9.1
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
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 be 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 be a nation or
a private individual. 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 be 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 be 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, be 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."