Isaac Asimov - Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

Volumnia's bloodthirsty and single-minded approach to the notion of military honor makes it plain why Marcius, trained by her, is what he is. But can it be that Shakespeare approves of this sort of mother and finds the product of her training to be admirable? Let's see what follows immediately!

Valeria, a friend of the family, comes to visit, and describes something she has observed that involves Marcius' young son. She says:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 63-68

The promising child, in other words, plays cat-and-mouse with a butterfly and ends by killing it in a rage. But why a butterfly? Surely nothing can be as pretty, harmless, and helpless as a butterfly. It isn't possible that we can feel sympathetic for a child that would deliberately and sadistically kill one. And this is clearly the product of Volumnia's bringing up.

But can we really apply the unreasoning action of a young child to the behavior of the adult Marcius? Surely we can, for Shakespeare makes certain that we do. What does he have Volumnia say to Valeria's tale? She says, calmly:

—Act I, scene iii, line 70

It seems reasonable to suppose that Shakespeare admires neither Volumnia's philosophy nor the individuals it produces.

Valeria wants Virgilia to come out on the town with her but Virgilia will not. Like a loyal wife, she will stay at home till her husband is back from the wars. Valeria says, cynically:

—Act I, scene iii, lines 86-88

Penelope is the very byword of the faithful wife. Married to Ulysses (see page I-90) but a couple of years when he went forth to Troy, she remained faithful for twenty years in his home island of Ithaca, till he returned. In the last several years, he was rumored dead and many suitors clamored for her hand. She put them off with one ruse or another, the most famous being that she wanted first to finish a shroud she was weaving for Ulysses' aged father, Laertes. Every day she wove and every night she ripped out what she had woven, keeping it up a long time before she was caught. The story of Penelope and the suitors makes up a major portion of Homer's Odyssey.

The Roman forces under Marcius and Titus Lartius (another valiant Roman) are meanwhile laying siege to Corioli. They are met with Volscian resolution and are beaten back at the first assault. Marcius, yelling curses at his soldiers in his usual manner, rushes forward and manages to get inside the city gates, which close behind him. He is alone in an enemy city.

Titus Lartius, coming up now, hears the news, and speaks of him as already dead. He says, apostrophizing the as-good-as-dead Marcius:

—Act I, scene iv, lines 57-61

This is taken almost verbatim from Plutarch, where that biographer describes Marcius as a soldier after Cato's heart. The Cato referred to is Marcus Porcius Cato, often called Cato the Censor (an office which he held with vigor), for he was a model of old-fashioned Roman virtue. He was completely honest and completely bound to duty, but he was cold, cruel, sour, miserly, and narrow-minded. He was heartless to his slaves and lacked any tender feelings for his wife and children. As censor, he was perfectly capable of fining a Roman patrician for kissing his own wife in the presence of their children.

It was perfectly proper for Plutarch to quote Cato in this connection, for he lived over three centuries after Cato. Shakespeare, however, is guilty of negligence in placing the remark in Lartius' mouth without making the necessary modification, for it now becomes an amusing anachronism. The siege of Corioli took place, according to legend, in 493 b.c., and Cato wasn't born till 243 b.c., two and a half centuries later (and didn't become censor till 184 b.c.).

But Marcius is not dead. If the tale were not a legend, magnified in the telling, even if we allow a kernel of truth, he would undoubtedly be dead. Perhaps this part of the tale of Marcius was inspired by a similar incident in the life of Alexander the Great.

In 326 b.c. Alexander was conducting his last major campaign in what was then called India, but in a region which is now part of Pakistan. They laid siege to a town called Multan, which is located about 175 miles southwest of Lahore, on one of the chief tributaries of the Indus. In a fever of excitement, Alexander pressed forward to the walls and managed to climb them and leap into the city without looking to see whether the army was following or not.

For a while, he was alone in the midst of enemies. One or two men managed to join him and when Alexander was struck down and seriously wounded they protected him until the army made its way into the city. Alexander survived, but it was a very near thing.

Marcius does better than that, however. No one joins him and he appears on the battlements, bleeding, but not seriously wounded. Only now does the rest of the army, in a fever of enthusiasm, storm the city and take it.

Marcius then leads part of the army to join Cominius and together they defeat the Volscians under Tullus Aufidius.

Now the army rings with praises for Marcius, but when Titus Lartius tries to put those praises into words, Marcius says, gruffly:

—Act I, scene ix, lines 13-15

This sounds like modesty, like superhuman modesty, but is it? Marcius is a loner. His universe consists of himself alone, plus his mother. He is willing to enter Corioli alone, to fight alone against an army; the soldiers under his command are but a source of annoyance to him.

Why, then, should he want their praise? Who are they to praise him? Far from this being a true mark of modesty, it might rather be interpreted as the sign of a most confounded arrogance. Only his mother has a right to praise him and even that is not entirely acceptable to him. In the remark, further, he naively reveals the fact that he places his mother (as far as the right of praise is concerned) above Rome.

Nevertheless, he is not to get away without some mark of favor. Cominius, the consul, gives him an added name, saying:

—Act I, scene ix, lines 62-65

It was a Roman custom, when one of their generals won a signal victory over some particular foreign enemy, to give him an additional name taken from the conquered place or people. Sometimes the individual was thereafter known by his new title almost exclusively.

The most renowned case of this in Roman history is that of Publius Cornelius Scipio. Scipio was the final conqueror of Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, the greatest and most feared enemy Rome ever had in the days of its greatness, and certainly one of the most remarkable captains in the lamentable history of warfare. The battle in which Scipio finally overcame Hannibal was fought at Zama in 202 b.c., a city in northern Africa. As a consequence, the title "Africanus" was added to Scipio's name.