Virgilia, the wife of Coriolanus, grows anxious as Volumnia and Valeria discuss the war between Rome and the Volscians, as she is deeply concerned for her husband’s safety. Volumnia alludes to Penelope from The Odyssey in expressing her disapproval for Virgilia’s anxieties, urging her to join the other Roman noblewomen in celebrating the war:
VIRGILIA:
I will wish her speedy strength and visit her
With my prayers, but I cannot go hither
VOLUMNIA
Why, I pray you?
VIRGILIA
‘Tis not to save labor, nor that I want love.
VALERIA
You would be another Penelope. Yet they say
All the yarn she spun in Ulysses' absence but did full
Ithaca full of moths. Come, I would your cambric
Were sensible as your finger, that you might leave
Pricking it for pity. Come, you shall go with us.
After Virgilia refuses to follow Valeria and Volumnia into the city to await updates on the war, Volumnia dismisses her daughter-in-law’s fears. Volumnia claims that Virgilia would “be another Penelope,” alluding to a figure known from Greek mythology. In Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Penelope is the Queen of Ithaca and the wife of the warrior Odysseus. While he fights in the Trojan War, she waits for him in Ithaca. When he is presumed dead after many years of absence, Penelope refuses the various suitors who come to marry her and claims that she will not remarry until she is done weaving a funeral shroud for her father-in-law, undoing her work every night to delay remarrying.
Though Penelope is generally understood as a model of marital loyalty and faithfulness, Volumnia argues that Penelope was wrong to wait passively for her husband, suggesting that she filled “Ithaca full of moths” by spending so much time weaving. Though Coriolanus is her own son, Volumnia has no patience for sentimental affection.
When Coriolanus is called to battle against the Volscian troops, led by his nemesis and rival Aufidius, his mother, Volumnia, and his wife, Virgilia, react very differently to this news. While Virgilia is horrified by the thought of her husband in battle, Volumnia urges her to look upon his military exploits with excitement. Both allude to various figures from classical mythology in articulating their divergent perspectives:
VIRGILIA
His bloody brow? O Jupiter, no blood!
VOLUMNIA
Away, you fool! It more becomes a man
Than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba,
When she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier
Than Hector’s forehead when it did spit forth blood
At Grecian sword, contemning. – Tell Valeria
We are fit to bid her welcome.
Eager for her husband to return from the battle unscathed, Virgilia prays to Jupiter, the most powerful god in Roman mythology, and a counterpart to the Greek god Zeus. Volumnia, however, dismisses Virgilia’s concerns as foolish, arguing that blood “becomes a man” or in other words, that men look most attractive when covered in blood. She alludes to Hecuba, the queen of Troy depicted in The Iliad. In the epic poem, she is the wife of King Priam and the mother of warriors Hector and Paris, as well as the prophetess Cassandra. Volumnia argues that Hecuba, famous for her beauty, was nevertheless “not lovelier” than the image of her son Hecuba covered in blood from battle.
After Coriolanus refuses to show his wounds to the citizens assembled in the marketplace, as is customary in the Roman Republic as depicted in the play, the plebeian tribunes Brutus and Sicinius are able to convince the crowds to deny Coriolanus’s candidacy for the consulship of Rome. When they present their opposition to his candidacy, Coriolanus mocks their words bitterly, alluding to the hydra, a multi-headed monster in classical mythology:
Why,
You grave but reckless senators, have you thus
Given Hydra here to choose an officer,
That with his peremptory “shall,” being but
The horn and noise o’ th’ monster’s, wants not spirit
To say he’ll turn your current in a ditch
And make your channel his? If he have power,
Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake
Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned,
Be not as common fools; if you are not,
Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians,
If they be senators; and they are no less
When, both your voices blended, the great’st taste
Most palates theirs.
Coriolanus rails against the democratic processes of Rome that grant political representation to the plebeians, whom he looks down upon. In his critique of the Roman masses, he alludes to the hydra, a serpentine monster in Greek and Roman myths, with many heads that can be quickly regenerated when cut off. He alludes to the hydra at various points throughout the speech, noting that the words of the tribunes are the “horn and noise o’ th’ monster.” In his speech, Coriolanus draws from common antidemocratic writing of Shakespeare’s own day, which argued that democracy is “monstrous” because a state must be governed by one mind, just as a body is.
At home, Coriolanus promises to follow his mother’s advice and speak gently to the Roman crowds in order to soften their anger and spare him from execution. Upon returning to the marketplace of Rome, however, Coriolanus is quickly baited into a state of fury, and he responds to the crowds with the same insults that previously ruined his candidacy for the consulship. After rejecting calls by Menenius and Cominius to moderate himself, Coriolanus alludes to the Tarpeian Rock, a well-known site for executions in ancient Rome:
I’ll know no further.
Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,
Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger
But with a grain a day, I would not buy
Their mercy at the price of one fair word,
Nor check my courage for what they can give,
To have ’t with saying “Good morrow.”
