At the end of this speech she sighed aloud, and tearing open her clothing showed her breasts, and touching her abdomen exclaimed:  “See, my child, this brought you forth, these reared you up.”  When she had said this, his wife and the children and the rest of the women joined in the lament, so that he too was cast into grief.  Recovering himself at length with difficulty he embraced his mother and at the same time kissing her replied:  “Mother, I yield to you.  Yours is the victory, and let the other men, too, bestow their gratitude for this upon you.  For I can not endure even to see them, who after receiving such great benefits at hands have treated me in such a way.  Hence I never even enter the city.  Do you keep the country instead of me, since you have so wished it, and I will take myself out of the way of you all.”

Having spoken thus he withdrew.  For through fear of the multitude and shame before his peers, in that he had made an expedition against them at all he would not accept even the safe return offered him, but retired among the Volsci, and there, either as the result of a plot or from old age, died. (Mai, p.148.  Zonaras, 7, 16.  Cp.  John Tzetzes, Letters, 6, p.9, 16.)

4.  Dio Cocceianus himself and numberless others who have set forth the deeds of the Romans, tell the story of this Marcus Coriolanus.  This Marcus, as he was formerly called and later Gnaeus, had along with these the name of Coriolanus.  When the Romans were warring against the city of Coriolanus [sic], and had all turned to flight at full speed, the man himself turned toward the hostile city and finding it open alone set fire to it.  As the flames rose brilliantly he mounted his horse and with great force fell upon the rear of the barbarians, who were bringing headlong flight upon the Romans.  They wheeled about and when they saw the fire consuming the city, thinking it was sacked they fled in another direction.  He, having saved the Romans and sacked the city, which we have already said was called Coriolanus, received, in addition to his former names Marcus and Gnaeus, the title of Coriolanus, from the rout.  But (the usual treatment that jealousy accords to benefactors) after a little in the course of reflections they fine the man.  The man excessively afflicted with most just wrath leaves his wife, his mother, and his country, and goes to the Corioli, and they receive the man.  Then after that they arrayed themselves against the Romans.  And had not his spouse and mother at the breaking out of that war run and torn apart their tunics and stood about him naked,—­Veturia and Volumnia were their names,—­and checked him with difficulty from the battle against the Romans, Rome would have made a resolve to honor benefactors.  But brought to a halt by the prayers of his mother and of his spouse he stopped the war against the Romans, and he himself leaving behind the Corioli and the Romans hurried to another land, smitten by sorrow. (Tzetzes, Hist. 6, 527-560.  Cp.  Haupt, Hermes, XIV.)