Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus

As statesmen, if the exceeding wantonness of Alcibiades, and the stain of dissoluteness and vulgarity upon all his efforts to win the favour of the multitude, won the loathing of sober-minded citizens, it was equally true that the utter ungraciousness of Marcius, together with his pride and oligarchical demeanour, won the hatred of the Roman people.

Neither course, then, is to be approved; although the man who seeks to win the people by his favours is less blameworthy than those who heap insults on the multitude, in order to avoid the appearance of trying to win them. For it is a disgrace to flatter the people for the sake of power; but to get power by acts of terror, violence, and oppression, is not only a disgrace, it is also an injustice.

Now, that Marcius is usually thought to have been rather simple in his nature, and straightforward, while Alcibiades was unscrupulous in his public acts, and false, is very clear. And Alcibiades is particularly denounced for the malicious deceit by which he cheated the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, as Thucydides relates,[*](V. 45; cf. Plutarch’s Nicias, x.; Alcibiades, xiv.) and put an end to the peace.

But this policy of his, although it did plunge the city again into war, made it nevertheless strong and formidable, by reason of the alliance with Mantinea and Argos which Alcibiades secured for it. And yet Marcius himself also used deceit to stir up war between the Romans and Volscians, when he brought a false charge against the visitors to the games, as Dionysius relates;[*](See Coriolanus, xxvi. 2; Dionysius Hal., Antiq. Rom. viii. 2. ) and the motive for his action makes it the worse of the two.

For he was not influenced by ambition, or by rivalry in a political struggle, as Alcibiades was, but simply gave way to his anger, from which passion, as Dion says, no one ever gets a grateful return, and threw many districts of Italy into confusion, and needlessly sacrificed many innocent cities to his rage against his country. It is true, indeed, that Alcibiades also, through his anger, was the cause of great calamities to his countrymen.

But just as soon as he saw that they were repentant, he showed them his goodwill, and after he had been driven away a second time, he did not exult over the mistakes of their generals, nor look with indifference upon their bad and perilous plans, but did precisely what Aristides is so highly praised for doing to Themistocles: he came to the men who were then in command, although they were not his friends, and told them plainly what they ought to do.