A great nation does not surrender what it possesses except under the pressure of extreme necessity:  all treaties making concessions are acknowledgments of such a necessity, not moral obligations.  If every people justly reckons it a point of honour to tear to pieces by force of arms treaties that are disgraceful, how could honour enjoin a patient adherence to a convention like the Caudine to which an unfortunate general was morally compelled, while the sting of the recent disgrace was keenly felt and the vigour of the nation subsisted unimpaired?

Victory of the Romans

Thus the convention of Caudium did not produce the rest which the enthusiasts for peace in Samnium had foolishly expected from it, but only led to war after war with exasperation aggravated on either side by the opportunity forfeited, by the breach of a solemn engagement, by military honour disgraced, and by comrades that had been abandoned.  The Roman officers given up were not received by the Samnites, partly because they were too magnanimous to wreak their vengeance on those unfortunates, partly because they would thereby have admitted the Roman plea that the agreement bound only those who swore to it, not the Roman state.  Magnanimously they spared even the hostages whose lives had been forfeited by the rules of war, and preferred to resort at once to arms.

Luceria was occupied by them and Fregellae surprised and taken by assault (434) before the Romans had reorganized their broken army; the passing of the Satricans(2) over to the Samnites shows what they might have accomplished, had they not allowed their advantage to slip through their hands.  But Rome was only momentarily paralyzed, not weakened; full of shame and indignation the Romans raised all the men and means they could, and placed the highly experienced Lucius Papirius Cursor, equally distinguished as a soldier and as a general, at the head of the newly formed army.  The army divided; the one-half marched by Sabina and the Adriatic coast to appear before Luceria, the other proceeded to the same destination through Samnium itself, successfully engaging and driving before it the Samnite army.  They formed a junction again under the walls of Luceria, the siege of which was prosecuted with the greater zeal, because the Roman equites lay in captivity there; the Apulians, particularly the Arpani, lent the Romans important assistance in the siege, especially by procuring supplies.  After the Samnites had given battle for the relief of the town and been defeated, Luceria surrendered to the Romans (435).  Papirius enjoyed the double satisfaction of liberating his comrades who had been given up for lost, and of requiting the yoke of Caudium on the Samnite garrison of Luceria.  In the next years (435-437) the war was carried on(3) not so much in Samnium itself as in the adjoining districts.  In the first place the Romans chastised the allies of the Samnites in the Apulian and Frentanian