alse. He is more especially blamed for the dishonorable
and treacherous way in which, as Thucydides relates, he imposed upon the
Lacedaemonian ambassadors, and disturbed the continuance of the peace.
yet this policy, which engaged the city again in way, nevertheless
placed it in a powerful and formidable position, by the accession, which
Alcibiades obtained for it, of the alliance of Argos and Mantinea. And
Coriolanus also, Dionysius relates, used unfair means to excite war
between the Romans and the Volscians, in the false report which he
spread about the visitors at the Games; and the motive of this action
seems to make it the worse for the two; since it was not done, like
the other, out of ordinary political jealousy, strife and competition.
simply to gratify anger, from which as Ion says, no one ever yet got any
return, he threw whole districts of Italy into confusion, and sacrificed
to his passion against his country numerous innocent cities. It is true,
indeed, that Alcibiades, by his resentment, was the occasion of great
disasters to his country, but he relented as soon as he found their
feelings to be changed; and after he was driven out a second time,
so far from taking pleasure in the errors and inadvertencies of their
commanders, or being indifferent to the danger they were thus incurring,
he did the very thing that Aristides is so highly commended for doing to
Themistocles: he came to the generals who were his enemies, and pointed
out to them what they ought to do. Coriolanus, on the other hand, first
all attacked the whole body of his countrymen, though only one portion
of them had done him any wrong, while the other, the better and nobler
portion, had actually suffered, as well as sympathized, with him. And,
secondly, by the obduracy with which he resisted numerous embassies and
supplications, addressed in propitiation of his person anger, he showed
that it had been to destroy and overthrow, not to recover and regain his
country, that he had excited bitter and implacable hostilities against.
There is, indeed, one distinction that may be drawn. Alcibiades, it may
be said, was not safe among the Spartans, and had the inducements at
once of fear and of hatred to lead him again to Athens; whereas Marcius
could not honorably have left the Volscians, when they were behaving
so well to him: he, in the command of their forces and the enjoyment
of their entire confidence, was in a very different position from
Alcibia