United States or Mayotte ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Apart from the unbending heroism shown by the conquered, it may be called the Caudine Forks of modern war. A force of close on 40,000 men was nearly destroyed: it lost all its cannon and survived only in bands of exhausted stragglers. Who is to be blamed for this disaster?
There were two roads leading to Luceria, one along the coast of the upper sea, wide and open; but, as it was the safer, so it was proportionably longer: the other, which was shorter, through the Caudine forks.
For after he had drawn up his forces behind the hills, he sent out a number of his soldiers, disguised as herdsmen, to drive great herds of cattle across the plain; who being captured by the Romans, and interrogated as to where the Samnite army was, all of them, as they had been taught by Pontius, agreed in saying that it had gone to besiege Nocera: which being believed by the consuls, led them to advance within the Caudine Valley, where no sooner were they come than they were beset by the Samnites.
Rome was in despair, for all seemed at an end. The Samnites had not forgotten a former Pontius, who had sent a Roman army under the Caudine Forks, and had been cruelly murdered in the Capitol They thundered on the Colline Gate. But at that critical moment a large body of cavalry appeared and charged the foe. It was the vanguard of Sulla's army, marching in haste to the relief of Rome.
The third and decisive battle was fought by both consuls at the entrance of the Caudine Pass near Suessula; the Samnites were completely vanquished forty thousand of their shields were picked up on the field of battle and they were compelled to make a peace, in which the Romans retained Capua, which had given itself over to their possession, while they left Teanum to the Samnites . Congratulations came from all sides, even from Carthage.
The same summer Marcellus made frequent excursions from Nola, which he was occupying with a garrison, into the lands of the Hirpini and Caudine Samnites, and so destroyed all before him with fire and sword, that he renewed in Samnium the memory of her ancient disasters.
When the customary decrees of the senate were passed, they proposed the consideration of the Caudine peace; and Publilius, who was in possession of the fasces, said, "Spurius Postumius, speak:" he arose with just the same countenance with which he had passed under the yoke, and delivered himself to this effect: "Consuls, I am well aware that I have been called up first with marked ignominy, not with honour; and that I am ordered to speak, not as being a senator, but as a person answerable as well for an unsuccessful war as for a disgraceful peace.
But most carefully should we avoid, as of all courses the most pernicious, such half-measures as were followed by the Samnites when they had the Romans shut up in the Caudine Forks, and would not listen to the counsels of the old man who urged them either to send their captives away with every honourable attention, or else put them all to death; but adopted a middle course, and after disarming them and making them pass under the yoke, suffered them to depart at once disgraced and angered.
After the Caudine catastrophe, when the Romans and Samnites stood opposed in Apulia, they had sent envoys thither to enjoin both parties to lay down their arms . This diplomatic intervention in the decisive struggle of the Italians could not rationally have any other meaning than that of an announcement that Tarentum had at length resolved to abandon the neutrality which it had hitherto maintained.
On one occasion a Roman army of twenty thousand men was saved from destruction by engagements which the Senate, as after the surrender at the Caudine Forks, repudiated. In 133, after a siege of eighteen months, Numantia was taken by Scipio Africanus AEmilianus.
Word Of The Day