CORIOLANUS. Shall I be charged no further than this present? Must all determine here? SICINIUS. I do demand If you submit you to the people’s voices, Allow their officers, and are content To suffer lawful censure for such faults As shall be proved upon you. CORIOLANUS. I am content. MENENIUS. Lo, citizens, he says he is content. The warlike service he has done, consider. Think Upon the wounds his body bears, which show Like graves i’ th’ holy churchyard. CORIOLANUS. Scratches with briars, Scars to move laughter only. MENENIUS. Consider further, That when he speaks not like a citizen, You find him like a soldier. Do not take His rougher accents for malicious sounds, But, as I say, such as become a soldier Rather than envy you. COMINIUS. Well, well, no more. CORIOLANUS. What is the matter, That, being passed for consul with full voice, I am so dishonoured that the very hour You take it off again? SICINIUS. Answer to us. CORIOLANUS. Say then. ’Tis true, I ought so. SICINIUS. We charge you that you have contrived to take From Rome all seasoned office and to wind Yourself into a power tyrannical, For which you are a traitor to the people. CORIOLANUS. How? Traitor? MENENIUS. Nay, temperately! Your promise. CORIOLANUS. The fires i’ th’ lowest hell fold in the people! Call me their traitor? Thou injurious tribune! Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, In thy hands clutched as many millions, in Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say “Thou liest” unto thee with a voice as free As I do pray the gods. SICINIUS. Mark you this, people? ALL PLEBEIANS. To th’ rock, to th’ rock with him! SICINIUS. Peace! We need not put new matter to his charge. What you have seen him do and heard him speak, Beating your officers, cursing yourselves, Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying Those whose great power must try him—even this, So criminal and in such capital kind, Deserves th’ extremest death. BRUTUS. But since he hath Served well for Rome— CORIOLANUS. What do you prate of service? BRUTUS. I talk of that that know it. CORIOLANUS. You? MENENIUS. Is this the promise that you made your mother? COMINIUS. Know, I pray you— CORIOLANUS. I’ll know no further. Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death, Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger But with a grain a day, I would not buy Their mercy at the price of one fair word, Nor check my courage for what they can give, To have’t with saying “Good morrow.” SICINIUS. For that he has, As much as in him lies, from time to time Envied against the people, seeking means To pluck away their power, as now at last Given hostile strokes, and that not in the presence Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers That do distribute it, in the name o’ th’ people And in the power of us the Tribunes, we, Even from this instant, banish him our city In peril of precipitation From off the rock Tarpeian, never more To enter our Rome gates. I’ th’ people’s name, I say it shall be so.