Ab urbe condita

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 [*](The full form is given in Vol. I. p. 28.) 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. [*](The officers gave their pledged word to do their utmost to induce the senate and people to conclude a treaty with the Samnites. Their failure involved the fate of hostages.) 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.