be drawn from this incident?

15. What was the next occurrence of note?

16. What precautions were necessary in this war?

17. In what way was the discipline of the Romans put to the proof?

18. Was his challenge disregarded?

19. Relate the particulars of the combat?

20. What reception did he expect from his father?

21. What was the consequence of his rashness?

22. How was this sentence received by the army?

23. Did a battle ensue?

24. What was wanting to insure the victory?

25. To whom did success incline?

26 What heroic resolution did Decius make?

27. In what way did he do this?

28. What followed?

29. What effect had this sacrifice on the hostile armies?

SECTION II.

U.C. 431.

Absurd the fumed advice to Pyrrhus given,
More praised than pander'd, specious, but unsound;
Sooner that hero's sword the world had quell'd,
Than reason, his ambition.--_Young_

1. But a signal disgrace which the Romans sustained about this time,
in their contest with the Samnites, made a pause in their usual good
fortune, and turned the scale for a while in the enemy's favour.[1] 2.
The senate having denied the Samnites peace, Pon'tius, their general,
was resolved to gain by stratagem, what he had frequently lost by
force. 3. Accordingly, leading his army into the neighbourhood of a
defile, called Cau'dium, and taking possession of all its outlets, he
sent ten of his soldiers, habited like shepherds, with directions to
throw themselves into the way which the Romans were to march. 4.
Exactly to his wishes, the Roman consul, Posthu'mius, met them, and
taking them for what they appeared, demanded the route the Samnite
army had taken: they, with seeming indifference, replied, that
they were going to Luce'ria, a town in Apulia, and were then actually
besieging it. 5 The Roman general, not suspecting the stratagem that
was laid against him, marched directly by the shortest road, which lay
through the defile, to relieve that city; and was not undeceived till
he saw his army surrounded, and blocked up on every side.[2] 6.
Pon'tius, thus having the Romans entirely in his power, first obliged
the army to pass under the yoke, after having stript them of all but
their under garments. He then stipulated, that they should wholly quit
the territories of the Samnites, and that they should continue to live
upon the terms of their former confederacy. 7. The Romans were
constrained to submit to this ignominious tr