Page:The story of Rome, from the earliest times to the death of Augustus, told to boys and girls (IA storyofromefrome00macg).pdf/98

 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.

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.'