VII.

HOW THE HEROES FOUGHT FOR A HUNDRED YEARS.



There is a long story connected with the young stripling who, at the
battle of Lake Regillus received the oaken crown for saving the life of
a Roman citizen. The century after that event was filled with wars with
the neighboring peoples, and in one of them this same Caius Marcius
fought so bravely at the taking of the Latin town of Corioli that he
was ever after known as Coriolanus (B.C. 493). He was a proud
patrician, and on one occasion when he was candidate for the office of
consul, behaved with so much unnecessary haughtiness toward the
plebeians that they refused him their votes. [Footnote: The whole
interesting story is found in Plutarch's Lives, and in Shakespeare's
play which bears the hero's name.] After a while a famine came to
Rome,--famines often came there,--and though in a former emergency of
the kind Coriolanus had himself obtained corn and beef for the people,
he was now so irritated by his defeat that when a contribution of grain
arrived from Syracuse, in Sicily (B.C. 491), he actually advocated that
it should not be distributed among the people unless they would consent
to give up their tribunes which had been assured to them by the laws of
the Sacred Mount! This enraged the plebeians very much, and they caused
Coriolanus to be summoned for trial before the comitia of the tribes,
which body, in spite of his acknowledged services to the state,
condemned him to exile. When he heard this sentence, Coriolanus angrily