History of Rome, books 1-10

The consuls were too much depressed and unnerved even to summon a council of war, for there was no place for either counsel or help, but the staff-officers and tribunes gathered round them, and the men with their faces turned towards their tents sought from their leaders a succour which the gods themselves could hardly render them.

Night surprised them while they were lamenting over their situation rather than consulting how to meet it The different temperaments of the men came out; some exclaimed: “Let us break through the barricades, scale the mountain slopes, force our way through the forest, try every way where we can carry arms.

Only let us get at the enemy whom we have beaten for now nearly thirty years; all places will he smooth and easy to a Roman fighting against the perfidious Samnite.”

Others answered: “Where are we to go? How are we to get there? Are we preparing to move the mountains from their seat? How will you get at the enemy as long as these peaks hang over us? Armed and unarmed, brave and cowardly we are all alike trapped and conquered. The enemy will not even offer us the chance of an honourable death by the sword, he will finish the war without moving from his seat.”

Indifferent to food, unable to sleep, they talked in this way throughout he night. Even the Samnites were unable to make up their minds what to do under such fortunate circumstances. It was unanimously agreed to write to Herennius, the captain-general's father, and ask his advice.

He was now advanced in years and had given up all public business, civil as well as military, but though his physical powers were failing his intellect was as sound and clear as ever.

He had already heard that the Roman armies were hemmed in between the two passes at the Caudine Forks, and when his son's courier asked for his advice he gave it as his opinion that the whole force ought to he at once allowed to depart uninjured.

This advice was rejected and the courier was sent back to consult him again.

He now advised that they should every one he put to death. On receiving these replies, contradicting each other like the ambiguous utterances of an oracle, his son's first impression was that his father's mental powers had become impaired through his physical weakness. However, he yielded to the unanimous wish and invited his father to the council of war.

The old man, we are told, at once complied and was conveyed in a wagon to the camp. After taking his seat in the council, it became clear from what he said that he had not changed his mind, but he explained his reasons for the advice he gave.

He believed that by taking the course he first proposed, which he considered the best, he was establishing a durable peace and friendship with a most powerful people in treating them with such exceptional kindness; by adopting the second he was postponing war for many generations, for it would take that time for Rome to recover her strength painfully and slowly after the loss of two armies.

There was no third course. When his son and the other chiefs went on to ask him what would happen if a middle course were taken, and they were dismissed unhurt but under such conditions as by the rights of war are imposed on the vanquished, he replied:

“That is just the policy which neither procures friends nor rids us of enemies. Once let men whom you have exasperated by ignominious treatment live and you will find out your mistake.

The Romans are a nation who know not how to remain quiet under defeat. Whatever disgrace this present extremity burns into their souls will rankle there for ever, and will allow them no rest till they have made you pay for it many times over.”

Neither of these plans was approved and Herennius was carried home from the camp. In the Roman camp, after many fruitless attempts had been made to break out and

they found themselves at last in a state of utter destitution, necessity compelled them to send envoys to the Samnites to ask in the first instance for fair terms of peace, and failing that to challenge them to battle.

Pontius replied that all war was at an end, and since even now that they were vanquished and captured they were incapable of acknowledging their true position, he should deprive them of their arms and send them under the yoke, allowing them to retain one garment each.

The other conditions would he fair to both victors and vanquished. If they evacuated Samnium and withdrew their colonists from his country, the Roman and

the Samnite would henceforth live under their own laws as sovereign states united by a just and honourable treaty. On these conditions he was ready to conclude a treaty with the consuls, if they rejected any of them he forbade any further overtures to he made to him.

When the result was announced, such a universal cry of distress arose, such gloom and melancholy prevailed, that they evidently could not have taken it more heavily if it had been announced to them all that they must die on the spot.

Then followed a long silence. The consuls were unable to breathe a word either in favour of a capitulation so humiliating or against one so necessary.

At last L. Lentulus, of all the staff-officers the most distinguished, both by his personal qualities and the offices he had held, spoke: “I have often,” he said, “heard my father, consuls, say that he was the only one in the Capitol who refused to ransom the City from the Gauls with gold, for the force in the Capitol was not invested and shut in with fosse and rampart, as the Gauls were to indolent to undertake that sort of work; it was therefore quite possible for them to make a sortie involving, perhaps, heavy loss, but not certain destruction.

