Coriolanus possessed those traits of character, which in an unpolished
age, and amongst a people so renowned for their chivalry as the
Romans, are fitted to command universal admiration. Of high birth—of a
frank, ingenuous nature—wise in the council-chamber, as he was ardent
and intrepid in the field, it would have been strange if he had not
soon won his way to the esteem and confidence of his countrymen.
Accordingly we find him, after having signalized his name by a series
of the most brilliant exploits in a campaign against the Volsci,
returning to Rome, to receive in the gratitude and applause of his
fellow-citizens, the reward of his heroic deeds. But neither the fame
of his splendid successes, nor his own intrinsic dignity, could exempt
him from the reverses of fortune. The chaplet with which the fickle
goddess one moment decks the conqueror’s brow, the next she snatches
away, and leaves him the wretched victim of disappointed ambition.
Thus was it with Coriolanus. The Tribunes of the People, those
infamous panders to the morbid appetites of the mob, finding it
necessary to sacrifice him, the panoply of virtue proved a poor shield
against their virulence. Taking advantage of that hauteur of which
there was certainly a spice too much in his composition, they very
dexterously managed to excite him to expressions of contempt for the
commons, on the one hand, and, on the other, to inflame their minds
with a sense of imaginary wrongs, and impress upon them a conviction,
that if they would not be trampled in the dust, they must dispute
every inch of ground with the Patricians, and omit no opportunity to
strike a blow at a class of men they were taught to consider their
natural enemies. As the influence of the tribunes with the people was
unlimited, so their success was complete—their machinations resulting
in the condemnation of Coriolanus to perpetual exile. Alas, that we
have to deplore that the magnanimity this great man had so often
exhibited, should desert him in the hour when most he needed it! Stung
to madness that his distinguished services to the state should meet so
base a return, he resolves, in an ecstacy of resentment, that Rome
shall suffer the meed of her dark ingratitude. He goes over to the
enemy, who {738} receive him with open arms, and signify their
readiness to do his bidding. An army is placed at his disposal, with
which he invades the Roman territory, and ravaging the country as he
passes along, at length draws up his legions within a few miles of the
city, prepared, in the event of a refusal to comply with his harsh and
extravagant requisitions, to whelm friend and foe in one
indiscriminate ruin. Seized with consternation at his sudden and
unexpected approach, the Romans sue for mercy. Successive deputations,
consisting of the friends who had fought at his side in battle, and of
the principal citizens who had stood by him when the decree was passed
for his unjust and cruel banishment, are in vain sent to intreat him
to lay aside his unnatural rebellion. Nothing can move him until, his
wife and mother coming out to the camp, and throwing themselves at his
feet, he reluctantly grants to their prayers and tears the amnesty
which all feebler considerations had not availed to obtain.
Now suppose, for a moment, that the reprobation which the Christian
code of morals pronounces on the principle of revenge, be laid out of
view; and let it be granted that Coriolanus had a right to retaliate
on the men who had so deeply injured him; yet how shall we excuse the
design he meditated of involving his innocent friends in the same
heavy penalty? When he was banished, it was by a majority of only
three tribes. The whole body of the Patricians were in his favor, and
profoundly sympathized in his calamity; and he must have foreseen that
if the Volscian soldiery, the ancient and uncompromising enemies of
Rome, were admitted into the city with Aufidius, his co-equal in
command, at their head, that nothing sacred or venerable would be
spared by their rapacious violence—that the rights of property, the
quiet and security of old men, the purity of virgins and matrons, and
the sanctity of temples—in a word, all that age, or innocence, or
religion had consecrated, would be made the inevitable victims of the
same ruthless invasion. And all this he contemplated unmoved. Surely,
in the very conception of an act implicating, in such tragical
consequences, not his enemies merely, but his friends also, and those
who should have been dearer to him than his own life—his family and
kindred—there was a monstrous perfidy from which every mind that has
not been too deeply corrupted to appreciate the force of any moral
motive, must revolt with horror.
