the
political existence of Rome would have been in serious danger. But
instead of taking this course and concluding a military convention,
Gavius Pontius thought that he could at once terminate the whole
quarrel by an equitable peace; whether it was that he shared that
foolish longing of the confederates for peace, to which Brutulus
Papius had fallen a victim in the previous year, or whether it was
that he was unable to prevent the party which was tired of the war
from spoiling his unexampled victory. The terms laid down were
moderate enough; Rome was to raze the fortresses which she had
constructed in defiance of the treaty--Cales and Fregellae--and to
renew her equal alliance with Samnium. After the Roman generals had
agreed to these terms and had given six hundred hostages chosen from
the cavalry for their faithful execution--besides pledging their own
word and that of all their staff-officers on oath to the same effect
--the Roman army was dismissed uninjured, but disgraced; for the
Samnite army, drunk with victory, could not resist the desire to
subject their hated enemies to the disgraceful formality of laying
down their arms and passing under the yoke.

But the Roman senate, regardless of the oath of their officers and
of the fate of the hostages, cancelled the agreement, and contented
themselves with surrendering to the enemy those who had concluded it
as personally responsible for its fulfilment. Impartial history can
attach little importance to the question whether in so doing the
casuistry of Roman advocates and priests kept the letter of the law,
or whether the decree of the Roman senate violated it; under a human
and political point of view no blame in this matter rests upon the
Romans. It was a question of comparative indifference whether,
according to the formal state law of the Romans, the general in
command was or was not entitled to conclude peace without reserving
its ratification by the burgesses. According to the spirit and
practice of the constitution it was quite an established principle
that in Rome every state-agreement, not purely military, pertained
to the province of the civil authorities, and a general who concluded
peace without the instructions of the senate and the burgesses
exceeded his powers. It was a greater error on the part of the
Samnite general to give the Roman generals the choice between saving
their army and exceeding their powers, than it was on the part of
the latter