If we had the same chance of fighting, whether on favourable or unfavourable ground, which they had of charging down upon the foe from the capitol, in the same way as the besieged have often made sorties against their besiegers, I should not fall behind my father's spirit and courage in the advice which I should give.

To die for one's country is, I admit, a glorious thing, and as concerns myself I am ready to devote myself for the people and legions of Rome or to plunge into the midst of the enemy.

But it is here that I beheld my country, it is on this spot that all the legions which Rome possesses are gathered, and unless they wish to rush to death for their own sakes, to save their honour, what else have they that they can save by their death.

“The dwellings of the City,” somebody may reply, “and its walls, and that crowd of human beings who form its population.” Nay, on the contrary, all these things are not saved, they are handed over to the enemy if this army is annihilated.

For who will protect them? A defenceless multitude of non-combatants, I suppose; as successfully as it defended them from the approach of the Gauls.

Or will they implore the help of an army from Veii with Camillus at its head? Here and here alone are all our hopes, all our strength. If we save these we save our country, if we give these up to death we desert and betray our country.

“Yes,” you say, “but surrender is base and ignominious.” It is; but true affection for our country demands that we should preserve it, if need be, by our disgrace as much as by our death.

However great then the indignity, we must submit to it and yield to the compulsion of necessity, a compulsion which the gods themselves cannot evade! Go, consuls, give up your arms as a ransom for that State which your ancestors ransomed with gold!”

The consuls left to confer with Pontius. When the victor began to insist upon a treaty, they told him that a treaty could not possibly be made without the orders of the people nor without the fetials and the usual ceremonial.

So that the convention of Claudium did not, as is commonly believed and as even Claudius asserts, take the form of a regular treaty. It was concluded through a sponsio, i.e. by the officers giving their word of honour to observe the conditions.

For what need would there have been in the case of a treaty for any pledge from the officers or for any hostages, since in concluding a treaty the imprecation is always used: “By whosoever default it may come about that the said conditions are not observed, may Jupiter so smite that people as this swine is new struck by the

fetials.” The consuls, the staff - officers, the quaestors, and the military tribunes all gave their word on oath, and all their names are extant to-day, whereas if a regular treaty had been concluded no names but those of the two fetials would have

survived. Owing to the inevitable delay in arranging a treaty, 6oo equites were demanded as hostages to answer with their lives if the terms of the capitulation were not

observed. Then a definite time was fixed for surrendering the hostages and sending the army, deprived of its arms, under the yoke. The return of the consuls with the terms of surrender henewed the grief and distress in the camp. So bitter was the feeling that the men had difficulty in keeping their hands off those “through whose rashness,” they said, “they had been brought into that place and through whose cowardice

they would have to leave it in a more shameful plight than they

had come. They had had no guides who knew the neighbourhood, no scouts had been thrown out, they had fallen blindly like wild animals into a trap.” There they were, looking at each other, gazing sadly at the armour and weapons which were soon to be given up, their right hands which were to be defenceless, their bodies which were to be at the mercy of

their enemies. They pictured to themselves the hostile yoke, the taunts and insulting looks of the victors, their marching disarmed between the armed ranks, and then afterwards the miserable progress of an army in disgrace through the cities of their allies, their return to their country and their parents, whither their ancestors had so often returned in

triumphal procession. They alone, they said, had been defeated without receiving a single wound, or using a single weapon, or fighting a single battle; they had not been allowed to draw the sword or come to grips with the enemy; courage and strength had been given them in vain.

While they were uttering these indignant protests, the hour of their humiliation arrived which was to make everything more bitter for them by actual experience than they had anticipated

or imagined. First of all they were ordered to lay down their arms and go outside the rampart with only one garment each. The first to be dealt with were those surrendered as hostages who were taken away for

safe keeping. Next, the lictors were ordered to retire from the consuls, who were then stripped of

their paludamenta. This aroused such deep commiseration amongst those who a short time ago had been cursing them and saying that they ought to be surrendered and scourged, that every man, forgetting his own plight, turned away his eyes from such an outrage upon the majesty of state as from a spectacle too horrible to behold.