By “steep Tarpeian death,” Coriolanus refers to the Tarpeian Rock, a steep cliff on the south side of the Capitoline Hill, one of the famed Seven Hills of Ancient Rome. The hill was known in Ancient Rome as a site of execution, as those convicted of serious crimes including treason were thrown from the cliff to their deaths. Characteristically unable to modify his behavior in order to appease the crowds, Coriolanus accepts his apparent fate, arguing that he wouldn’t “buy mercy at the price of one fair word” uttered to the angry crowds. This allusion to the Tarpeian Rock helps ground the play in its Ancient Roman setting.
In their brief conversation that follows Coriolanus’s disastrous return to the Roman marketplace, Coriolanus and Volumnia allude to figures from both classical mythology and early modern history:
VOLUMNIA
Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,
And occupations perish!
CORIOLANUS
What, what, what!
I shall be loved when I am lacked.Nay, mother,
Resume that spirit when you were wont to say
If you had been the wife of Hercules
Six of his labors you’d have done and saved
Your husband so much sweat.—Cominius,
Droop not. Adieu.—Farewell, my wife, my mother.
I’ll do well yet.
Outraged at her son’s banishment, Volumnia calls for a “red pestilence” to strike Rome, leading to a cessation of all commerce. Here, she alludes to the bubonic plague that frequently afflicted European nations in the medieval and early modern periods. Though this allusion doesn’t fit the ancient Roman setting of the play, it does address a topic on the minds of many theatergoers in Shakespeare’s own day.
Attempting to calm down Volumnia, Coriolanus alludes to the mythological figure of Hercules. In the past, Volumnia declared that if she “had been the wife of Hercules,” she would have completed six of the legendary 12 “Labors of Hercules” on his behalf in order to save him the time and effort. Coriolanus, then, urges his mother to remember her own strong and fiery spirit in these difficult times.
After his banishment from Rome, Coriolanus travels to Corioli, a Volscian city, where he finds the court of his former nemesis Aufidius and declares his loyalty to the Volscians, hoping to revenge himself upon Rome. Rather than turning Coriolanus away, Aufidius welcomes him with open arms, treating the Roman warrior with a high degree of honor, respect, and admiration. The Third Servingman, a commoner employed by Aufidius, uses simile, metaphor, and allusion in describing Coriolanus’s treatment in the Volscian court:
Why, he is so made on here within
as if he were son and heir to Mars; set at upper end
o’ th’ table; no question asked him by any of the
senators but they stand bald before him. Our general
himself makes a mistress of him, sanctifies
himself with ’s hand, and turns up the white o’ th’
eye to his discourse. But the bottom of the news is,
our general is cut i’ th’ middle and but one half of
what he was yesterday, for the other has half,
by the entreaty and grant of the whole table. He’ll go,
he says, and sowl the porter of Rome gates by th’ears.
Coriolanus, the Servingman claims, has been treated “as if he were son and heir to Mars.” Through this simile, the Third Servingman compares Coriolanus to a god or half-god. More specifically, he alludes to Mars, the Roman god of war, reflecting Coriolanus’s status as a prolific warrior in battle. Aufidius, conversely, “makes a mistress” of his former enemy, a metaphor that suggests Aufidius is carefully courting Coriolanus in the manner of a lover.
Several of Aufidius’s troops, servants, and military generals express their anxieties regarding Coriolanus’s high degree of influence on their leader. Many of them remember Coriolanus as an enemy and remain unconvinced by his claims to have switched allegiances, while others worry that Aufidius has demeaned himself by doting upon Coriolanus “like a mistress.” In conversation, a Volscian Lieutenant and Aufidius make a number of allusions while addressing the topic:
LIEUTENANT
I do not know what witchcraft’s in him, but
Your soldiers use him as the grace ’fore meat,
Their talk at table, and their thanks at end;
And you are dark’ned in this action, sir,
Even by your own.
AUFIDIUS
I cannot help it now,
Unless by using means I lame the foot
Of our design. He bears himself more proudlier,
Even to my person, than I thought he would
When first I did embrace him. Yet his nature
In that’s no changeling, and I must excuse
What cannot be amended.
The Lieutenant acknowledges that Coriolanus has had a motivating effect on the soldiers, who “use him as the grace 'fore meat.” Here, he alludes to the Christian practice of saying grace, or offering a brief prayer to God before eating a meal. Though this Christian allusion is not appropriate to the earlier Roman time period depicted in the play, it does emphasize the extent to which the soldiers treat Coriolanus like an object of worship or a god.
Though Aufidius acknowledges that Coriolanus “bears himself more proudlier” than he “thought he would,” the Volscian leader concludes that it is simply in Coriolanus’s nature to be proud, as he’s “no changeling.” Here, Aufidius alludes to the “changeling,” a figure from Medieval and Renaissance folklore of Europe. In these myths, supernatural creatures occasionally replace one of their own children with a human child, which is then raised by unsuspecting human parents. Through this allusion, Aufidus suggests that Coriolanus is unfailingly true to his own nature.
