There is no discrepancy as to A. Cornelius having been Dictator that year, the only doubt is whether he was appointed to conduct the war, or whether, owing to the serious illness of L. Plautius, the praetor, he was appointed to give the signal for starting the chariot races, and after discharging this not very noteworthy function resigned office.
It is difficult to decide which account or which authority to prefer.
I believe that the true history has been falsified by funeral orations and lying inscriptions on the family busts, since each family appropriates to itself an imaginary record of noble deeds and official distinctions. It is at all events owing to this cause that so much confusion has been introduced into the records of private careers and public events.
There is no writer of those times now extant who was contemporary with the events he relates and whose authority, therefore, can he depended upon.
The
T. Veturius Calvinus and Spurius Postumius were the consuls. The Samnites had for their captain-general that year C. Pontius, the son of Herennius, the ablest statesman they possessed, whilst the son
was their foremost soldier and commander. When the envoys who had been sent with the terms of surrender returned from their fruitless mission, Pontius made the following speech in the Samnite council: “Do not suppose that this mission has been barren of results.
We have gained this much by it, whatever measure of divine wrath we may have incurred by our violation of treaty obligations has now been atoned for. I am perfectly certain that all those deities whose will it was that we should he reduced to the necessity of making the restitution which was demanded under the terms of the treaty, have viewed with displeasure the haughty contempt with which the Romans have treated our concessions.
What more could we have done to placate the wrath of heaven or soften the resentment of men than we have done?
The property of the enemy, which we considered ours by the rights of war, we have restored; the author of the war, whom we could not surrender alive, we gave up after he had paid his debt to nature, and lest any taint of guilt should remain with us we carried his possessions to Rome.
What more, Romans, do I owe to you or to the treaty or to the gods who were invoked as witnesses to the treaty? What arbitrator am I to bring forward to decide how far your wrath, how far my punishment is to go?
I am willing to accept any, whether it he a nation or a private individuaI. But if human law leaves no rights which the weak share with the stronger, I can still fly to the gods, the avengers of intolerable tyranny, and I will pray them to turn their wrath against those for whom it is not enough to have
their own restored to them and to he loaded also with what belongs to others, whose cruel rage is not satiated by the death of the guilty and the surrender of their lifeless remains together with their property, who cannot he appeased unless we give them our very blood to suck and our bowels to tear.
A war is just and right, Samnites, when it is forced upon us; arms are blessed by heaven when there is no hope except in arms.
Since then it is of supreme importance in human affairs what things men do under divine favour and what they do against the divine will, he well assured that, if in your former wars you were fighting against the gods even more than against men, in this war which is impending you will have the gods themselves to lead you.”
After uttering this prediction, which proved to he as true as it was reassuring, he took the field and, keeping his movements as secret as possible, fixed his camp in the neighbourhood of Caudium.