The consuls were the first to be sent, little more than half-clothed, under the yoke, then each in the order of his rank was exposed to the same disgrace, and finally, the legionaries one after another.

Around them stood the enemy fully armed, reviling and jeering at them; swords were pointed at most of them, and when they offended their victors by showing their indignation and resentment too plainly some were wounded and even killed.

. —Thus were they marched under the yoke. But what was still harder to bear was that after they had emerged from the pass under the eyes of the foe, though, like men dragged up from the jaws of hell, they seemed to behold the light for the first time, the very light itself, serving only to reveal such a hideous sight as they marched along, was more gloomy than any shape of death.

They could have reached Capua before nightfall, but not knowing how their allies would receive them, and kept back by a feeling of shame, they all flung themselves, destitute of everything, on the sides of the road near Capua.

As soon as news of this reached the place, a proper feeling of compassion for their allies got the better of the inborn disdain of the Campanian;

they immediately sent to the consuls their own insignia of office, the fasces and the lictors, and the soldiers they generously supplied with arms, horses, clothes, and provisions.

As they entered Capua the senate and people came out in a body to meet them, showed them all due hospitality, and paid them all the consideration to which as individuals and as members of an allied state they were entitled.

But all the courtesies and kindly looks and cheerful greetings of their allies were powerless to evoke a single word or even to make them lift up their eyes and look in the face the friends who were trying to comfort them.

To such an extent did feelings of shame make their gloom and

despondency all the heavier, and constrain them to shun the converse and society of men.

The next day some young nobles were commissioned to escort them to the frontier. On their return they were summoned to the Senate-house, and in answer to inquiries on the part of the older senators they reported that they seemed to be much more gloomy and depressed than the day before;

the column moved along so silently that they might have been dumb; the Roman mettle was cowed; they had lost their spirit with their arms; they saluted no man, nor did they return any man's salutation; not a single man had the power to open his mouth for fear of what was coming; their necks were bowed as if they were still beneath the yoke.

The Samnites had won not only a glorious victory but a lasting one; they had not only captured Rome as the Gauls had done before them, but, what was a still more warlike exploit, they had captured the Roman courage and hardihood.

While this report was being made and listened to with the greatest attention, and the name and greatness of Rome were being mourned over

as though lost for ever, in the council of her faithful allies, Ofillius Calavius, the son of Ovus, addressed the senators. He was a man of high birth and with a distinguished career and now venerable for his age.

He is reported to have said: “The truth is far otherwise. That stubborn silence, those eyes fixed on the ground, those ears deaf to all consolation, that shame - faced shrinking from the light, are all indications of a terrible resentment fermenting in their hearts which will break out in vengeance.

Either I know nothing of the Roman character or that silence will soon call forth amongst the Samnites cries of distress and groans of anguish.

The memory of the capitulation of Caudium will be much more bitter to the Samnites than to the Romans. Whenever and wherever they meet each side will be animated by its own courage and the Samnites will not find the Caudine Forks everywhere.”

Rome was now aware of its disaster. The first information they received was that the army was blockaded, then came the more gloomy news of the ignominious capitulation.

Immediately on receiving the first intelligence of the blockade they began to levy troops, but when they heard that the army had surrendered in such a disgraceful way, the preparations for relieving them were abandoned, and without waiting for any formal order the whole City presented the aspect of public mourning.

The booths round the Forum were shut up; all public business in the Forum ceased spontaneously before the proclamation closing it was made; the senators laid aside their purple striped tunics and gold rings; the gloom amongst the citizens was almost greater than that in the army.

Their indignation was not confined to the generals or the officers who had made the convention, even the innocent soldiers were the objects of resentment, they said they would not admit them into the City.

But this angry temper was dispelled by the arrival of the troops; their wretched appearance awoke commiseration amongst the most resentful.

They did not enter the City like men returning in safety after being given up for lost, but in the guise and with the expression of prisoners. They came late in the evening and crept to their homes, where they kept themselves so close that for some days not one of them would show himself in public or in the Forum.

