At first he wondered who these women could be. But when they came near, and he saw his mother at the head of the train, his deep love for her welled up so strongly in his heart that he could not restrain himself, but sprang up and ran to meet and kiss her. The Roman matron stopped him with a dignified gesture, saying,-- "Ere you kiss me, let me know whether I am speaking to an enemy or to my son; whether I stand here as your prisoner or your mother." He stood before her in silence, with bent head, and unable to speak. "Must it then be that if I had never borne a son, Rome would have never seen the camp of an enemy?" said Volumnia, in sorrowful tones. "But I am too old to bear much longer your shame and my misery. Think not of me, but of your wife and children, whom you would doom to death or to life in bondage." Then Virgilia and the children came up and kissed him, and all the noble ladies in the train burst into tears and bemoaned the peril of their country. Coriolanus still stood silent, his face working with contending thoughts. At length he cried out, in heart-rending accents, "O mother, what have you done to me?" Clasping her hand, he wrung it vehemently, saying, "Mother, the victory is yours! A happy victory for you and Rome, but shame and ruin to your son." Then he embraced her with yearning heart, and afterwards clasped his wife and children to his breast, bidding them return with their tale of conquest to Rome. As for himself, he said, only exile and shame remained. Before the women reached home the army of the Volscians was on its homeward march. Coriolanus never led them against Rome again. He lived and died in exile, far from his wife and children. When very old, he sadly remarked, "That now in his old age he knew the full bitterness of banishment." The Romans, to honor Volumnia and those who had gone with her to the Volscian camp, built a temple to "Woman's Fortune" on the spot where Coriolanus had yielded to his mother's entreaties; and the first priestess of this temple was Valeria, who had been inspired in the temple of Jupiter with the thought that saved Rome. _CINCINNATUS AND THE AEQUIANS._ In the old days of Rome, not far from the time when Coriolanus yielded up his revenge at his mother's entreaty, the Roman state possessed a citizen as patriotic as Coriolanus was proud, and who did as much good as the other did evil to his native land. This citizen, Lucius Quinctius by name, was usually called Cincinnatus, or the "crisp-haired," from the fact that he let his hair grow long, and curled and crisped it so carefully as to gain as much fame for his hair as for his wisdom and valor.