The Comparison of Alcibiades with Coriolanus   

we are to suppose that his object in courting favour with him was
to avert the entire destruction of his native city, whither he wished
himself to return.
As regards money, Alcibiades, we are told, was often guilty of procuring
it by accepting bribes, and spent it ill in luxury and dissipation.
Coriolanus declined to receive it, even when pressed upon him by his
commanders as an honour; and one great reason for the odium he incurred
with the populace in the discussions about their debts was, that he
trampled upon the poor, not for money's sake, but out of pride and
insolence.
Antipater, in a letter written upon the death of Aristotle the philosopher,
observes, "Amongst his other gifts he had that of persuasiveness;"
and the absence of this in the character of Marcius made all his great
actions and noble qualities unacceptable to those whom they benefited:
pride, and self-will, the consort, as Plato calls it, of solitude,
made him insufferable. With the skill which Alcibiades, on the contrary,
possessed to treat every one in the way most agreeable to him, we
cannot wonder that all his successes were attended with the most exuberant
favour and honour; his very errors, at times, being accompanied by
something of grace and felicity. And so in spite of great and frequent
hurt that he had done the city, he was repeatedly appointed to office
and command; while Coriolanus stood in vain for a place which his
great services had made his due. The one, in spite of the harm he
occasioned, could not make himself hated, nor the other, with all
the admiration he attracted, succeeded in being beloved by his countrymen.
Coriolanus, moreover, it should be said, did not as a general obtain
any successes for his country, but only for his enemies against his
country. Alcibiades was often of service to Athens, both as a soldier
and as a commander. So long as he was personally present, he had the
perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded
in his absence. Coriolanus was condemned in person at Rome; and in
like manner killed by the Volscians, not indeed with any right or
justice, yet not without some pretext occasioned by his own acts;
since, after rejecting all conditions of peace in public, in private
he yielded to the solicitations of the women and, without establishing
peace, threw up the favourable chances of war. He ought, before retiring,
to have obtained the consent of those who had placed their trust in
him; if indeed he considered their claims on him to be the strongest.
Or, if we say that he did not care about the Volscians, but merely
had prosecuted the war, which he now abandoned, for the satisfaction
of his own resentment, then the noble thing would have been, not to
spare his country for his mother's sake, but his mother in and with
his country; since both his mother and his wife were part and parcel
of that endangered country. After harshly repelling public supplications,
the entreaties of ambassadors, and the prayers of priests, to concede
all as a private favour to his mother was less an honour to her than
a dishonour to the city which thus escaped, in spite, it would seem,
of its own demerits through the intercession of a single woman. Such
a grace could, indeed, seem merely invidious, ungracious, and unreasonable
in the eyes of both parties; he retreated without listening to the
persuasions of his opponents or asking the consent of his friends.
The origin of all lay in his unsociable, supercilious, and self-willed
disposition, which, in all cases, is offensive to most people; and
when combined with a passion for distinction passes into absolute
savageness and mercilessness. Men decline to ask favours of the people,
professing not to need any honours from them; and then are indignant
if they do not obtain them. Metellus, Aristides, and Epaminondas certainly
did not beg favours of the multitude; but that was because they, in
real truth, did not value the gifts which a popular body can either
confer or refuse; and when they were more than once driven into exile,
rejected at elections, and condemned in courts of justice, they showed
no resentment at the ill-humour of their fellow-citizens, but were
willing and contented to return and be reconciled when the feeling
altered and they were wished for. He who least likes courting favour,