said, that “the people could not be acquitted of the religious obligation by the consuls being given up, unless all things were restored to the Samnites in the same state in which they had been at Caudium; nor had they themselves deserved any punishment, for having, by becoming sureties to the peace, preserved the army of the Roman people; nor, finally, could they, being sacred and inviolable, be surrendered to the enemy or treated with violence.”

9.  To this Postumius replied, “In the mean time surrender us as unsanctified persons, which ye may do, without offence to religion; those sacred and inviolable personages, the tribunes, ye will afterwards deliver up as soon as they go out of office:  but, if ye listen to me, they will be first scourged with rods, here in the Comitium, that they may pay this as interest for their punishment being delayed.  For, as to their denying that the people are acquitted of the religious obligation, by our being given up, who is there so ignorant of the laws of the heralds, as not to know, that those men speak in that manner, that they themselves may not be surrendered, rather than because the case is really so?  Still I do not deny, conscript fathers, that compacts, on sureties given, are as sacred as treaties, in the eyes of all who regard faith between men, with the same reverence which is paid to duties respecting the gods:  but I insist, that without the order of the people, nothing can be ratified that is to bind the people.  Suppose that, out of the same arrogance with which the Samnites wrung from us the convention in question, they had compelled us to repeat the established form of words for the surrendering of cities, would ye, tribunes, say, that the Roman people was surrendered? and, that this city, these temples, and consecrated grounds, these lands and waters, were become the property of the Samnites?  I say no more of the surrender, because our having become sureties is the point insisted on.  Now, suppose we had become sureties that the Roman people should quit this city; that they should set it on fire; that they should have no magistrates, no senate, no laws; that they should, in future, be ruled by kings:  the gods forbid, you say.  But, the enormity of the articles lessens not the obligation of a compact.  If there is any thing in which the people can be bound, it can in all.  Nor is there any importance in another circumstance, which weighs, perhaps, with some:  whether a consul, a dictator, or a praetor, be the surety.  And this, indeed, was what even the Samnites themselves proved, who were not satisfied with the security of the consuls, but compelled the lieutenants-general, quaestors, and military tribunes to join them.  Let no one, then, demand of me, why I entered into such a compact, when neither such power was vested in a consul, and when I could not either to them, insure a peace, of which I could not command the ratification; or in behalf of you, who had given me no powers.