or thus by a great benefit ye will make peace and
friendship for ever with a very powerful nation. If ye follow my second
counsel ye will put off war with Rome for many generations; since,
losing two great armies, they will not readily recover their strength.
But counsel other than these two there is none." And when his son and
others of the captains asked him whether there were not some middle way,
so that the prisoners should be sent away unhurt but with conditions
according to the right of war, "That," said he, "is a counsel which will
neither get friends for you nor rid you of enemies. For think who they
are that ye will provoke by such disgrace. The Romans cannot endure to
sit quiet under defeat, nor will they rest till they have got manifold
vengeance for that which present necessity shall have compelled them
to suffer." Then, the Samnites not approving either counsel, Pontius
departed to his home.

And now the Romans, having sought many times in vain to break forth, and
being now destitute of everything, sent ambassadors to the Samnites
to seek peace, and, if peace were not given, to challenge the enemy to
battle. To these Pontius made answer, "Since ye will not confess your
plight, prisoners though ye be, I will send you under the yoke without
arms, each having one garment only. As to the conditions of peace, they
shall be equal and right. Ye shall depart from the land of the Samnites,
and take away your colonies; and hereafter both Romans and Samnites
shall live under their own laws. If these conditions please the Consuls,
I will make a treaty with them; if they please them not, return not
hither again." When this message was brought back there arose a general
lamentation; for it seemed better to die than to suffer such disgrace.
And when the Consuls knew not what to say, Lucius Lentulus, being first
of the lieutenants, both in respect of valour and of the honours which
he had received, then spake: "Consuls, I have often heard from my father
that he only gave counsel to the Senate that they should not ransom
their country for gold, and that he did this because the Gauls had not
enclosed the capital, and that therefore they might sally forth, not
indeed without danger, yet without certainty of destruction. I also
would give like advice this day if we could come near our enemies to
fight with them. But seeing this may not be, and that if this army be
destroyed, Rome is destroyed with it (for how can an unarmed mul