commanders was remarkably similar. Each of them, after distinguishing
himself as an excellent citizen, being driven from his country by the
wrongs of an ungrateful people, went over to the enemy: and each of them
repressed the efforts of his resentment by a voluntary death. For though
you, my Atticus, have represented the exit of Coriolanus in a different
manner, you must give me leave to dispatch him in the way I have
mentioned."--"You may use your pleasure," replied Atticus with a smile:
"for it is the privilege of rhetoricians to exceed the truth of history,
that they may have an opportunity of embellishing the fate of their
heroes: and accordingly, Clitarchus and Stratocles have entertained us
with the same pretty fiction about the death of Themistocles, which you
have invented for Coriolanus. Thucydides, indeed, who was himself an
Athenian of the highest rank and merit, and lived nearly at the same time,
has only informed us that he died, and was privately buried in Attica,
adding, that it was suspected by some that he had poisoned himself. But
these ingenious writers have assured us, that, having slain a bull at the
altar, he caught the blood in a large bowl, and, drinking it off, fell
suddenly dead upon the ground. For this species of death had a tragical
air, and might be described with all the pomp of rhetoric; whereas the
ordinary way of dying afforded no opportunity for ornament. As it will,
therefore, suit your purpose, that Coriolanus should resemble Themistocles
in every thing, I give you leave to introduce the fatal bowl; and you may
still farther heighten the catastrophe by a solemn sacrifice, that
Coriolanus may appear in all respects to have been a second Themistocles."

"I am much obliged to you," said I, "for your courtesy: but, for the
future, I shall be more cautious in meddling with History when you are
present; whom I may justly commend as a most exact and scrupulous relator
of the Roman History; but nearly at the time we are speaking of (though
somewhat later) lived the above-mentioned Pericles, the illustrious son of