Plutarch's life of Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, the Roman patrician whose unbending pride and contempt for the people carry him from war-hero to exile to enemy general, until his mother alone can turn him back at the gates of Rome.
Plutarch traces Gaius Marcius from a fatherless boyhood, raised by his mother Volumnia, into a soldier obsessed with martial excellence, winning the oak crown for saving a citizen in battle and, later, the surname Coriolanus for single-handedly forcing his way into the besieged city of Corioli. He refuses spoils and honors himself, wanting only the freedom of a Volscian guest-friend taken captive, and Plutarch reads this scrupulousness as proof that Marcius scorns money more than he loves glory. But the same rigidity that makes him fearless in battle makes him disastrous in politics: during a grain shortage he argues in the senate that the newly won tribunate of the plebs should be abolished outright, is condemned by a popular vote for tyranny, and is exiled from Rome.
Exiled, Marcius does the unthinkable: he goes in disguise to the house of his old enemy Tullus Aufidius, leader of the Volscians, and offers himself as their weapon against Rome. Made joint general, he leads Volscian armies to the very walls of the city, rejecting delegation after delegation of priests, senators, and old friends, until his wife Vergilia, his young sons, and finally his mother Volumnia come to his camp and plead with him in person. Volumnia's speech - that he must step over her corpse before he can march against his own country - breaks him; he withdraws the army and, in Plutarch's telling, resigns himself to be 'defeated' by her alone. Robbed of his war and resented by Tullus for his continuing preeminence among the Volscians, Marcius is set upon and killed in an assembly at Antium, and Rome permits its women a ten-month mourning for the man it had exiled.
Written as one half of a paired Life with the Athenian Alcibiades, Coriolanus is Plutarch's case study in a virtue unmoderated by paideia - courage and self-control without the 'taming' that reason and education give to nature, producing a man magnificent in war and catastrophic in a republic. The Life supplied Shakespeare with the plot and much of the substance of his tragedy Coriolanus, and it remains one of antiquity's sharpest character studies of the aristocratic contempt for popular government, filtered through Plutarch's Greek moral-philosophical lens on Roman history.
“The house of the Marcii in Rome, one of the patrician families, produced many distinguished men, among them Ancus Marcius, the grandson of Numa on his daughter's side, who became king after Tullus Hostilius.”
— Coriolanus
“For there is nothing else that men enjoy from the goodwill of the Muses so much as the taming of their nature through reason and education, when through reason it accepts due measure and casts off excess.”
— Coriolanus
“I am Gaius Marcius, the man who has done the most harm to you and to the Volscians, and I carry about with me the surname that will not let me deny it — Coriolanus.”
— Coriolanus
“For I must not wait for that day on which I shall see my son either led in triumph by his fellow citizens or triumphing against his fatherland”
— Coriolanus
“Marcius, crying out, "What have you done to me, mother!" raises her up, and gripping her right hand tightly, said, "You have won — a victory fortunate for your country, but ruinous for me; for I go away defeated by you alone."”
— Coriolanus
It follows Gaius Marcius, a Roman patrician nicknamed Coriolanus for his valor at the siege of Corioli, from celebrated soldier to political outcast. Condemned and exiled by the Roman people for arguing to abolish the tribunate, he defects to Rome's enemies, the Volscians, and leads their army almost to the city walls before his mother persuades him to turn back.
During a grain shortage, Marcius told the senate that giving the people cheap grain without concessions would only embolden them, and urged that the newly created tribunate be stripped from the plebeians entirely. The tribunes then charged him with aiming at tyranny, and though that charge could not be proven, a vote by tribes condemned him on a related charge over the distribution of war spoils, sentencing him to permanent exile.
His mother Volumnia, accompanied by his wife Vergilia, his young children, and a delegation of Roman women led by Valeria. Volumnia's speech at his camp - arguing that he must step over her corpse before reaching his own country - breaks his resolve, and he withdraws the Volscian army.
After withdrawing from Rome, Marcius returns to the Volscian city of Antium, where Tullus Aufidius, resentful of his growing preeminence, arranges to have him tried before an assembly and killed by conspirators before he can fully mount a defense.
Exiled and embittered, he resolved to make war on Rome and went in disguise to the house of his old rival Tullus Aufidius, leader of the Volscians, offering his knowledge of Roman warfare in exchange for the chance at revenge. Tullus welcomed him and made him joint general of the Volscian forces.
Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus draws its plot, many of its scenes (including the mother's supplication), and much of its characterization directly from Plutarch's Life, making this one of the most consequential of Plutarch's biographies for later literature.
Both men were brilliant, proud aristocrats who turned against their own cities after political humiliation and allied with their homeland's enemies; Plutarch uses the parallel to explore how natural gifts without moral education can ruin a public career.
During the plebeian secession to the Sacred Mount, the senator Menenius Agrippa tells the people a fable in which the body's limbs rebel against the belly for seeming idle, not realizing the belly nourishes and redistributes to them all; Agrippa uses it to argue that the senate serves the people just as the belly serves the body.
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