forks between the two glens, being consulted by his son's messenger, he gave his opinion, that they should all be immediately dismissed from thence unhurt. On this counsel being rejected, and the same messenger returning a second time, he recommended that they should all, to a man, be put to death. When these answers, so opposite to each other, like those of an ambiguous oracle, were given, although his son in particular considered that the powers of his father's mind, together with those of his body, had been impaired by age, was yet prevailed on, by the general desire of all, to send for him to consult him. The old man, we are told, complied without reluctance, and was carried in a waggon to the camp, where, when summoned to give his advice, he spoke in such a way as to make no alteration in his opinions; he only added the reasons for them. That "by his first plan, which he esteemed the best, he meant, by an act of extraordinary kindness, to establish perpetual peace and friendship with a most powerful nation: by the other, to put off the return of war to the distance of many ages, during which the Roman state, after the loss of those two armies, could not easily recover its strength. A third plan there was not. When his son, and the other chiefs, went on to ask him if "a plan of a middle kind might not be adopted; that they both should be dismissed unhurt, and, at the same time, by the right of war, terms imposed on them as vanquished?" "That, indeed," said he, "is a plan of such a nature, as neither procures friends nor removes enemies. Only preserve those whom ye would irritate by ignominious treatment. The Romans are a race who know not how to sit down quiet under defeat; whatever that is which the present necessity shall brand will rankle in their breasts for ever, and will not suffer them to rest, until they have wreaked manifold vengeance on your heads." Neither of these plans was approved, and Herennius was carried home from the camp.

4. In the Roman camp also, when many fruitless efforts to force a passage had been made, and they were now destitute of every means of subsistence, forced by necessity, they send ambassadors, who were first to ask peace on equal terms; which, if they did not obtain, they were to challenge the enemy to battle. To this Pontius answered, that "the war was at an end; and since, even in their present vanquished

and captive state, they were not willing to acknowledge their situation, he would send them under the yoke unarmed, each with a single garment; that the other conditions of peace should be such as were just between the conquerors and the conquered. If their troops would depart, and their colonies be withdrawn out of the territories of the Samnites; for the future, the Romans and Samnites, under a treaty of equality, shall live according to their own respective laws. On these terms he was ready to negotiate with the consuls: and if any of these should not be accepted, he forbade the ambassadors to come to him again." When the result of this embassy was made known, such general lamentation suddenly arose, and such melancholy took possession of them, that had they been told that all were to die on the spot, they could not have felt deeper affliction. After silence continued a long time, and the consuls were not able to utter a word, either in favour of a treaty so disgraceful, or against a treaty so necessary; at length, Lucius Lentulus, who was the first among the lieutenants-general, both in respect of bravery, and of the public honours which he had attained, addressed them thus: "Consuls, I have often heard my father say, that he was the only person in the Capitol who did not advise the senate to ransom the state from the Gauls with gold; and these he would not concur in, because they had not been enclosed with a trench and rampart by the enemy, (who were remarkably slothful with respect to works and raising fortifications,) and because they might sally forth, if not without great danger, yet without certain destruction. Now if, in like manner as they had it in their power to run down from the Capitol in arms against their foe, as men besieged have often sallied out on the besiegers, it were possible for us to come to blows with the enemy, either on equal or unequal ground, I would not be wanting in the high quality of my father's spirit in stating my advice. I acknowledge, indeed, that death, in defence of our country, is highly glorious; and I am ready, either to devote myself for the Roman people and the legions, or to plunge into the midst of the enemy. But in this spot I behold my country in this spot, the whole of the Roman legions: and unless these choose to rush on death in defence of their own individual characters, what have they which can be preserved by their death? The houses of the city, some may

say, and the walls of it, and the crowd who dwell in it, by which the city is inhabited. But in fact, in case of the destruction of this army, all these are betrayed, not preserved. For who will protect them? An unwarlike and unarmed multitude, shall I suppose? Yes, just as they defended them against the attack of the Gauls. Will they call to their succour an army from Veii, with Camillus at its head? Here, on the spot, I repeat, are all our hopes and strength; by preserving which, we preserve our country; by delivering them up to death, we abandon and betray our country. But a surrender is shameful and ignominious. True: but such ought to be our affection for our country, that we should save it by our own disgrace, if necessity required, as freely as by our death. Let therefore that indignity be undergone, how great soever, and let us submit to that necessity which even the gods themselves do not overcome. Go, consuls, ransom the state for arms, which your ancestors ransomed with gold."

