Background
Gaius Coriolanus was born in Rome, Italy. . His mother was Veturia.
Gaius Coriolanus was born in Rome, Italy. . His mother was Veturia.
In 492, when there was a famine in Rome, Gaius Coriolanus advised that the people should not be relieved out of the supplies obtained from Sicily, unless they would consent to the abolition of their tribunes.
In vain the first men of Rome prayed for moderate terms.
He would agree to nothing less than the restoration to the Volscians of all their land, and their admission among the Roman citizens.
At the traditional date (493 B. C. ) Corioli was not a Volscian possession, but one of the Latin cities which had concluded a treaty of alliance with Rome; further, Livy himself states that the chroniclers knew nothing of a campaign carried on by the consul Postumus Cominius Auruncus (under .
whom Coriolanus is said to have served) against the Volscians.
Only one of the consuls was mentioned as having concluded the treaty; the absence of the other was consequently assumed, and a reason-for it found in a Volscian war.
The bestowal of a cognomen from a captured city was unknown at the time, the first instance being that of Scipio; in.
any case, it would have been conferred upon the commander-in-chief, Postumus Cominius Auruncus, not upon a subordinate.
The conquest of Corioli by Coriolanus is invented to explain the surname.
The details of the famine are borrowed from those of later years, especially 433 and 411.
The incident of Coriolanus taking refuge with the Volscian king, who, according to Plutarch, was his bitter enemy, curiously resembles the appeal of Themistocles to the Molossian king Admetus.
Further, the tradition that Coriolanus, like Themistocles, committed suicide, renders it a probable conjecture that these incidents are derived from a Greek source.
The contradictions in the accounts of the campaign against Rome and its inherent improbability give further ground for suspicion.
Twelve important towns are taken in a single summer apparently without resistance on the part of the Romans, and after the retirement of Coriolanus they are immediately abandoned by the conquerors.
