THE STRUGGLE OF THE ORDERS
Roman tradition associated model figures with these wars. Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus, who earned his third name or cognomen from his leadership of the army that captured the Volscian town of Corioli (its exact location is no longer known), left Rome because of his unpopularity there and took refuge with the Volsci he had previously defeated. Becoming a leader of the Volsci, Coriolanus led their armies against the Romans with great success, and (we are told) failed to capture Rome only because he heeded the pleas of his mother Veturia and his wife Volumnia, models of the virtuous Roman matron.
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus provides a more positive example. In 458, Cincinnatus was summoned from his fields to serve as dictator after the Aequi had trapped a Roman army in the mountains. Within sixteen days, he had gathered an army, defeated the Aequi, rescued the beleaguered Roman army, resigned his dictatorship, and returned to his farm. There could be no better model of the modest and dutiful citizen. Although there is much embellishment in these stories, which undoubtedly grew in the telling, real people and situations may lie behind them.
In the fifth and early fourth centuries, Rome also faced severe internal conflicts that accompanied its foreign wars. Roman historians later included in their histories frequent reports of famine, and of strife over land and debt. Food shortages and quarrels over fields and their produce are common occurrences in small scale agricultural societies, and the warfare of the fifth century, with its disruption of social arrangements and the devastation of fields, must have aggravated the situation. Competition between members of the Roman elite for leadership in the city may often have led to violence and disorder. This strife, however, was aggravated by deeper conflicts, reflecting aspects of the basic organization of the Republic and of Roman society in general. Modern scholars call this conflict the “Struggle of the Orders.”