Having described all their actions that seem to deserve commemoration,
their military ones, we may say, incline the balance very decidedly upon
neither side. They both, in pretty equal measure, displayed on numerous
occasions the daring and courage of the soldier, and the skill and
foresight of the general; unless, indeed, the fact that Alcibiades was
victorious and successful in many contests both by sea and land, ought
to gain him the title of a more complete commander. That so long as they
remained and held command in their respective countries, they eminently
sustained, and when they were driven into exile, yet more eminently
damaged the fortunes of those countries, is common to both. All the
sober citizens felt disgust at the petulance, the low flattery, and
base seductions which Alcibiades, in his public life, allowed himself
to employ with the view of winning the people's favor; and the
ungraciousness, pride, and oligarchical haughtiness which Marcius,
on the other hand, displayed in his, were the abhorrence of the Roman
populace.
Marcius, according to our common conceptions of his character, was
undoubtedly simple and straightforward; Alcibiades, unscrupulous as a
public man, and false. 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
Alcibiades, whom the Lacedaemonians did not so much wish to adopt into
their service, as to use, and then abandon. Driven about from house to
house in the city, and from general to general in the camp, the latter
had no resort but to place himself in the hands of Tissaphernes; unless
we are to suppose that his object in courting favor with him was to
avert the entire destruction of his native city, whither he wished
himself to return.
As regards money, Alcibiades, we are told, was often guilty of procuring
it by accepting bribes, and spent it in luxury and dissipation.
Coriolanus declined to receive it, even when pressed upon him by his
commanders as an honor; and one great reason for the odium he incurred
with the populace in the discussions about their debts was, that he
trampled upon the poor, not for money's sake, but out of pride and
insolence.
Antipater, in a letter written upon the death of Aristotle the
philosopher, observes, "Amongst his other gifts he had that of
persuasiveness," and the absence of this in the character of Marcius
made all his great actions and noble qualities unacceptable to those
whom they benefited: pride, and self-will, the consort, as Plato calls
it, of solitude, made him insufferable. With the skill which Alcibiades,
on the contrary, professed to treat every one in the way most agreeable
to him, we cannot wonder that all his successes were attended with
the most exuberant favor and honor; his very errors, at times, being
accompanied by something of grace and felicity. And so, in spite of
great and frequent hurt that he had done the city, he was repeatedly
appointed to office and command; while Coriolanus stood in vain for a
place which his great services had made his due.
Alcibiades never professed to deny that it was pleasant to him to be
honored and distasteful to him to be overlooked; and, accordingly, he
always tried to place himself upon good terms with all that he met;
Coriolanus' pride forbade him to pay attentions to those who could have
promoted his advancement, and yet his love of distinction made him feel
hurt and angry when he was disregarded. Such are the faulty parts of
his character, which in all other respects was a noble one. For his
temperance, continence, and probity, he might claim to be compared
with the best and purest of the Greeks; not in any sort of kind with
Alcibiades, the least scrupulous and most entirely careless of human
beings in all these points.