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accounts, two successful battles against the enemy;(96) and sent a despatch to the Senate, not to the dictator, containing a report of his successes. Papirius, indignant at this breach of military discipline, hurries back to the camp, and orders his disobedient officer to immediate execution. Fabius is saved by the soldiers, and escapes to Rome, whither he is instantly followed by the dictator. The father of Fabius, who had filled the highest offices in the state, prevailed upon the Senate to intercede in his favour; but their intercession had no effect upon this stern assertor of the dictatorial authority. He next appealed to the tribunes, and upon their entreaties, Papirius consented to pardon the delinquent master of the horse. Papirius then returned to the army, but the soldiers, disgusted by his harshness, fought without alacrity. After a time, he regained their favour, defeated the Samnites with great loss, and compelled them to sue for peace.(97) The whole of this remarkable transaction is narrated by Livy in great detail: it contains nothing improbable, and it is highly characteristic of the Roman notions respecting the maintenance of military discipline; but as it could not have been recorded by any contemporary historian, we are at a loss to know from what authentic source Livy could have derived his circumstantial

account.

Two years afterwards the war is renewed against the Samnites; they are again defeated in a great battle, and agree to surrender the prisoners and spoils taken in the previous war; but the Romans refuse to make peace with them. (98) Livy describes the battle and the subsequent proceedings in detail,

(96) Auctores habeo, bis cum hoste signa collata dictatore absente, bis rem egregie gestam. Apud antiquissimos scriptores una hæc pugna invenitur; in quibusdam annalibus tota res prætermissa est; Livy, viii. 30. By tota res' Livy must mean the entire transaction,' including the proceedings at Rome, for these all turned upon the battle fought in the dictator's absence.

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(97) Livy, viii. 29-36. Compare Dio Cass. xxxvi. 1-7; Victor, de Vir. Ill. 31; Val. Max. ii. 7, § 8, iii. 2, § 9; Eutrop. ii. 8.

(98) The surrender of the Roman captives, and of Brutulus Papius, a Samnite citizen, who had been active in promoting a breach of the truce and a renewal of the war, described in Livy, viii. 39, is also mentioned in Dio Cass. xxxvi. 8. The same transaction is likewise related by Appian, Samn. 4, and Zon. vii. 26.

and adds, that some of his authorities attribute the victory to A. Cornelius Arvina, the dictator, and others to Q. Fabius and L. Fulvius, the consuls of the year. There is no doubt, he says, that A. Cornelius Arvina was dictator in that year; but it is uncertain whether he was appointed for the war, or merely for the formal purpose of giving the sign to the chariots in the Roman games. He believes that the truth of history has in this, as in other instances, been perverted by funeral orations, and false inscriptions under ancestorial portraits, for the sake of exalting particular families; and there was no contemporary historian of the time whose testimony would have decided the question.(99)

§ 29 The arrogance of the Romans in refusing the fair offers of the Samnites was, according to Appian, speedily punished by the divine nemesis.(100) In the year 321 B.C., C. Pontius, an experienced general, was commander of the Samnite army; the Roman consuls, T. Veturius Calvinus and Sp. Postumius, marched against the Samnites, and were encamped near Calatia, a town on the borders of Samnium, north of the Vulturnus. Pontius, by false information, succeeded in making the consuls believe that the Samnites were besieging Luceria, an Apulian town, to the east of Samnium. The consuls instantly marched to the relief of their allies, the Apulians, taking the most direct road, across the midland district of Italy. (101) This road led through a narrow pass in the mountains near Caudium. Livy describes

(99) Livy, viii. 38-40. See above, vol. i. p. 188. (100) θεὸς δ ̓ ἐνεμέσησε τῆς μεγαληγορίας, Samn. 4. xxxvi. 10.

Compare Dio Cass.

(101) Livy says: Dum ad Luceriam ferebant viæ; altera præter oram superi maris patens apertaque, sed quanto tutior, tanto fere longior; altera per Furculas Caudinas brevior; ix. 2. It is difficult to understand how one road from Calatia, on the borders of Samnium, to Luceria, an inland town of Apulia, could be said to lead along the Adriatic sea. Livy probably means that the army might have returned to Rome, have crossed Italy, and have descended the coast to Luceria. Compare c. 13, where he says: 'Exercitus alter cum Papirio consule locis maritimis pervenerat Arpos.' Arpi was not far from Luceria. Mr. Gandy (Craven's Tour through the Southern Provinces of Naples, p. 15, 17), is mistaken in representing Livy to state that half the Roman army went through the Caudine Pass, and half by the circuitous route.

this pass as a small plain to which there was one inlet and one outlet, through narrow defiles, covered with wood. When the Romans had reached the open space, and were about to enter the second gulley, they found it blocked up with stones and trunks of trees, and perceived the Samnite army on the surrounding heights. They then attempted to return by the way along which they had come; but this pass was now closed against them by the enemy.(102)

The Roman army, caught in this mountain pass, unable, from want of provisions, to remain in their camp, until they could be relieved from Rome, or to extricate themselves by force, were compelled to submit to the terms dictated by the Samnite general. These were, that they should lay down their arms, and be passed under the yoke, each man taking a single garment; and that a treaty should be made obliging the Romans to evacuate the Samnite territory, to remove the colonies established in it, and to place the Samnites on an equality of rights with the Romans. (103) Livy affirms that the consuls informed Pontius of their inability to made a binding treaty without the consent of the people, and without the feciales and other formalities. He assures us that the Caudine Convention was not (as was commonly believed in his time, and as had been stated even by Claudius Quadrigarius the historian) (104) a treaty, but

(102) Concerning the situation of the Furculæ Caudinæ, or Caudine Pass, see Mr. Bunbury's art. Caudium, in Dr. Smith's Dictionary. The furca was in general of the shape of the letter V. See Lipsius de Cruce, iii. 4, 5; Varro de L. L. v. § 117. Hence it would seem that the pass consisted of two defiles making an acute angle with each other, and meeting at the little plain described by Livy. This however is a singular pass to be selected for a road, in a country not closed by a ridge of mountains; nor does it agree with Livy's description. Furce and furculæ may be considered as equivalent in meaning; Livy, Florus, Eutropius, and Victor use the expression Furcula Caudina: but the prose writers are not (as Mr. Bunbury supposes) constant in the use of this form; for Valerius Maximus twice has Furce Caudina. As the word furcule is inadmissible in the hexameter verse in its inflected cases, and in the nominative is admissible only by means of a harsh elision, it was natural that Lucan should speak of Čaudinæ furcæ; (ii. 137.)

