Rome 5 insomuch that the story of Coriolanus has riow come to be generally regarded as among the most beautiful of the early Roman legends. With these questions, however, Shake speare of course did not concern himself: like others of his time, he was content to take the rambling and credulous, but lively and graphic narratives of Plutarch as veritable and authentic history. And he would have been every way justi fiable in doing this, even if the later arts of historic doubting and sifting, together with the results thereof, had been at his command. For his business as an artist was to set forth a free and life-like portraiture of human character as modified by the old Roman nationality, and clothed with the drapery of the old Roman manners. Here, then, the garrulous and gossiping old story-teller of Cheronea was just the man for him since it will hardly be questioned that his tales, whether legendary or not, are replete with the spirit and life of the times and places to which they refer.