Caius Marcius Coriolanus

There he found much corn, and secured large booty in cattle and captives, no part of which did he take out for himself; but brought his followers back to Rome laden with large spoils of every sort. The rest of the citizens therefore repented themselves, envied their more fortunate fellows, and were filled with hostility to Marcius, not being able to endure the reputation and power of the man, which was growing, as they thought, to be detrimental to the people.[*](Cf. Dionysius Hal. vii. 19. )

But not long after, when Marcius stood for the consulship,[*](There is nothing of this candidacy for the consulship in Livy (ii. 34, 7-35). Marcius urges the senate to take advantage of the famine and exact from the plebeians a surrender of their tribunate. This so exasperates the people that they try Marcius in absentia and banish him, whereupon he goes over to the Volsci. Plutarch’s story (xiv.-xx.) agrees closely with Dionysius Hal. vii. 21-64. ) the multitude relented, and the people felt somewhat ashamed to slight and humble a man who was foremost in birth and valour and had performed so many and such great services. Now it was the custom with those who stood for the office to greet their fellow-citizens and solicit their votes, descending into the forum in their toga, without a tunic under it. This was either because they wished the greater humility of their garb to favour their solicitations, or because they wished to display the tokens of their bravery, in case they bore wounds.

It was certainly not owing to a suspicion of the dispensing of money in bribery that the candidate for the votes of the citizens was required to present himself before them without a tunic and ungirt. For it was long after this time that the buying and selling of votes crept in and money became a feature of the elections.

But afterwards, bribery affected even courts and camps, and converted the city into a monarchy, by making armies the utter slaves of money. For it has been well said that he first breaks down the power of the people who first feasts and bribes them. But at Rome the mischief seems to have crept in stealthily and gradually, and not to have been noticed at once.

For we do not know who was the first man to bribe her people or her courts of law; whereas at Athens, Anytus, the son of Anthemion, is said to have been the first man to give money to jurors, when he was on trial for the treacherous failure to relieve Pylos,[*](A stronghold on the western coast of Messenia, in Peloponnesus. It was occupied and successfully defended by the Athenians in 425 B.C. (Thuc. iv. 2-41). In 410, the Lacedaemonians laid siege to its Messenian garrison, which surrendered after an Athenian fleet had failed to relieve it (Diodorus, xiii. 64, 5f.).) toward the close of the Peloponnesian war; a time when the pure race of the golden age still possessed the Roman forum.

So when Marcius disclosed his many scars from many contests, wherein he had been a foremost soldier for seventeen years together, the people were put out of countenance by his valour, and agreed with one another to elect him. But when the day for casting their votes came, and Marcius made a pompous entry into the forum escorted by the senate, and all the patricians about him were clearly more bent on success than ever before,

the multitude fell away again from their good will towards him, and drifted into feelings of resentment and envy. These feelings were reinforced by their fear that if an aristocrat, who had such weight with the patricians, should become supreme in the government, he might altogether deprive the people of their liberties.