Plutarch
46-119 A.C.E - Wrote in Greek
The Comparison of
Alcibiades with Coriolanus
Written 75 A.C.E.
Translated by John Dryden
The Comparison of
Alcibiades with Coriolanus
By Plutarch
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 favour; and the ungraciousness, pride, and oligarchical haughtiness
which Marcius, on the other hand, displayed in his, were the abhorrence
of the Roman 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.
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 dishonourable
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 war, 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
of 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 also, 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 of 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 single anger
and offence, 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 it. 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 honourably 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 Tisaphernes; unless,
indeed, we are to suppose that his object in courting favour 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 ill in luxury and dissipation.
Coriolanus declined to receive it, even when pressed upon him by his commanders
as an honour; 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, possessed
to treat every one in the way most agreeable to him, we cannot wonder that
all his successes were attended with the most exuberant favour and honour;
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. The
one, in spite of the harm he occasioned, could not make himself hated,
nor the other, with all the admiration he attracted, succeeded in being
beloved by his countrymen.
Coriolanus, moreover, it should be said, did not as a general obtain
any successes for his country, but only for his enemies against his country.
Alcibiades was often of service to Athens, both as a soldier and as a commander.
So long as he was personally present, he had the perfect mastery of his
political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence. Coriolanus
was condemned in person at Rome; and in like manner killed by the Volscians,
not indeed with any right or justice, yet not without some pretext occasioned
by his own acts; since, after rejecting all conditions of peace in public,
in private he yielded to the solicitations of the women and, without establishing
peace, threw up the favourable chances of war. He ought, before retiring,
to have obtained the consent of those who had placed their trust in him;
if indeed he considered their claims on him to be the strongest. Or, if
we say that he did not care about the Volscians, but merely had prosecuted
the war, which he now abandoned, for the satisfaction of his own resentment,
then the noble thing would have been, not to spare his country for his
mother's sake, but his mother in and with his country; since both his mother
and his wife were part and parcel of that endangered country. After harshly
repelling public supplications, the entreaties of ambassadors, and the
prayers of priests, to concede all as a private favour to his mother was
less an honour to her than a dishonour to the city which thus escaped,
in spite, it would seem, of its own demerits through the intercession of
a single woman. Such a grace could, indeed, seem merely invidious, ungracious,
and unreasonable in the eyes of both parties; he retreated without listening
to the persuasions of his opponents or asking the consent of his friends.
The origin of all lay in his unsociable, supercilious, and self-willed
disposition, which, in all cases, is offensive to most people; and when
combined with a passion for distinction passes into absolute savageness
and mercilessness. Men decline to ask favours of the people, professing
not to need any honours from them; and then are indignant if they do not
obtain them. Metellus, Aristides, and Epaminondas certainly did not beg
favours of the multitude; but that was because they, in real truth, did
not value the gifts which a popular body can either confer or refuse; and
when they were more than once driven into exile, rejected at elections,
and condemned in courts of justice, they showed no resentment at the ill-humour
of their fellow-citizens, but were willing and contented to return and
be reconciled when the feeling altered and they were wished for. 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 from an overweening
appetite to have it.
Alcibiades never professed to deny that it was pleasant to him
to be honoured, and distasteful to him to be overlooked; and, accordingly,
he always tried to place himself upon good terms with all that he met;
Coriolanus's 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 claims to be compared with the best and purest
of the Greeks; not in any sort or kind with Alcibiades, the least scrupulous
and most entirely and most entirely careless of human beings in all these
points.
THE END
|
