In recently reading Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, I was inspired to revisit his chief source material, Plutarch’s Lives, a collection of biographical vignettes in which Plutarch endeavors to compare the lives of remarkable Greeks and Romans with an eye toward their moral qualities. In this case, Plutarch contrasts the life of Alcibiades (a Greek) with Coriolanus (a Roman), and surprisingly he seems to conclude that Coriolanus possesses greater moral qualities than Alcibiades. In many other cases, the Greeks were shown to be superior than the Romans according to Plutarch. At any rate, I decided to analyze both biographies in an effort to see what Shakespeare might have been considering when crafting his tragedy of Coriolanus.
We begin, as Plutarch did, with Alcibiades –the notorious celebrity, politician, and tactician of ancient Athens. By rumor, Alcibiades descended from Eurysaces, the son of the Homeric hero Ajax. His father gained great honor by fitting a galley for the battle at Artemisium and was killed at the Battle of Coronea while fighting the Boetians. After his father’s death, Alcibiades was taken in by none other than Pericles and his wife Ariphon, who became his guardians.
In youth, Alcibiades was publicly viewed as just another mischievous, unruly, frivolous golden-haired child of Athens –a pompous, wayward child who was nevertheless charismatic and physically attractive. Plutarch says: “It is not, perhaps, material to say anything of the beauty of Alcibiades, only that it bloomed with him in all the ages of his life, in his infancy, in his youth, and in his manhood; and, in the peculiar character becoming to each of these periods, gave him, in every one of them, a grace and a charm” (258).
It was said that Alcibiades had a lisp, which is attested to by several sources aside from Plutarch, but it was a apparently a unique and endearing physical trait. It only added to his charisma. Alcibiades fought at the Battle of Potidaea, where he bunked with and stood alongside Socrates. In fact, Socrates once rescued Alcibiades from near-death, but owing to Alcibiades’s station and popularity, he was given the honor by the people.
Plutarch offers a brief anecdote wherein, as a young man, Alcibiades boxed the ear of Hipponicus, father of Callias, unprovoked for which Alcibiades received condemnation by a great many people. In apology, he presented his naked body to be scourged by Hipponicus at his home the next day, instead Hipponicus offered his daughter in marriage to Alcibiades. However, she quickly grew exasperated with Alcibiades’s flamboyant and luxurious ways. He entertained so many courtesans and strangers alike using gold and silver owned by the commonwealth) that his otherwise “dutiful wife” departed and resided at her brother’s house until she was summoned to defend her desire for a divorce, but Alcibiades arrived and forcibly carried her home through the market. Plutarch notes this was somewhat more customary in their day.
Alcibiades was remarkably eloquent –his silver tongue never failed to find the right words for every crowd. As such, he was born for politics, and his early confidantes were Nicias and Phaex, though Alcibiades’s pride was so expansive that he regarded himself as best among his friends. Plutarch says, “among the many strong passions of his real character, the one most prevailing of all was his ambition and desire of superiority” (259). Realizing that this high-born young man was vulnerable to flattery and manipulation, Socrates took Alcibiades under his wing as a student. Plutarch notes that Socrates had a tempering effect on Alcibiades’s spiritedness, their relationship pushed away many other admirers and flatterers. “But those who endeavored to corrupt Alcibiades took advantage chiefly of his vanity and ambition, and thrust him unseasonably to undertake great enterprises, persuading him that as soon as he began to concern himself in public affairs, he would not only obscure the rest of the generals and statesmen, but outdo the authority and the reputation which Pericles himself had gained in Greece. But in the same manner as iron which is softened by the fire grows hard with the cold and all its parts are closed again, so, as often as Socrates observed Alcibiades to be misled by luxury or pride, he reduced and corrected him by his addresses, and made him humble and modest, by showing him in how many things he was deficient, and how very far from perfection in virtue” (269).
