that the Roman armies were shut up at the Caudine forks between the two glens, being consulted by his son’s messenger, he gave his opinion, that they should all be immediately dismissed from thence unhurt.  On this counsel being rejected, and the same messenger returning a second time, he recommended that they should all, to a man, be put to death.  When these answers, so opposite to each other, like those of an ambiguous oracle, were given, although his son in particular considered that the powers of his father’s mind, together with those of his body, had been impaired by age, was yet prevailed on, by the general desire of all, to send for him to consult him.  The old man, we are told, complied without reluctance, and was carried in a waggon to the camp, where, when summoned to give his advice, he spoke in such way as to make no alteration in his opinions; he only added the reasons for them.  That “by his first plan, which he esteemed the best, he meant, by an act of extraordinary kindness, to establish perpetual peace and friendship with a most powerful nation:  by the other, to put off the return of war to the distance of many ages, during which the Roman state, after the loss of those two armies, could not easily recover its strength.”  A third plan there was not.  When his son, and the other chiefs, went on to ask him if “a plan of a middle kind might not be adopted; that they both should be dismissed unhurt, and, at the same time, by the right of war, terms imposed on them as vanquished?” “That, indeed,” said he, “is a plan of such a nature, as neither procures friends or removes enemies.  Only preserve those whom ye would irritate by ignominious treatment.  The Romans are a race who know not how to sit down quiet under defeat; whatever that is which the present necessity shall brand will rankle in their breasts for ever, and will not suffer them to rest, until they have wreaked manifold vengeance on your heads.”  Neither of these plans was approved, and Herennius was carried home from the camp.

4.  In the Roman camp also, when many fruitless efforts to force a passage had been made, and they were now destitute of every means of subsistence, forced by necessity, they send ambassadors, who were first to ask peace on equal terms; which, if they did not obtain, they were to challenge the enemy to battle.  To this Pontius answered, that “the war was at an end; and since, even in their present vanquished and captive state, they were not willing to acknowledge their situation, he would send them under the yoke unarmed, each with a single garment; that the other conditions of peace should be such as were just between the conquerors and the conquered.  If their troops would depart, and their colonies be withdrawn out of the territories of the Samnites; for the future, the Romans and Samnites, under a treaty of equality, shall live according to their own respective laws.  On these terms he was ready to negotiate with the consuls:  and if any of these should not be accepted, he forbade