The Consuls shut themselves up in privacy and refused to discharge any official functions with the exception of one which was wrung from them by a decree of the senate,

namely, the nomination of a Dictator to conduct the elections. They nominated Q. Fabius Ambustus, with P. Aelius Paetus as Master of the Horse.

Their appointment was found to be irregular, and they were replaced by M. Aemilius Papus as Dictator and L. Valerius Flaccus as Master of the Horse. Even they, however, were not allowed to conduct the elections; the people were dissatisfied with all the magistrates of that year, and so matters reverted to an interregnum.

Q. Fabius Maximus and M. Valerius Corvus were successively interreges, and the latter held the consular elections. Q. Publilius Philo and L. Papirius Cursor —the latter for the second time —were returned. The choice was universally approved, for all knew there were no more brilliant generals at that day.

They entered upon the active duties of their office on the very day of their election, for so had the senate decreed, and after disposing of the business connected with their accession to office, they proceeded at once to introduce the subject of the capitulation of Caudium.

Publilius, who was the presiding consul, called upon Spurius Postumius to speak. He rose in his place with just the same expression that he had worn when passing under the yoke, and began:

“Consuls, I am quite aware that I have been called upon to speak first, not because I am foremost in honour, but because I am foremost in disgrace and hold the position not of a senator but of a man on his trial who has to meet the charge not only of an unsuccessful war but also of an ignominious peace.

Since, however, you have not introduced the question of our guilt or punishment, I shall not enter upon a defence which in the presence of men not unacquainted with the mutability of human fortunes would not be a very difficult one to undertake. I will state in a few words what I think about the question before us, and you will he able to judge from what I say whether it was myself or your legions that I spared when I pledged myself to the convention, however shameful or however necessary it was.

This convention, however, was not made by the order of the Roman people, and therefore the Roman people are not bound by it, nor is anything due to the Samnites under its terms beyond our own persons.

Let us be surrendered by the fetials, stripped and bound; let us release the people from their religious obligations if we have involved them in any, so that without infringing any law human or divine we may resume a war which will be justified by the law of nations and sanctioned by the gods.

I advise, that in the meantime the consuls enrol and equip an army and lead it forth to war, but that they do not cross the hostile frontier until all our obligations under the terms of surrender have been discharged.

And you, immortal gods, I pray and beseech, that as it was not your will that the consuls Sp. Postumius and T. Veturius

should wage a successful war against the Samnites, you may at least deem it enough to have witnessed us sent under the yoke and compelled to submit to a shameful convention, enough to witness us surrendered, naked and in chains, to the enemy, taking upon our heads the whole weight of his anger and vengeance!

May it be in accordance with your will that the legions of Rome under fresh consuls should wage war against the Samnites in the same way in which all wars were waged before we were consuls!”

When he finished speaking, such admiration and pity were felt for him that they could hardly think that it was the same Sp. Postumius who had concluded such a disgraceful peace.

They viewed with the utmost sadness the prospect of such a man suffering at the hands of the enemy such terrible punishment as he was sure to meet with, enraged as they would be at the rupture of the peace.

The whole House expressed in terms of the highest praise their approval of his proposal. They were beginning to vote on the question when two of the tribunes of the plebs, L. Livius and Q. Maelius, entered a protest which they afterwards withdrew.

They argued that the people as a whole would not be discharged from their religious obligation by this surrender unless the Samnites were placed in the same position of advantage which they held at Caudium.

Further, they said they did not deserve any punishment for having saved the Roman army by undertaking to procure peace, and they urged as a final reason that as they, the tribunes, were sacrosanct and their persons inviolable they could not be surrendered to the enemy or exposed to any violence.

To this Postumius replied: “In the meanwhile, surrender us, whom no inviolability protects and whose surrender will violate no man's conscience.

Afterwards you will surrender those “sacrosanct” gentlemen also as soon as their year of office expires, but if you take my advice you will see that before they are surrendered they are scourged in the Forum by way of paying interest for a punishment that will have been delayed.

Why, who is so ignorant of fetial law as not to see that these men are saying this, not because it represents the fact but to prevent their being surrendered?