ing up a position on the Sacred Mount outside,
stayed there until the Senate (this was the ruling body of the State, at
the time composed only of patricians) agreed first to change the harsh
laws about debt, and second to give to the poorer people a body of men
to look after their interests. These were the Tribunes. The appointment
of these tribunes angered many patricians, and especially Coriolanus.
Not understanding the sufferings of the people--he had always been far
removed himself from any such difficulties, belonging as he did to a
family of wealth and dignity--he thought that their discontents were
created by talk and idleness. And since there were men in Rome who got a
cheap popularity by perpetually reminding the people of their wrongs, he
sometimes seemed to be right. The tribunes he regarded as noxious
busybodies, whose loose talk was dividing Rome into two parties. In fact
there were two parties. Coriolanus could not see that the real cause of
the division was not what the tribunes said but what the people
suffered. He could see no right but his own, and all his powerful will
was set to driving that right through. To yield seemed to him
pusillanimous. There was bound to be a fierce struggle and it soon came.
Coriolanus made bitter scornful speeches, which enraged the people. They
smarted under his biting words and forgot all his great deeds. He became
more and more unpopular. This unpopularity only made him despise the
people, who judged men by words and not by deeds. At last the tribunes
accused him of trying to prevent their receiving the corn that had been
sent to them by the city of Syracuse and of aiming at making himself
ruler in the city. Finally they demanded that he should be banished.
Coriolanus scorned to defend himself. Instead of that he attacked the
tribunes and abused the people in terms of cruel scorn and contempt.
When the vote banishing him was carried he turned on them, declaring
that they made him despise not only them but Rome. He banished them:
there was a world elsewhere.

But though Coriolanus had always declared that he cared more for Rome
than for anything and desired not his own greatness but that of the city
and now pretended to scorn the people and the sentence they had passed
upon him, his actions showed how far his bitterness had eaten into his
own soul. He turned his back on Rome and betook himself to the camp of
Tullus Aufidius, the leader of the people of Antium, then engaged