Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus

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.