Читать книгу The Story of Rome, From the Earliest Times to the Death of Augustus, Told to Boys and Girls онлайн

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When the priests returned, having accomplished nothing, one of these matrons said: ‘We will go to Veturia and Volumnia and beseech them to go plead with Coriolanus. He cannot refuse to listen to his mother and his wife, for he loves them well.’

Veturia, who was stricken with grief that her son could betray his country into the hands of the enemy, needed no persuasion to go to speak with him.

Clad in black garments, she and Volumnia with her little children, followed by a band of Roman matrons set out for the camp of the enemy.

Coriolanus, when he caught sight of his mother, leaped from his seat, and running quickly toward her, would have kissed her, as was his wont.

But she, putting him aside, bade him first answer her question.

‘Am I the mother of Gaius Marcius,’ she asked reproachfully, ‘or a prisoner in the hands of the leader of the Volscians? Alas! had I not been a mother, my country had still been free.’ As his mother said these words, his wife and children fell at his knees and clung to him. His mother’s words did what nothing else had been able to do, for the proud patrician could not bear to listen to her reproaches.