needed colonizing, the multitude censured the powerful classes on both
these points, maintaining that they were being deprived of food and were
being purposely delivered into the hands of enemies for manifest
destruction. Whenever persons come to suspect each other, they take
amiss everything even that is done in their behalf, and yield wholly to
their belligerent instincts. Coriolanus had invariably evinced contempt
for the people, and after grain had been brought in from many sources
(most of it sent as a gift from princes in Sicily) he would not allow
them to receive allotments of it as they were petitioning. Accordingly,
the tribunes, whose functions he was especially eager to abolish,
brought him to trial before the populace on a charge of aiming at
tyranny and drove him into exile. It availed nothing that all his peers
exclaimed and expressed their consternation at the fact that tribunes
dared to pass such sentences upon _their_ order. So on being expelled he
betook himself, raging at his treatment, to the Volsci, though they had
been his bitterest foes. His valor, of which they had had a taste, and
the wrath that he cherished toward his fellow-citizens gave him reason
to expect that they would receive him gladly, since they might hope,
thanks to him, to inflict upon the Romans injuries equal to what they
had endured, or even greater. When one has suffered particular damage at
the hands of any party, one is strongly inclined to believe in the
possibility of benefit from the same party in case it is willing and
also able to confer favors. (Mai, p.147. Cp. Zonaras 7, 16.) 3. For he
was very angry that they, who were incurring danger for their own
country would not even under these conditions withdraw from the
possessions of others. When, accordingly, this news also was brought,
the men did not cease any the more from factional strife. They were,
indeed, so bitterly at variance that they could be reconciled not even
by dangers. But the women, Volumnia the wife of Coriolanus and Veturia
his mother, gathering a company of the other most eminent ladies visited