Ab urbe condita

Further, they said they did not deserve any punishment for having saved the Roman army by undertaking to procure peace,[*](Livy evidently assumes that these two tribunes of the plebs were with the army, a most unusual arrangement, as they were supposed to be watching over the interests of the plebs within the walls of Rome. But the whole strength of Rome, i. e., the great majority of the plebeians, were at Caudium, so the presence of all the tribunes in the City might not have been necessary.) 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?

I do not deny, senators, that where the pledged words of men are held to possess a binding force only second to the sanctions of religion, then such undertakings as we have given are as sacred as formal treaties. But I do say that without the express order of the people nothing can be ratified which can bind the people.

Suppose the Samnites, in the same spirit of insolent pride in which they extorted this capitulation from us, had compelled us to recite the formula for the surrender of cities,[*](For this formula, see Vol. I. p. 45.) would you say, tribunes, that the Roman people was surrendered and that this City with its shrines and temples, its territory, and its waters had become the property of the Samnites? I say no more about surrender, because what we are considering is the pledge we gave in the capitulation.

Well now, suppose we had given a pledge that the Roman people would abandon this City, would burn it, would no longer have its own magistrates and senates and laws, but would live under the rule of kings. “Heaven forbid!” you say.

Yes, but the binding force of a capitulation is not lightened by the humiliating nature of its terms. If the people can be bound by any article, it can by all. The point which some consider important, namely whether it is a consul or a Dictator or a praetor who has given the undertaking is of no weight whatever.

The Samnites themselves made this clear, for it was not enough for them that the consuls pledged themselves, they compelled the staff-officers, the quaestors, and the military tribunes to do the same.”

“Now no one need say to me, “Why did you pledge yourself in that way, seeing that a consul has no right to do so and you were not in a position to promise them a peace of which you could not guarantee the ratification, or to act on behalf of the people when they had given you no mandate to do so?”