Veturia: the Mother of Coriolanus in Plutarch's Lives.

Veturia was a Roman matron, the mother of the perhaps legendary Roman general Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus. It is clear that Shakespeare wanted a Roman lady tough enough to rival such more modern women as his Queen Margaret of Anjou in Henry VI and found this exemplar in Plutarch's Lives. As usual in Shakespeare, a powerful general is outmanoeuvred by a determined woman. The Romans honored Veturia for her courage as a model of Roman female virtue, but she asked only that a temple be built to Female Fortune. Plutarch wrote: "The senate, much commendable for their public spirit, caused the temple to be built and a statue set up in it at the public charge.” Shakespeare renamed her Volumnia.

This fanciful coin-portrait of the mother of Coriolanus appeared in a biographical collection: "Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum" in 1553. Published by Guillaume Rouille (1518?-1589). Picture and data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).