The story is not altogether a fiction: Coriolanus lives too much in the Roman legends for this to be the case. As for the assertion that he was general of the Volscians, it is to be attributed to the natural feeling that it is less painful to be conquered by one’s own countryman than by a foreigner. From such a feeling of national pride, the Romans gave a false colouring to the Volscian war, and thus softened down, for themselves and the Latins, the disgrace of a defeat which led to such great conquests of the Volscians. In the same spirit, they devised the tale of the magnanimity of Coriolanus, and likewise of his death; and I am convinced that Fabius Pictor was right in asserting that Coriolanus, even to an advanced age, lived in exile among the Volscians. That Rome was on the brink of utter ruin, is likely; the distress, as represented, is perhaps not quite fictitious; but, that the expedients for warding off the danger, namely, the three embassies, of the senate, the priests, and the matrons, were invented to glorify the hero, is not to be denied. The different orders in their narratives mutually revile each other; and thus the _Plebes_ here shows itself at once discouraged, and the patricians proud, as if they did not wish for a reconciliation with Coriolanus. I believe that the real truth is something quite different. At that period when so many emigrants of the times of the Tarquins still existed, who flocked together wherever a new gathering point presented itself, I consider Coriolanus as one, who, on his retiring to the Volscians, formed such a centre. As he finds an army of Roman emigrants who are joined by the Volscians, he makes his appearance with them on the Roman frontier. He could not, however, have had any idea of forcing the walls of the city; but he encamped, just like a man in the history of Dittmarsch who had renounced his country, and he threatened war against it. He grants a respite, at first of thirty days, that the senate might deliberate whether his demands were to be conceded or no; and when this was not done, he waited for three days more, this being the time which the state or the general asking for satisfaction, still took to consider, whether war was to be declared, or how to decide on any proposals which might have been made. Coriolanus had come with partisans of the Tarquins, and likewise with many who had fled the country for their crimes, and lastly with Volscians. The republic invited him to return; the supplications of the mother, the wife, and the matrons could have had no other meaning--but to urge him at least to come alone, and not to bring back the terrible band. He probably answered, that he could not enter alone, that he could not leave his companions. If he returned, nothing remained for him but to be a tyrant in his own native land, as we know from Greek history that the return of the φυγάδες is an awful calamity; the ousted party cannot but crush the other entirely.