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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With tears in his eyes he cried: ‘O my mother, thou hast saved Rome, but thou hast lost thy son.’

Then he led the Volscian army away from the city, and restored to the Romans the towns which the enemy had taken.

Some legends tell that the Volscians were so angry with Coriolanus for deserting them, that they slew him as a traitor; but others say that he lived in exile until he was an old man.

Weary of exile, he is said to have cried: ‘Only an old man knows how hard it is to live in a far country.’

“O my mother, thou hast saved Rome, but thou hast lost thy son.”

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While the Romans were at war with the Volscians, another tribe, called the Æquians, poured down from their mountain fastnesses and plundered and destroyed their land.

In 459 B.C. peace was made with these fierce mountaineers, and Rome hoped that her borders would no longer be disturbed.

But the Æquians were a restless people. They soon broke the treaty, and, led by their chief Clœlius, pitched their camp on one of the spurs of the Alban hills, and began to burn and plunder as of old.