Ab urbe condita

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.