ion. Alcibiades resided at that time in a small
village in Phrygia. Those who were sent to assassinate him had not
courage enough to enter the house, but surrounded it first, and set it
on fire. Alcibiades, as soon as he perceived it, wrapped his cloak about
his left arm, and holding his naked sword in his right, cast himself
into the middle of the fire, and escaped securely through it, before his
clothes were burnt. The barbarians, as soon as they saw him, retreated,
and none of them durst engage with him, but standing at a distance, they
slew him with their darts and arrows.

CORIOLANUS

The patrician house of the Marcii in Rome produced many men of
distinction, and among the rest, Ancus Marcius, grandson to Numa by his
daughter, and king after Tulus Hostillus. Of the same family were also
Publius and Quintus Marcius, which two conveyed into the city the best
and most abundant supply of water they have at Rome. But Caius Marcius,
of whom I now write, being left an orphan, and brought up under the
widowhood of his mother, has shown us by experience, that, although the
early loss of a father may be attended with other disadvantages, yet it
can hinder none from being either virtuous or eminent in the world, and
that it is no obstacle to true goodness and excellence. Those who saw
with admiration how proof his nature was against pleasure, hardships,
and the allurements of gain, while allowing to that universal firmness
of his the respective names of temperance, fortitude, and justice, yet,
in the life of the citizen and the statesman, could not but be
offended at the severity and ruggedness of his deportment, and with his
overbearing, haughty, and imperious temper.

Those were times at Rome in which that kind of worth was most esteemed
which displayed itself in military achievements; one evidence of which
we find in the Latin word for virtue, which is properly equivalent to
many courage. But Marcius, having a more passionate inclination than any
of that age for feats of war, began from his very childhood to handle
arms; and feeling that adventitious implements and artificial arms would
be of small use to such as have not their natural weapons well prepared
for services, he so exercised and inured his body to all sorts of
activity and accouter, that, besides the lightness of a racer, he had a
weight in close seizures and wrestlings with an enemy, from which it was
hard for anybody to disengage himself; so that his