7. Through the tendency, natural to most persons, to differ with their fellows in office (it is always difficult for a number of men to attain harmony, especially in a position of any influence)--through this natural tendency, then, all their power was dissipated and torn to shreds. None of their resolutions was valid in case even one of them opposed it. They had originally received their office for no other purpose than to resist such as were oppressing their fellow-citizens, and thus he who tried to prevent any measure from being carried into effect was sure to prove stronger than those who supported it. (Mai, ib. Cp. Zonaras 7, 15.) [Frag. XVII] 1. For it is not easy for a man either to be strong at all points or to possess excellence in both departments,--war and peace,--at once. Those who are physically strong are, as a rule, weak-minded and success that has come in unstinted measure generally does not luxuriate equally well everywhere. This explains why after having first been exalted by the citizens to the foremost rank he was not much later exiled by them, and how it was that after making the city of the Volsci a slave to his country he with their aid brought his own land in turn into an extremity of danger. (Mai, p. 146. Cp. Zonaras 7,16.) [Sidenote: B.C. 491 (_a.u._ 263)] 2. ¶The same man wished to be made prætor, and upon failing to secure the office became angry at the populace; and in his displeasure at the great influence of the tribunes he employed greater frankness in speaking to that body than was attempted by others whose deeds entitled them to the same rank as himself. A severe famine occurring at the same time that a town Norba needed colonizing, the multitude censured the powerful classes on both these points, maintaining that they were being deprived of food and were being purposely delivered into the hands of enemies for manifest destruction. Whenever persons come to suspect each other, they take amiss everything even that is done in their behalf, and yield wholly to their belligerent instincts. Coriolanus had invariably evinced contempt for the people, and after grain had been brought in from many sources (most of it sent as a gift from princes in Sicily) he would not allow them to receive allotments of it as they were petitioning. Accordingly, the tribunes, whose functions he was especially eager to abolish, brought him to trial before the populace on a charge of aiming at tyranny and drove him into exile. It availed nothing that all his peers exclaimed and expressed their consternation at the fact that tribunes dared to pass such sentences upon _their_ order. So on being expelled he betook himself, raging at his treatment, to the Volsci, though they had been his bitterest foes. His valor, of which they had had a taste, and the wrath that he cherished toward his fellow-citizens gave him reason to expect that they would receive him gladly, since they might hope,