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
460, with a band of fugitives and slaves, obtained possession of the
capital--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 res