SOURCE: Barton, Anne. “Livy, Machiavelli, and Shakespeare's Coriolanus.” In Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, edited by Harold Bloom, pp. 123-47. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.

In the following essay, originally published in 1985, Barton emphasizes the historical and political themes of Coriolanus and considers the influence of Livy and Machiavelli on Shakespeare's dramatization of republican Rome.

In book 7 of his great history of Rome, from her foundation to the time of Augustus, Titus Livius recounts, with a certain admixture of scepticism, the story of Marcus Curtius. In the year 362 b.c. a chasm suddenly opened in the middle of the Forum. The soothsayers, when consulted, declared that only a ritual sacrifice of the thing “wherein the most puissance and greatness of the people of Rome consisted” could close the fissure and “make the state of Rome to remain sure forever.” Much discussion followed, but no one could determine...