MENENIUS

Hear me speak:
As I do know the consul's worthiness,
So can I name his faults,–

SICINIUS

Consul! what consul?

MENENIUS

The consul Coriolanus.

BRUTUS

He consul!

Citizens

No, no, no, no, no.

MENENIUS

If, by the tribunes' leave, and yours, good people,
I may be heard, I would crave a word or two;
The which shall turn you to no further harm
Than so much loss of time.

SICINIUS

Speak briefly then;
For we are peremptory to dispatch
This viperous traitor: to eject him hence
Were but one danger, and to keep him here
Our certain death: therefore it is decreed
He dies to-night.

MENENIUS

Now the good gods forbid
That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude
Towards her deserved children is enroll'd
In Jove's own book, like an unnatural dam
Should now eat up her own!

SICINIUS

He's a disease that must be cut away.

MENENIUS

O, he's a limb that has but a disease;
Mortal, to cut it off; to cure it, easy.
What has he done to Rome that's worthy death?
Killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost–
Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath,
By many an ounce–he dropp'd it for his country;
And what is left, to lose it by his country,
Were to us all, that do't and suffer it,
A brand to the end o' the world.

SICINIUS

This is clean kam.

BRUTUS

Merely awry: when he did love his country,
It honour'd him.

MENENIUS

The service of the foot
Being once gangrened, is not then respected
For what before it was.