All of his love of the finer things in life earned Alcibiades a reputation among the people of Athens: “But with all these words and deeds, and with all this sagacity and eloquence, he intermingled exorbitant luxury and wantonness, in his eating and drinking and dissolute living; wore long purple robes like a woman, which dragged after him as he went through the market-place,; caused the planks of his galley to be cut away, that so he might lie the softer, his bednot being placed on boards, but hanging upon girths. His shield, again, which was richly gilded, had not the usual ensigns of the Athenians, but a Cupid, holding a thunderbolt in his hand, was painted upon it. The sight of all this made the people of good repute in the city feel disgust and abhorrence, and apprehension also, at his free living, and his contempt of law, as things monstrous in themselves, and indicating designs of usurpation. Aristophanes has well expressed the people’s feelings towards him— ‘They love, and hate, and cannot do without him.’ The truth is, his liberalities, his public shows, and other munificence to the people, which were such as nothing could exceed, the glory of his ancestors, the force of his eloquence, the grace of his person, his strength of body, joined with his great courage and knowledge in military affairs, prevailed upon the Athenians to endure patiently his excesses, to indulge many things to him, and according to their habit, to give the softest names to his faults, attributing them to youth and good nature” (269).
It was not long before the wrath of envy took hold, and Alcibiades privately turned against some of his friends amidst the ongoing Peloponnesian War. In particular, Alcibiades resented his compatriot Nicias who negotiated a temporary peace –indeed, it was commonly said in Greece at the time that Pericles started the war but Nicias ended it (it was known as the “Peace of Nicias”). Plutarch describes how this popular praise of Nicias actually drove Alcibiades to keep the war going, by at once betraying a delegation of Lacedemonians and also creating a new confederacy of allies among the Argives, Eleans, and the people of Mantinea. He committed many acts considered noble by the people –like siring a child with an enslaved Melian woman only to elect to educate the boy properly, yet he was also the principal cause of the horrific slaughter of the inhabitants of the isle of Melos (the Melian Siege which is memorably by Thucydides in the “Melian Dialogue” section of his History). It was what we might call today a genocide. Melos was a neutral island, refusing to bow to either Sparta or Athens in the Pelopponesian War, however the Athenians slaughtered every adult man on the island and sold all the women and children into slavery. The island was then populated by Athenians and it came under the pruview of the Athenian Empire. This hideous power play gave credence to Thucydides claim that “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
At any rate, the multitudes in Athens were pleased by Alcibiades –his charisma and supreme confidence gave hope to the people– however the elder people were wry, they saw Alcibiades as a tyrannical, tempestuous child. Now, the Athenians had long set their eye on Sicily, even during the life of Pericles, but they did not attempt an invasion until after Pericles’s death. Under the pretense of aiding Athenian confederates in Sicily, Alcibiades roused the people with elaborate speeches that inflamed the heights of his desires to conquer Sicily, and then onto other lands like Carthage and Libya, thereby expanding Athens to become master of Italy and the Peloponnesus (in Thucydides’s History, Alcibiades propounds the political theory that Athens must continue to expand and conquer foreign nations or else face decline and eventual conquest themselves). While Nicias urged caution with respect to Sicily, in the end Alcibiades prevailed by invigorating the hearts of young men, invoking colorful imagery of all the wondrous sights and noble adventures they would find abroad. Nicias was thus reluctantly persuaded to support the mission. However, unlucky omens began to appear just before the fleet was to set sail –it was the evening of the feast of Adonis (“The Adonia”) in which the women of the city honored the death of the god Adonis (the lover of Aphrodite and Persephone) by displaying images of dead men and singing lamentations and funeral songs. However, when the Athenians awoke the following morning, the Statues of Hermes all had their faces mutilated and disfigured causing widespread panic across the city (the Hermai were statues with a head and phallus carved into stone. They were thought to bring good luck and honored Hermes, herald of the gods). It was later said by some that the desecration of the Hermai was actually the work of Athens’s enemies, like the Corinthians, who hoped to delay the invasion of Sicily to protect their allies, the Syracusans (this was Xenophon’s theory). However, the people of Athens thought it was likely caused by a group of rowdy debauched youth. A leading demagogue named Androcles perpetuated a rumor that the desecration of the Hermai was caused by Alcibiades and a group of other young men who profaned the sacred by drunkenly mocking the sacred Eleusinian Mysteries (the famous secret religious rites in honor of the cult of Demeter and Persephone). Despite being irate at these claims, the people of Athens elected for Alcibiades to leave immediately for Sicily and then face trial upon return –it was a charge Alcibiades swiftly rejected but nevertheless he was compelled to depart in order to abide by custom. He was outfitted with 140 galleys, 5,100 men and 3,100 archers aaccording to Plutarch. They quickly took the city of Catana while back in Athens conspiracies continued to swirl and the people voted to lock up many friends of Alcibiades supposedly involved in the profaning of the mysteries (Socrates himself would later be swept up in this tempest some sixteen years later). Alcibiades was then immediately ordered to return to Athens. The assembly announced a penalty of death for Alcibiades (in response he simply replied “I will make them feel that I am alive”).
