ch. 19.1 [Note] The following year (321 B.C.)
was rendered memorable by the disaster which befell the
Romans at Caudium and the capitulation which they made
there. 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 com-
mander.
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 pro-
perty 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 in-
dividuaI. 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.
