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 in war against the Republic, and prepared to assist him in order to punish the ungrateful Romans.