Alcibiades fled from Thurii to the Peloponnesus staying at Argos before ultimately defecting to Sparta. He then offered information to Sparta which crushed the Athenian forces in Sicily, he also helped Sparta renew their war against the city of Athens by fortifying Decelea which reduced and wasted Athenian trade, forcing the city to acquire all of its goods from aboard.
Notably, in Sparta Alcibiades quickly won the praise of the Lacedaemonians by quickly adopting their customs and habits –wearing his hair cut lose, bathing in cold water, eating coarse meals, dining on black broth (you would never know he was raised among the cooks and perfumers and soft purple robes of Athens). “For he had, as it was observed, this peculiar talent and artifice for gaining men’s affections, that he could at once comply with and really embrace and enter into their habits and ways of life, and change faster than the chameleon” (275). He could adopt his mannerisms to all sorts of people, good or bad, including both their virtues and vices. In Sparta, he was devoted to Athletic exercises, he lived frugally, and behaved with a reserved temperament; in Ionia he was luxurious, gay, and indolent; in Thrace he was always drinking; in Thessaly he was ever on horseback; and when he lived with Tisaphernes (or sometimes listed as “Tissaphernes”) the Persian satrap, he exceeded the Persians in magnificence and pomp.
When King Agis of Sparta departed with his army aboard, Alcibiades reportedly sired a son with his wife. She did not deny it and was passionate for him, but Alcibiades merely stated that he slept with the Queen to sire a future king of the Lacedemonians (though his son Leotychides was later cut out from the line of succession). Needless to say, from here King Agis despised Alcibiades, even while he had won over the favor of the people and served as a skilled tactician in the war, however a conspiracy arose to kill him so Alcibiades fled once again, this time to the King of Persia’s satrap where he once again earned the love and respect of the Persians. However, fearing the collapse of Athens and the shadow of Greece falling under the control of Sparta, Alcibiades sent a secret message to the generals of Athens overseeing the Athenian fleet housed at Samos –he pleaded with the Athenian aristocrats to regain control of the city so that the people could not commit Alcibiades to death again. Thus came a new tyrannical-oligarchic rule of the “Five Thousand” (or Four Hundred) in Athens, a hideously brutal regime under which many people were put to death if they did not submit. Athens then spoke with one united voice, begging Alcibiades to return to restore order. He was given generalship of the army, but rather than returning empty-handed, he endeavored to bring glory to Athens. He received intelligence that Spartan admiral Mindarus was sailing into the Hellespont and then surprised the admiral and won a string of great victories for Athens. When he returned to Tisaphernes in Persia, however, Alcibiades was betrayed and imprisoned. After thirty days, Alcibiades managed to escape by horse and boat in order to rouse the Athenian army once more –finally he had come full circle back among the soldiers of his native city.