But it may be asked, “How can Coriolanus be justly charged with the
crime of those consequences which his clemency prevented?” In
estimating character, the man who has once evinced the inveterate
malignity of his heart, must be branded with eternal infamy, unless it
appears that he subsequently became penetrated with profound
contrition, and changed his conduct from the purest and most virtuous
motives. Was this true of Coriolanus? Having contemned the higher
claims of his country, and thrown off her allegiance, his ultimately
yielding to the yearning voice of natural affection was a weakness—an
amiable weakness, it may be said—but still a weakness. Such is our
mental conformation, that we behold a congruous character with a
degree of complacency, even though the character be a bad one; and
although we may lend a measure of our sympathy to those good acts of
confessedly bad men, which are the mere gratification of a physical
propensity, the unbending rigor of reason sternly refuses to allow any
moral excellence to those deeds, or to insult the majesty of virtue by
assigning them as her offspring. We return, however, to a point
temporarily merged, in order to follow up another branch of the
argument. The principle of revenge is wholly, and under all
circumstances, inadmissible. Nor is it a proper reply to this
proposition to say, that ours is an age of moral and intellectual
light, and that it is unjust to apply to one who lived two thousand
years ago, the same rigid rule of judgment to which he would be
subjected at the present day. In the trial of questions involving an
abstract principle, there should manifestly be but one standard for
all ages and nations. Any other hypothesis will lead to the most
glaring absurdities. For if the moral quality of an action could be
modified by the unimportant circumstances of _time_ or _place_, there
is no crime in the decalogue which may not be justified. Modern
heathen nations almost universally allow polygamy; in certain portions
of the world murder is deemed innocent; and the ancient Spartan, we
know, regarded theft as the prince of virtues. Where is the man who
would presume to excuse these practices because they pertain to a
barbarous nation, or to a period of moral darkness? Yet may it as well
be done, as to justify the practice of revenge in the case under
consideration. The ignorance of the age or nation may _palliate_ the
conduct of an individual; it cannot justify what is intrinsically
wrong; and it would be in the last degree preposterous to put out the
lights by which we are surrounded, and go to seek the radiant form of
virtue in the dim twilight of heathenism. If Coriolanus had displayed
a fortitude in suffering equal to his bravery in action—if he had
never suffered a thought of retaliation upon his ingrate country to
invade his breast; but, when thrust out from home and kindred, and all
that on earth he held most dear, he had sought, in the conscious
purity of his heart, and, in a sense of duty discharged, that tranquil
happiness which, to a wise man, is of far higher price than the shouts
and huzzas of the multitude—that mental peace which can cheer the
gloom of solitude, and whose elastic energy can buoy up the soul under
the heaviest distresses, his name would have come down to posterity
circumvested with a halo of glory, ever enlarging, ever brightening.
As it is, there is a spot upon his fame which all his splendid
achievements may not wipe off. The man who courts toil, and suffering,
and danger in his country’s cause, earns well the patriot’s meed; but
he who conquers himself, achieves a nobler triumph. He bequeaths to
the generations of all time, in the bright example he leaves for their
emulation, a rarer and richer legacy.
There may be glory in the might
Which treadeth nations down;
Wreaths for the crimson conqueror,
Pride for the kingly crown;
But nobler is that triumph hour
The disenthralled shall find,
When evil passion boweth down
Unto the Godlike mind.
In his contempt of this sentiment consisted Coriolanus’ great error.
Alas for his fame, that he had not discerned its truth and acted
accordingly!
{739}
MR. EDITOR,—Reading the “Belles of Williamsburg” in your July number
of the Messenger, induced me to search amongst some old papers for the
enclosed graphical and beautiful lines, which though not written at
quite so early a period as 1777, will serve to show that in 1799 the
halo of refinement and wit was still shining around that classical
spot so famed in Virginia history.