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COMPARISON OF ALCIBIADES AND CORIOLANUS
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.
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