The Comparison of Alcibiades with Coriolanus   

Having described all their actions that seem to deserve commemoration,
their military ones, we may say, incline the balance very decidedly
upon neither side. They both, in pretty equal measure, displayed on
numerous occasions the daring and courage of the soldier, and the
skill and foresight of the general; unless, indeed, the fact that
Alcibiades was victorious and successful in many contests both by
sea and land, ought to gain him the title of a more complete commander.
That so long as they remained and held command in their respective
countries they eminently sustained, and when they were driven into
exile yet more eminently damaged, the fortunes of those countries,
is common to both. All the sober citizens felt disgust at the petulance,
the low flattery, and base seductions which Alcibiades, in his public
life, allowed himself to employ with the view of winning the people's
favour; and the ungraciousness, pride, and oligarchical haughtiness
which Marcius, on the other hand, displayed in his, were the abhorrence
of the Roman populace. Neither of these courses can be called commendable;
but a man who ingratiates himself by indulgence and flattery is hardly
so censurable as one who, to avoid the appearance of flattering, insults.
To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain
it by terror, violence, and oppression is not a disgrace only, but
an injustice.
Marcius, according to our common conceptions of his character, was
undoubtedly simple and straightforward; Alcibiades, unscrupulous as
a public man, and false. He is more especially blamed for the dishonourable
and treacherous way in which, as Thucydides relates, he imposed upon
the Lacedaemonian ambassadors, and disturbed the continuance of the
peace. Yet this policy, which engaged the city again in war, nevertheless
placed it in a powerful and formidable position, by the accession,
which Alcibiades obtained for it, of the alliance of Argos and Mantinea.
And Coriolanus also, Dionysius relates, used unfair means to excite
war between the Romans and the Volscians, in the false report which
he spread about the visitors at the Games; and the motive of this
action seems to make it the worse of the two; since it was not done,
like the other, out of ordinary political jealousy, strife, and competition.
Simply to gratify anger from which, as Ion says, no one ever yet got
any return, he threw whole districts of Italy into confusion, and
sacrificed to his passion against his country numerous innocent cities.
It is true, indeed, that Alcibiades also, by his resentment, was the
occasion of great disasters to his country, but he relented as soon
as he found their feelings to be changed; and after he was driven
out a second time, so far from taking pleasure in the errors and inadvertencies
of their commanders, or being indifferent to the danger they were
thus incurring, he did the very thing that Aristides is so highly
commended for doing to Themistocles; he came to the generals who were
his enemies, and pointed out to them what they ought to do. Coriolanus,
on the other hand, first of all attacked the whole body of his countrymen,
though only one portion of them had done him any wrong, while the
other, the better and nobler portion, had actually suffered, as well
as sympathized, with him. And, secondly, by the obduracy with which
he resisted numerous embassies and supplications, addressed in propitiation
of his single anger and offence, he showed that it had been to destroy
and overthrow, not to recover and regain his country, that he had
excited bitter and implacable hostilities against it. There is, indeed,
one distinction that may be drawn. Alcibiades, it may be said, was
not safe among the Spartans, and had the inducements at once of fear
and of hatred to lead him again to Athens; whereas Marcius could not
honourably have left the Volscians, when they were behaving so well
to him: he, in the command of their forces and the enjoyment of their
entire confidence, was in a very different position from Alcibiades,
whom the Lacedaemonians did not so much wish to adopt into their service,
as to use and then abandon. Driven about from house to house in the
city, and from general to general in the camp, the latter had no resort
but to place himself in the hands of Tisaphernes; unless, indeed,