He eventually returned to Athens full of pride after winning numerous military conquests in the Peloponnesian War. He sailed into the harbor packed to the brim with countless soils and riches on the feast day of the goddess Minerva. He was welcomed as a man of the people, celebrated as the city’s long-lost hero, but older people still feared that Alcibiades intended to usurp the sovereign power of the city, so he was soon sent off to battle again.
“Certainly, if ever a man was ruined by his own glory, it was Alcibiades. For his continual success had produced such an idea of his courage and conduct, that if he failed in anything he undertook, it was imputed to his neglect, and no one would believe it was through want of power. For they thought nothing was too hard for him, if he went about it in good earnest” (287).
Later in the war, Alcibiades was forced to secure funding for the effort and he left the army in the care of his generals, however back in Athens Thrasybulus, the Athenian general, roused the passions of the people against Alcibiades once again and, fearing the worst, Alcibiades raised a mercenary army and departed. The Athenian generals, meanwhile, failed to heed Alcibiades’s advice and they were surprised by Spartan general Lysander who decimated the Athenian fleet and invaded the city of Athens, leveling much of the city and burning every ship he could find. This led Alcibiades to further live in dread of the Lacedaemonians. If Athens fell, then what would stop King Agis of Sparta from exacting vengeance on Alcibiades? Under Spartan influence, came the rule of the thirty despots in Athens appointed by Lysander. Alcibiades departed the region for the court of Phrygia (in present-day Turkey). But so long as Alcibiades lived, he remained a threat to the rule of the thirty tyrants in Athens, since the Athenian people continued to hold out hope that Alcibiades would return and deliver them. Thus, it was determined by Lysander and the Spartans that Alcibiades must be killed. Assassins were sent to the small village where Alcibiades was dwelling with his mistress Timandra. They set fire to his house and killed him with arrows when he attempted to burst forth naked. It was the demise of a great Athenian celebrity and tactician –a man filled with magnanimity, pride, and impatience of dishonor in the classical Homeric sense, but who also possessed the peculiar talent of guile and flattery which allowed him to be welcomed wherever he went.
The life of Alcibiades is contrasted with Caius Marcius, later known as Coriolanus, a mighty Roman warrior who descended from the patrician house of Marcii in Rome, a lineage which produced many notable men of the city according to Plutarch. Cato later praised Marcius for his strength of hand and stroke as well as his booming voice and a visage that inspired terror.
“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 has no true obstacle to true goodness and excellence; however bad men may be pleased to lay the blame of their corruptions upon that misfortune and the neglect of them in the minority. Nor is he less an evidence to the truth of their opinion who conceive that a generous and worthy nature without discipline, like a rich soil without culture, is apt with its better fruits to produce also much that is bad and faulty. While the force and vigour of his soul, and persevering constancy in all he undertook, led him successfully into many noble achievements, yet, on the other side, also, by indulging the vehemence of his passion, and through an obstinate reluctance to yield or accommodate his humors and sentiments to those of a people about him, he rendered himself incapable of acting and associating with others. Those who saw with admiration how proof his nature was against all the softness of pleasure, the hardships of service, and the allurements of gain, while allowing to that universal firmness of the respective names of temperance, fortitude, and justice, yet in the life of the citizen and the statesman, could not choose but be disgusted at the severity and ruggedness of his deportment, and with his overbearing, haughty, and imperious temper. Education and study, and the favours of the muses, confer no greater benefit on those that seek them than these humanizing and civilizing lessons, which teach our natural qualities to submit to the limitations prescribed by reason, and to avoid the wildness of extremes” (291).
It was an age where military achievement was most respected in Rome (indeed the Latin word for virtue is synonymous with valour). As such, Marcius was given an inexhaustible training from a young age. He remained close with his mother Volumnia all his life, indeed even after marrying and having children, he still continued to live with his mother.