5. The consuls having gone to Pontius to confer with him, when he talked, in the strain of a conqueror, of a treaty, they declared that such could not be concluded without an order of the people, nor without the ministry of the heralds, and the other customary rites. Accordingly the Caudine peace was not ratified by settled treaty, as is commonly believed, and even asserted, by Claudius, but by conventional sureties. For what occasion would there be either for sureties or hostages in the former case, where the ratification is performed by the imprecation, "that whichever nation shall give occasion to the said terms being violated, may Jupiter strike that nation in like manner as the swine is struck by the heralds." The consuls, lieutenants-general, quæstors, and military tribunes, became sureties; and the names of all these who became sureties are extant; where, had the business been transacted by treaty, none would have appeared but those of the two heralds. On account of the necessary delay of the treaty, six hundred horsemen were demanded as hostages, who were to suffer death if the compact were not fulfilled; a time was then fixed for delivering up the hostages, and sending away the troops disarmed. The return of the consuls renewed the general grief in the camp, insomuch that the men hardly refrained from offering violence to them, "by whose rashness," they said, "they had been brought into such a situation; and

through whose cowardice they were likely to depart with greater disgrace than they came. They had employed no guide through the country, nor scouts; but were sent on blindly, like beasts into a pitfall." They cast looks on each other, viewed earnestly the arms which they must presently surrender; while their persons would be subject to the will of the enemy: figured to themselves the hostile yoke, the scoffs of the conquerors, their haughty looks, and finally, thus disarmed, their march through the midst of an armed foe. In a word, they saw with horror the miserable journey of their dishonoured band through the cities of the allies; and their return into their own country, to their parents, whither themselves, and their ancestors, had so often come in triumph. Observing, that "they alone had been conquered without a fight, without a weapon thrown, without a wound; that they had not been permitted to draw their swords, nor to engage the enemy. In vain had arms, in vain had strength, in vain had courage been given them." While they were giving vent to such grievous reflections, the fatal hour of their disgrace arrived, which was to render every circumstance still more shocking in fact, than they had preconceived it in their imaginations. First, they were ordered to go out, beyond the rampart, unarmed, and with single garments; then the hostages were surrendered, and carried into custody. The lictors were next commanded to depart from the consuls, and the robes of the latter were stripped off. This excited such a degree of commiseration in the breasts of those very men, who a little before, pouring execrations upon them, had proposed that they should be delivered up and torn to pieces, that every one, forgetting his own condition, turned away his from that degradation of so high a dignity, as from a spectacle too horrid to behold.

eyes

6. First, the consuls, nearly half naked, were sent under the yoke; then each officer, according to his rank, was exposed to disgrace, and the legions successively. The enemy stood on each side under arms, reviling and mocking them swords were pointed at most of them, several were wounded and some even slain, when their looks, rendered too fierce by the indignity to which they were subjected, gave offence to the conquerors. Thus were they led under the yoke; and what was still more intolerable, under the eyes of the enemy.

When they had got clear of the defile, they seemed as if they had been drawn up from the infernal regions, and then for the first time beheld the light; yet, when they viewed the ignominious appearance of the army, the light itself was more painful to them than any kind of death could have been; so that although they might have arrived at Capua before night, yet, uncertain with respect to the fidelity of the allies, and because shame embarrassed them, in need of every thing, they threw themselves carelessly on the ground, on each side of the road: which being told at Capua, just compassion for their allies got the better of the arrogance natural to the Campanians. They immediately sent to the consuls their ensigns of office, the fasces and lictors; to the soldiers, arms, horses, clothes, and provisions in abundance: and, on their approach to Capua, the whole senate and people went out to meet them, and performed every proper office of hospitality, both public and private. But the courtesy, kind looks, and address of the allies, could not only not draw a word from them, but it could not even prevail on them to raise their eyes, or look their consoling friends in the face, so completely did shame, in addition to grief, oblige them to shun the conversation and society of these their friends. Next day, when some young nobles, who had been sent from Capua, to escort them on their road to the frontiers of Campania, returned, they were called into the senate-house, and, in answer to the inquiries of the elder members, said, that "to them they seemed deeply sunk in melancholy and dejection; that the whole body moved on in silence, almost as if dumb; the former genius of the Romans was prostrated, and that their spirit had been taken from them, together with their arms. Not one returned a salute, nor returned an answer to those who greeted them; as if, through fear, they were unable to utter a word; as if their necks still carried the yoke under which they had been sent. That the Samnites had obtained a victory, not only glorious, but lasting also; for they had subdued, not Rome merely, as the Gauls had formerly done, but what was a much more warlike achievement, the Roman courage." When these remarks were made and attentively listened to, and the almost extinction of the Roman name was lamented in this assembly of faithful allies, Ofilius Calavius, son of Ovius, a man highly distinguished, both by his birth and conduct, and at this time