GAIUS

See also:

• GAIUS CORIOLANUS (or GNAEUS)14IARCIUS

CORIOLANUS (or GNAEUS)14IARCIUS  , Roman legendary hero of patrician descent . According to tradition, his surname was due to the bravery displayed by him at the siege of Corioli (493 B.C.) during the war against the Volscians (but see below) . In 492, when there was a famine in Rome, he 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 . For this he was accused by the tribunes, and, being condemned to exile, took refuge with his friend Attius Tullius, king of the Volscians . A pretext for a quarrel with Rome was found, and Coriolanus, in command of the Volscian army, advanced against his native city . In vain the first men of Rome prayed formoderate terms . He would agree to nothing less than the restoration to the Volscians of all their land, and their admission among, the Roman citizens . A mission of the chief priests also failed . At last, persuaded by his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia, he led back the Volscian army, and restored the conquered towns . He died at an advanced age in exile amongst the Volscians; according to others, he was put to death by them as a traitor; a third tradition (mentioned, but ridiculed, by Cicero) represents him as having taken his own life . The whole legend is open to serious criticism . 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 . It is strange that the Volscians should have entrusted a stranger with the command of their army, and it is possible that the attribution of their successes to a Roman general was intended to gratify the national pride and obliterate the memory of a disastrous war . It is suggested that Coriolanus never commanded the Volscian army at all, but that, like Appius Herdonius—the Sabine chieftain who in 46o, with a band of fugitives and slaves, obtained possession of the capitol—he appeared at the gates of Rome at the head of a body of exiles (but at a much later date, c . 443), at a time when the city was in great distress, perhaps as the result of a pestilence, and only desisted from making himself master of Rome at the earnest entreaty of his mother . This seems to be the historical nucleus of the tradition, which accentuates the great influence exercised by and the respect shown to the Roman matrons in early times .