Alcibiades and Coriolanus were brilliant men who made war on their own cities. Coriolanus was driven out of Rome for his pride and led a Volscian army to the gates. Alcibiades was driven out of Athens and served Sparta, then Persia, then Athens again.

Plutarch finds Coriolanus the more rigid, and the less able to bend. He finds Alcibiades the more gifted and the less trustworthy. Neither, he says, knew how to live with the people who had raised him.