“As a punishment for this treachery, which the Volscians, as it appears, were obliged to submit to, they were reported to have cruelly murdered Coriolanus at the end of the campaign. Yet another, and probably older, form of the legend says nothing of this revenge, but allows him to attain a great age among the Volscians, and to lament his banishment from his fatherland. The simple-minded old annalist saw nothing unnatural in the fact that a Roman exile should restore to the Romans towns conquered by the military strength of the Volscians. “The germ from which the whole legend sprang is the story of the filial love of Coriolanus, and of the great authority exercised in olden times by Roman matrons over their sons and husbands. Now it is not beyond the range of possibility that, at one time or other, a Roman party leader, expelled in one of the numerous civil broils, may have joined the national enemies, and may have been induced by the tears of his mother and wife to desist from hostilities against his native city; but the story of Coriolanus, as given by Livy and Dionysius, relates things utterly impossible in Rome. The Roman senate could at no time have dreamed of sending an embassy of priests to ask for peace from a public enemy; still less can we reconcile a deputation of matrons with what we know of Roman manners and law, granting even that such a deputation was self-appointed, and not formally commissioned by the senate to act for the Roman people.”[d] CINCINNATUS AND THE ÆQUIANS In the course of these wars, Minucius, one of the consuls, suffered himself to be cut off from Rome in a narrow valley of Mount Algidus, and it seemed as if hope of delivery there was none. However, five horsemen found means to escape and report at Rome the perilous condition of the consul and his army. Then the other consul consulted the senate, and it was agreed that the only man who could deliver the army was L. Quinctius Cincinnatus. Therefore this man was named dictator, and deputies were sent to acquaint him with his high dignity. Now this Lucius Quinctius was called Cincinnatus, because he wore his hair in long curling locks (_cincinni_); and, though he was a patrician, he lived on his own small farm, like any plebeian yeoman. This farm was beyond the Tiber, and here he lived contentedly with his wife Racilia.