TALES OF THE ROMANS
up and down the streets, and old men knelt praying before the altars of the gods.
Some of the senators, who had once been friends of Coriolanus, offered to go and confer with him in his camp.
“I will make peace,” he replied to these messengers, “if the Romans give back all the land they have taken from the Volscians. You may have thirty days to think about it.”
They returned to his camp in thirty days, and said the Romans would yield a part of the land if the Volscians would lay down their arms.
“No,” he answered, “and you can now have but three more days before I resume the war.”
A third party came. This consisted of priests bearing their wands and staves. To these he spoke as sternly as to the senators.
A wise lady named Valeria thought of a plan. She took a number of Roman matrons with her, and they called at the house where lived Volumnia, the aged mother of Coriolanus. They found her sitting with her daughter-in-law, the wife of Coriolanus; and his children were with the mother and grandmother.
“We come to you,” said the visitors, “as women to women, not being sent by the senate or the consuls. We come to beg your help. Go along with us to Coriolanus. Tell him that, though you are his mother, the Romans have done you
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