rgency attached to Coriolanus's moral judgment of the situation is amplified with the only appearance of his son onstage, when Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria come to plead for reconciliation. Young Marcius's one line is in response to Volumnia's plea to Coriolanus not to tread on Rome, more exactly not to make his family choose between loyalty to Rome and loyalty to him, but rather to reconcile with Rome. Young Marcius's line is the naive bluster of a child: "A' shall not tread on me; / I'll run away till I am bigger, but then I'll fight" (V.iii). Now this is undoubtedly a silly statement on its face, but the line contrasts the innocence of Marcius with the calculation of Volumnia. For his part, Coriolanus has a grim sense that nothing good can come of an attempt at reconciliation, though as Volumnia justly points out he seems more concerned to protect what he sees as a moral entitlement to sack Rome than to sort through the human cost of military engagements. "Do not bid me . . . capitulate / . . . desire not / To allay my rages and revenges with / Your cold
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