a later period, which betray a great want of skill in the invention of a probable narrative, and even ignorance of the institutions and manners of the Roman people. The conquest of Corioli is evidently invented to account for the name Coriolanus. For the whole of the alleged history of the campaign in which Corioli is reported to have been conquered, the annalists, as Livy himself admits, had no positive testimony. And so thoughtless and ignorant were the Roman annalists, that they mentioned as the benefactor of the distressed Romans the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse. This chronological error was discovered by the learned archæologist Dionysius, who was too well acquainted with the history of his disreputable namesake of Syracuse to suppose that he could have sent corn to Rome about half a century before he was born. He therefore substitutes Gelo as the Greek tyrant who is said to have sent the corn. It is evident that the removal of a gross blunder does not amount to positive evidence, and the learning and ingenuity of Dionysius are therefore thrown away.
“The accusation and sentence of Coriolanus by the plebs, almost immediately after the first election of tribunes, was impossible. According to Livy, the Volscians conquered, in the course of one summer, twelve—and, according to Dionysius, fourteen—Latin towns, overran the whole of Latium, and penetrated into the immediate neighbourhood of Rome. When we consider what a small measure of success usually followed a campaign, how difficult, even in the time of their undisputed supremacy, the Romans found it to reduce a single town, it may well be looked upon as a miracle that the Volscians took seven towns, as Dionysius says, in thirty days. But what is still more wonderful than the rapid conquest of so many Latin towns by the Volscians, is the ready restoration of them to the Latins.
“As a punishment for this treachery, which the Volscians, as it appears, were obliged to submit to, they were reported to have cruelly murdered Coriolanus at the end of the campaign. Yet another, and probably older, form of the legend says nothing of this revenge, but allows him to attain a great age among the Volscians, and to lament his banishment from his fatherland. The simple-minded old annalist saw nothing unnatural in the fact that a Roman exile should restore to the Romans towns conquered by the military strength of the Volscians.
“The germ from which the whole legend sprang is the story of the filial love of Coriolanus, and of the great authority exercised in olden times by Roman matrons over their sons and husbands. Now it is not beyond the range of possibility that, at one time or other, a Roman party leader, expelled in one of the numerous civil broils, may have joined the national enemies, and may have been induced by the tears of his mother and wife to desist from hostilities against his native city; but the story of Coriolanus, as given by Livy and Dionysius, relates things utterly impossible in Rome. The Roman senate could at no time have dreamed of sending an embassy of priests to ask for peace from a public enemy; still less can we reconcile a deputation of matrons with what we know of Roman manners and law, granting even that such a deputation was self-appointed, and not formally commissioned by the senate to act for the Roman people.”[d]
CINCINNATUS AND THE ÆQUIANS
In the course of these wars, Minucius, one of the consuls, suffered himself to be cut off from Rome in a narrow valley of Mount Algidus, and it seemed as if hope of delivery there was none. However, five horsemen found means to escape and report at Rome the perilous condition of the consul and his army. Then the other consul consulted the senate, and it was agreed that the only man who could deliver the army was L. Quinctius Cincinnatus. Therefore this man was named dictator, and deputies were sent to acquaint him with his high dignity.
Now this Lucius Quinctius was called Cincinnatus, because he wore his hair in long curling locks (cincinni); and, though he was a patrician, he lived on his own small farm, like any plebeian yeoman. This farm was beyond the Tiber, and here he lived contentedly with his wife Racilia.
Two years before he had been consul, and had been brought into great distress by the conduct of his son Cæso, a wild and insolent young man, who despised the plebeians and hated their tribunes, like Coriolanus. Like Coriolanus, he was impeached by the tribunes, but on very different grounds. One Volscius Fictor alleged that he and his brother, an old and sickly man, had been attacked by Cæso and a party of young patricians by night in the Subura; his brother had died of the treatment then received. The indignation of the people rose high; and Cæso, again like Coriolanus, was forced to go into exile. After this the young patricians became more insolent than ever, but they courted the poorest of the people, hoping to engage them on their side against the more respectable plebeians. Next year all Rome was alarmed by finding that the Capitol had been seized by an enemy during the night. This enemy was Appius Herdonius, a Sabine, and with him was associated a band of desperate men, exiles and runaway slaves. The first demand he made was that all Roman exiles should be restored. The consul, P. Valerius, collected a force, and took the Capitol. But he was himself killed in the assault, and L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, father of the banished Cæso, was chosen to succeed him. When he heard the news of his elevation, he turned to his wife and said, “I fear, Racilia, our little field must remain this year unsown.” Then he assumed the robe of state, and went to Rome. Now it was believed that Cæso had been concerned in the desperate enterprise that had just been defeated. What had become of him was unknown, but that he was already dead is pretty certain; and his father was very bitter against the tribunes and their party, to whom he attributed his son’s disgrace and death. P. Valerius, the consul, had persuaded the plebeians to join in the assault of the Capitol, by promising to gain them further privileges: this promise Cincinnatus refused to keep, and used all his power to frustrate the attempts of the tribunes to gain its fulfilment. At the end of his year of office, however, when the patricians wished to continue him in the consulship, he positively declined the offer, and returned to his rustic life as if he had never left it.
It was two years after these events that the deputies of the senate, who came to invest him with the ensigns of dictatorial power, found him working on his little farm. He was clad in his tunic only; and as the deputies advanced, they bade him put on his toga, that he might receive the commands of the senate in seemly guise. So he wiped off the dust and sweat, the signs of labour, and bade his wife fetch his toga, and asked anxiously whether all was right or not. Then the deputies told him how the army was beset by the Æquian foe, and how the senate looked to him as the saviour of the state. A boat was provided to carry him over the Tiber; and when he reached the other bank he was greeted by the senate, who followed him to the city, while he himself walked in state, with his four-and-twenty lictors. Cincinnatus then chose L. Tarquitius as his master of the horse. This man was a patrician, but, like the dictator himself, was poor—so poor that he could not afford to keep a horse, but was obliged to serve among the foot-soldiers.