Coriolanus Act 2.1.1 Part 2

“What then, sir?” Both men replied again in unison.

“Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates alias fools as any in Rome.” Menenius spat it out for the two. He had enough of the contempt for Marcius whom he held in high regards. It was Sicinius who stood up this preventing Brutus from injuring himself.

“Menenius, you are known well enough too.” Sicinius trying to claim back his own by attempting to denounce the older man.

“I am known to be a humorous patrician, and that one that love a cup of hot wine.” Menenius smiled while he raised his glass of wine. It was a new one for him; direct from the barrel, fermented and stored longer in the cellar. The taste was new to him then. “Tiber isn’t it?”

“It’s said to be something imperfect in favoring the first complaint, hasty and tinder like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning.” Menenius drew on his habit to sit before the throne of his chamber every evening before he sleeps while he thought out his day that had past. He would smile at the blunders and awed at the achievement then. By morning, he was all out to recreate a new day to be reflected in the evening on his throne.

“What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath.” Menenius took to the role of a tutor before the students. 

“Meeting two such … wealsmen as you are.”

Menenius held his breath there for he almost blurted the word Commoner and it would be dire insults to the ears but had used an expression of sort to softer the tone.

“I cannot call you Lycurguses.” The infamous Spartan Lycurgus had reformed Spartan into a military society and later to revere as warriors among all the nations there.

“If the drinks you give me touch my palate adversely,” Menenius looked to the glass of wine which he later set it down unfinished. “I make a crooked face at it.”

“Well, when I find the ass in the compound with the major part of your syllables; and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave faces, yet they lie deadly that tell you have good faces.” The tutor coached to his student on their stupidity.

“If you see this microcosm,” Menenius leaned forward to look at the two. “Follow it that I am known well enough too? What harm can your …..bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be well known enough too?”

“Come, come, sir. We know you well enough.” Brutus spoke out for the older man. Menenius had been a known Consul who spoke well for any sides he believed in. They are his companions to learn more or at times to glean off.

“You know neither of me, yourselves, nor anything.” It was a harsh statement by the tutor on the student. “You are ambitious for poor knaves; caps and legs, you wear out a good wholesome forenoon, listening between the orange wife and a faucet seller and then rejoin the controversy of three pence matter between parties.”

Menenius coughed out the air that was blocked in his nasal. He then cleared his throat and continued on.

“If you chance to be pinched with the colic, you make faces like mummies, and in roaring for a chamber pot, dismissed the controversy bleeding, the more entangled in your hearing.” Menenius cleared his throat while his fingers pressed on the bridge of the nose as if to constrict the passage there.  “All the peace you ever make in their cause was calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones.”

Menenius was reflecting on the two’ behavior in the Senate; of calling as mediators for discussion and most times ended up snarling both parties to call on each other as liars. Or bringing up past issues to antagonize during the ongoing proceedings.

“Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Senate.” 

Brutus brooded on the older was alike in the Senate. Menenius laughed at it. He was nicknamed the Brawler for his antics.

“Our priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it’s not worth the wagging of your beards.” Menenius rubbed his short stubs on his chin. “You must be saying Marcius is proud; who, in cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion; though peradventure some of the best of them were hereditary hangmen.”

Menenius had made snide reference on Brutus’ ancestry to Deucalion; who was the son of Prometheus, who had escaped the wrath of Zeus when he rained disasters on the world in his rage. He escaped with his wife in a chest made by him and his father. It was said to be similar to the tale of the Ark.

“God-den to your worships, more of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you.” Menenius grew tired of the conversation that leads to nowhere. He excused himself and the other two stood aside. He had feigned the excuse for he had sighted the arrival of the two ladies he would like to meet.