(103) Livy, ix. 1-4.

(104) In eo fœdere quod factum est quondam cum Samnitibus, quidam adolescens nobilis porcam sustinuit jussu imperatoris. Fœdere autem ab

merely a sponsio, or provisional agreement; and that the consuls, legates, quæstors, and military tribunes were the sponsors: he adds that the names of those who were sponsorial parties to the convention were extant in his time; whereas, if it had been a formal treaty, the names of the two feciales would alone appear in the record. Six hundred horsemen were also demanded as hostages, on account of the necessary delay in completing the treaty.

§ 30 The Romans are stripped of their arms, and passed under the yoke ;(105) and in this ignominious state return to Rome. The consuls name a dictator for holding comitia, and after a time, Q. Publilius Philo and L. Papirius Cursor, the two best generals of the time, are appointed in their stead. As soon as the new consuls have entered upon their office, they assemble the Senate, and bring before it the question of the Caudine Convention. Sp. Postumius, the late consul, on being called upon to deliver his opinion, gives the magnanimous advice that the convention should be disavowed by the state, and that the sponsors should be surrendered to the Samnites. His advice is adopted; Postumius and the other sponsors are taken by a

senatu improbato, et imperatore Samnitibus dedito, quidam in senatu eum quoque dicit, qui porcam tenuerit, dedi oportere; Cic. de Invent. ii. 30. This anecdote differs from Livy's account, because it supposes the consuls to have executed a treaty in due form, and with the slaughter of a pig; see Livy, ix. 5. The variation does not however affect the substance of the obligation. The case stated by Cicero seems to be real, and not (as Niebuhr thinks, Hist. vol. iii. n. 374) an imaginary one.

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(105) The jugum or yoke was in the form of a gallows: two upright spears, and a third attached to them transversely. See Appian, Samn. 4; Dion. Hal. iii. 22; Livy, iii. 28; Zon. vii. 17. Passing under the yoke was the greatest humiliation which could be inflicted upon an army, but it was milder treatment than selling them as slaves. Thus Livy says, in a subsequent year (307 B.C.): Deditio fieri cœpta, et pacti, qui Samnitium forent, ut cum singulis vestimentis emitterentur. Hi omnes sub jugum missi. Sociis Samnitium nihil cautum ; ad septem millia sub coronâ veniere;' ix. 42. Again he relates that in 294 B.C., the consul Atilius gained a victory over the Samnites, in which he lost 7200 of his own soldiers, and took 7200 prisoners, who were passed under the yoke. When he returned to Rome, he applied to be allowed a triumph; but his application was refused, et ob amissa tot millia militum, et quod captivos sine pactione sub jugum misisset;' x. 36. In the case of Caudium, the Samnites had made a pactio, but not an effectual one.

fecialis to the Samnite camp; but Pontius refuses to receive them, and sends them back to Rome; at the same time he protests against the repudiation of the convention by the Romans he maintains that they cannot release themselves from their obligation by the mere surrender of the sponsors, but are bound to place their army in the position in which it was when the convention was made.(106)

:

The Romans, eager to efface the ignominy which their army had sustained at Caudium, sent out two armies, one under each consul. The army of Publilius Philo attacked the Samnites near Caudium, and drove it into Apulia; Papirius Cursor marched to Luceria, which he besieged and took. Here, besides passing 7000 Samnites under the yoke (among whom, according to some accounts, was the general Pontius), he recaptured all the standards and arms which the Romans had surrendered at Caudium, and recovered the six hundred horsemen who had been given up as hostages to the Samnites. remarks, that his authorities left it in uncertainty whether these great victories were gained by L. Cornelius, as dictator, with Papirius Cursor as master of the horse, or by the consuls, Papirius Cursor and Publilius Philo. He likewise adds, that, in the following year, it is uncertain whether the consul with Q. Aulius Cerretanus was L. Papirius Cursor or L. Papirius Mugillanus (319 B.C.). (107) A similar doubt between L. Papirius Cursor and L. Papirius Mugillanus also existed with respect to the year 326 B.C.(108)

Livy

§ 31 Livy's narrative of the Caudine disaster, and of its consequences, is in the highest degree animated and picturesque; and the accounts of Appian, Dio Cassius, and the others, though less circumstantial, agree with it in the material points. Much

(106) Livy, ix. 1-11; Dion. Hal. xvi. 3-5; Appian, Samn. 4; Dio Cass. xxxvi. 9-20 (the paragraphs 11 to 14 are from the speech of Herennius), Zon. vii. 26; Gell. xvii. 21, § 36; Cic. de Off. iii. 30; Val. Max. v. 1, ext. § 5, vii. 2, ext. § 17; Flor. i. 16, § 9; Eutrop. ii. 9; Oros. iii. 15.

(107) Livy, ix. 12-15; Dio Cass. xxxvi. 21-3; Flor. et Zon. ib. (108) Livy, viii. 23.

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