Clad in black garments, she and Volumnia with her little children, followed by a band of Roman matrons set out for the camp of the enemy. Coriolanus, when he caught sight of his mother, leaped from his seat, and running quickly toward her, would have kissed her, as was his wont. But she, putting him aside, bade him first answer her question. ‘Am I the mother of Gaius Marcius,’ she asked reproachfully, ‘or a prisoner in the hands of the leader of the Volscians? Alas! had I not been a mother, my country had still been free.’ As his mother said these words, his wife and children fell at his knees and clung to him. His mother’s words did what nothing else had been able to do, for the proud patrician could not bear to listen to her reproaches. With tears in his eyes he cried: ‘O my mother, thou hast saved Rome, but thou hast lost thy son.’ Then he led the Volscian army away from the city, and restored to the Romans the towns which the enemy had taken. Some legends tell that the Volscians were so angry with Coriolanus for deserting them, that they slew him as a traitor; but others say that he lived in exile until he was an old man. Weary of exile, he is said to have cried: ‘Only an old man knows how hard it is to live in a far country.’ [Illustration: “O my mother, thou hast saved Rome, but thou hast lost thy son.”] CHAPTER XXVIII THE ROMAN ARMY IN A TRAP While the Romans were at war with the Volscians, another tribe, called the Æquians, poured down from their mountain fastnesses and plundered and destroyed their land. In 459 B.C. peace was made with these fierce mountaineers, and Rome hoped that her borders would no longer be disturbed. But the Æquians were a restless people. They soon broke the treaty, and, led by their chief Clœlius, pitched their camp on one of the spurs of the Alban hills, and began to burn and plunder as of old. The Romans, furious at this breach of faith, sent an embassy to demand redress. But Clœlius mocked at the Roman ambassadors, and laughingly bade them lay their complaints before the oak-tree, under which his tent was pitched. The angry ambassadors took the oak and all the gods to witness that it was not they but the Æquians who had broken the treaty and begun the war. Then hastening back to Rome, they told how insolently they had been treated. An army, with the Consul Minucius at its head, was at once dispatched to punish the Æquians. Clœlius was a skilful general, and as the Roman army advanced he slowly retreated into a narrow valley. The Romans foolishly followed the retreating Æquians, as Clœlius intended that they should. When the enemy was in the midst of the valley, hemmed in by steep hills on either side, Clœlius ordered a band of soldiers to guard the end by which the Romans had entered. Minucius was caught in a trap.