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Based on a legendary figure who lived in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, Caius Martius Coriolanus is a great Roman military hero of patrician (i.e., noble) descent. Shakespeare’s play depicts the events that dictated this man’s rise and fall. The central event of his rise to prominence was his remarkable victory against the Volscians in the city of Corioles, which, according to tradition, earned him the surname “Coriolanus.” His fall came when, during a famine, he advised that the common people should only be given grain if they agreed to abolish the office of the tribune and thereby relinquish their representatives in the senate—a recommendation that resulted in his exile. Shakespeare’s dramatization of these events portrays Coriolanus as a military hero of epic proportions who lacks the political finesse and social grace necessary to sustain his reputation. His intensely martial attitude comes directly from his overbearing mother, Volumnia. She has brought him up on the traditional values associated with the life of a warrior, in which honor and valor are only to be won on the battlefield. Yet however much of a “man” she has made him, her continuing dominance over him effectively renders him a “boy.”
Central to Coriolanus’s character is the double edge of humility and pride. His nomination to the consulship comes as a reward for his prowess as a warrior. But in order for him to be elected consul, Coriolanus is required to legitimize his candidacy by making a public show of his battle wounds. Coriolanus resists making such a boastful display, suggesting a strong sense of humility. However, when coached by their tribunes, the common people come to view this humility as a sign of Coriolanus’s tyrannical pride. This view misinterprets Coriolanus’s motivation, and yet it also isn’t entirely wrong. Coriolanus certainly isn’t the tyrant the tribunes accuse him of being. Yet the strenuousness of his refusal to play a political role demonstrates that his humility is closely bound up with pride. Coriolanus refuses to dissemble out a strong sense of pride in his own authenticity. It is this pride that leads to his banishment from Rome as well as his collaboration with his chief rival, Tullus Aufidius, against his home city. But Coriolanus’s final downfall comes when he yields to his mother’s influence and breaks off the campaign against Rome. Betrayed, Aufidius declares him a traitor and has him murdered in the street.
