COMINIUS

Ay, if you come not in the blood of others,
But mantled in your own.

MARCIUS

O, let me clip ye
In arms as sound as when I woo'd, in heart
As merry as when our nuptial day was done,
And tapers burn'd to bedward!

COMINIUS

Flower of warriors,
How is it with Titus Lartius?

MARCIUS

As with a man busied about decrees:
Condemning some to death, and some to exile;
Ransoming him, or pitying, threatening the other;
Holding Corioli in the name of Rome,
Even like a fawning greyhound in the leash,
To let him slip at will.

COMINIUS

Where is that slave
Which told me they had beat you to your trenches?
Where is he? call him hither.

MARCIUS

Let him alone;
He did inform the truth: but for our gentlemen,
The common file–a plague! tribunes for them!–
The mouse ne'er shunn'd the cat as they did budge
From rascals worse than they.

COMINIUS

But how prevail'd you?

MARCIUS

Will the time serve to tell? I do not think.
Where is the enemy? are you lords o' the field?
If not, why cease you till you are so?

COMINIUS

Marcius,
We have at disadvantage fought and did
Retire to win our purpose.

MARCIUS

How lies their battle? know you on which side
They have placed their men of trust?

COMINIUS

As I guess, Marcius,
Their bands i' the vaward are the Antiates,
Of their best trust; o'er them Aufidius,
Their very heart of hope.

MARCIUS

I do beseech you,
By all the battles wherein we have fought,
By the blood we have shed together, by the vows
We have made to endure friends, that you directly
Set me against Aufidius and his Antiates;
And that you not delay the present, but,
Filling the air with swords advanced and darts,
We prove this very hour.