At this point in time, the senate of Rome had skewed heavily toward favoring the wealthy over the rest of the city. It found itself at variance with the common people such that the plebians declined to appear for conscription in the city’s wars. When it came up for debate, Marcius spoke vehemently against delivering money to the plebians, suggesting instead that their behavior was akin to open revolt. The people, in protest, went to the place known then as “Holy Mount” along the river Anio and refused to work or fight since they were indebted and famished. The senate then sent its more popular men, like Menenius Agrippa, who reiterated a parable about limbs mutinying against the stomach and the ways in which such a mutiny would harm the larger body politic (Shakespeare faithfully copies this language into his play Coriolanus). In response to the plebians’ needs, a unit of five tribunes was established to give voice to the people and address their grievances. The first two pitched were Junius Brutus and Sicinnius Vellutus (as mentioned by Shakespeare). With the political leverage of the tribunate now at their hands, the plebians agreed to follow Marcius in battle, even as he showed contempt and disgust for them.
Rome was at war with the Volscian nation whose capital city was Corioli. Shakespeare’s play follows closely the account given by Plutarch of how Marcius more or less single-handedly took the city of Corioli (earning him the name “Coriolanus”). He was then appointed consul of Rome amidst some grumbling among the plebians, who were disappointed in his refusal to make the customary appearance of a prospective consul in the forum in a toga alone, with no funic under it. However, he was against bowing to the whims of the people —“For it was well and truly said that the first destroyer of the liberties of a people is he who first gave them bounties and largesses.” (Plutarch claims it was Anytus in Athens who first began offering financial rewards for public judges).
As a result of his obstinance, the people of Rome began to feel envy and indignation for Marcius, his temperamental passions then broke out in response, and the plebians rejected him for consul. This led to a tumultuous fight over grain distribution, and fears over Coriolanus’s usurpation. Amidst an upswell in populist anger and superstitious divinations, Coriolanus is banished from Rome, and he defects to the Volscians, which leads to him marching on Rome in charge of the Volscians. Before he can sack his home city, Coriolanus is persuaded by his wife and mother to cancel the invasion. When he returns to the Volscians empty-handed, a gaggle of conspirators jumps and kills him on the spot. His death, however, is mourned by many of the Volscians as well as the Romans and they are soon brought to heel in several battles and before finally bring defeated by Rome at which point Tullus Aufidius, Coriolanus’s mortal enemy, loses his life.
When comparing Alcibiades and Coriolanus, Plutarch mentions that both were highly competent military strategists and commanders, but his opinion is considerably lower for Alcibiades.
“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 favour; and the ungraciousness, pride, and oligarchic haughtiness which Marcius, on the other hand, displayed in his, were the abhorrence of the Romance populace, Neither of these courses can be called commendable, but a man who ingratiates himself by indulgence and flattery is hardly so censurable as one who, to avoid the appearance of flattering, insults. To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression is not a disgrace only, but an injustice” (322).
Marcius/Coriolanus was “simple and straightforward” whereas Alcibiades was “unscrupulous as a public man, and false.” Coriolanus served the victories of Rome’s enemies, whereas Alcibiades served both sides in the war, and certainly won incredible victories for Athens while also delivering horrid blows. Both harmed their native cities, but Alcibiades’s deeds arguably contributed to the downfall of Athens, whereas in spite of his defection, Coriolanus ultimately decided against invading Rome, and the Volscians were later conquered by Rome.
“He who least likes courting favour, ought also least to think of resenting neglect; to feel wounded at being refused a distinction can only arise for an overweening appetite to have it” (325)
In summary, Plutarch claims Coriolanus possesses a certain strength and temperance of character, even if his tempestuous pride and arrogance often rears its head from time to time, but Plutarch suggests that he deserves to be compared with the best and purest of the Greeks. However, Plutarch does not mince his words when he says Alcibiades was “the least scrupulous and most entirely careless of human beings in all these points” (325).
Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives Vol. I. Random House, Modern Library (Paperback Edition), New York, NY, 1992.
Great Books Guy 