Гней Марций Кориолан: от героя Рима к врагу города.

5th century BCE Roman general

Gnaeus (or Gaius) Marcius Coriolanus was a Roman general who is said to have lived in the 5th century BC. He received his toponymic cognomen "Coriolanus" following his courageous actions during a Roman siege of the Volscian city of Corioli. He was subsequently exiled from Rome, and led troops of Rome's enemy the Volsci to besiege the city. In later ancient times, it was generally accepted by historians that Coriolanus was a real historical individual, and a consensus narrative story of his life appeared, retold by leading historians such as Livy, Plutarch, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. More recent scholarship has cast doubt on the historicity of Coriolanus, with some portraying him as either a wholly legendary figure or at least disputing the accuracy of the conventional story of his life or the timing of the events.

Coriolanus came to fame as a young man serving in the army of the consul Postumus Cominius in 493 BC during the siege of the Volscian town of Corioli. While the Romans were focused on the siege, another Volscian force arrived from Antium and attacked the Romans, and at the same time the soldiers of Corioli launched a sally. Marcius held watch at the time of the Volscian attack. He quickly gathered a small force of Roman soldiers to fight against the Volscians who had sallied forth from Corioli. Not only did he repel the enemy, but he also charged through the town gates and then began setting fire to some of the houses bordering the town wall. The citizens of Corioli cried out, and the whole Volscian force was dispirited and was defeated by the Romans. The town was captured, and Marcius gained the cognomen Coriolanus.

In 491 BC, two years after Coriolanus' victory over the Volscians, Rome was recovering from a grain shortage. A significant quantity of grain was imported from Sicily, and the senate debated the manner in which it should be distributed to the commoners. Coriolanus advocated that grain should be provided only upon the reversal of the pro plebeian political reforms arising from the first secessio plebis in 494 BC. The senate thought Coriolanus' proposal was too harsh. The populace were incensed at Coriolanus' proposal, and the tribunes put him on trial. The senators argued for the acquittal of Coriolanus, or at the least a merciful sentence. Coriolanus refused to attend on the day of his trial, and he was convicted.

Coriolanus fled to the Volsci in exile. He was received and treated kindly, and resided with the Volscian leader Attius Tullus Aufidius. Coriolanus and Aufidius led the Volscian army against Roman towns, colonies and allies. Roman colonists were expelled from Circeii. They then retook the formerly Volscian towns of Satricum, Longula, Pollusca and Corioli. Then the Volscian army took Lavinium, then Corbio, Vitellia, Trebia, Lavici, and Pedum. From there the Volsci marched on Rome and besieged it. The Volscians initially camped at the Cluilian trench, five miles outside Rome, and ravaged the countryside. Coriolanus directed the Volsci to target plebeian properties and to spare those of the patricians. Coriolanus' fate after this point is unclear, but it seems he took no further part in the war. says that Coriolanus retired to Aufidius' home town of Antium. Coriolanus had committed acts of disloyalty to both Rome and the Volsci, and Aufidius raised support to have Coriolanus first put on trial by the Volscians, and then assassinated before the trial had ended. Plutarch's tale of Coriolanus' appeal to Aufidius is quite similar to a tale from the life of Themistocles, a leader of the Athenian democracy who was a contemporary of Coriolanus. During Themistocles' exile from Athens, he travelled to the home of Admetus, King of the Molossians, a man who was his personal enemy. Themistocles came to Admetus in disguise and appealed to him as a fugitive, just as Coriolanus appealed to Aufidius. Themistocles, however, never attempted military retaliation against Athens.

Some modern scholars question parts of the story of Coriolanus. It is notable that accounts of Coriolanus' life are first found in works from the third century BC, some two hundred years after Coriolanus' life, and there are few authoritative historical records prior to the Gallic sack of Rome in 390 BC. Whether or not Coriolanus himself is a historical figure, the saga preserves a genuine popular memory of the dark, unhappy decades of the early 5th century BC when the Volscians overran Latium and threatened the very existence of Rome.

Shakespeare's Coriolanus is the last of his "Roman plays". Its portrayal of the hero has led to a long tradition of political interpretation of Coriolanus as an anti populist, or even proto fascist leader. Bertolt Brecht's version of Coriolanus (1951) stresses this aspect. Shakespeare's play also forms the basis of the 2011 motion picture Coriolanus, starring and directed by Ralph Fiennes, in which Coriolanus is the protagonist. John Dennis's play The Invader of His Country was staged at the Drury Lane Theatre in 1719. Inspired by Shakespeare's work, it made reference to the recent Jacobite uprisings against the Hanoverian Succession. Heinrich Joseph von Collin's 1804 play Coriolan portrayed him in the context of German romantic ideas of the tragic hero. Beethoven's 1807 Coriolan Overture was written for a production of the von Collin play. T. S. Eliot wrote a sequence of poems in 1931 entitled "Coriolan". Coriolanus: Hero without a Country is a 1963 Italian film based on the legend of Coriolanus. Steven Saylor's 2007 novel Roma presents Coriolanus as a plebeian, the child of a patrician mother and plebeian father. His attitudes toward the changes occurring in Rome during his lifetime are reflective of what has been described. He achieves Senatorial status thanks to his military valour and connections. When he calls for the abolition of the office of tribune, he becomes a target of the plebeians and their representatives. He flees before the trial which would ruin him and his family socially and financially, and seeks the alliance with the Volsci described above. His military campaign against Rome is successful and his forces are approaching the walls of the city until the appeal of the Roman women, including his patrician mother and his wife. When he orders his troops to withdraw, he is killed by them. The 48 Laws of Power uses Coriolanus as an example of violating Law no. 4: "Always Say Less Than Necessary", citing his constant insulting of the plebeians as the reason for his exile. In Suzanne Collins' novel series The Hunger Games the lead antagonist is named Coriolanus Snow. The prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, focuses solely on Coriolanus Snow, and Collins then references the similarities between the historical Coriolanus and the fictional Coriolanus.