Ab urbe condita

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.