HISTORY OF ROME.

BOOK IX.

Titus Veturius and Spurius Postumius, with their army, were surrounded by the Samnites at the Caudine Forks. They entered into a treaty, gave six hundred hostages, and were sent under the yoke. The treaty was later declared invalid; the two generals and the other sureties were sent back to the Samnites, but were not accepted. Not long after, Papirius Cursor erased this disgrace by vanquishing the Samnites, sending them under the yoke, and recovering the hostages. Two tribes were added to the state. Appius Claudius, as censor, constructed the Claudian aqueduct and the Appian Road, and admitted the sons of freedmen into the Senate. There were successes against the Apulians, Etruscans, Umbrians, Marsians, Pelignians, Aequians, and Samnites. Mention is made of Alexander the Great, who flourished at this time, along with a comparative estimate of his strength and that of the Roman people, tending to show that if he had carried his arms into Italy, he would not have been as successful there as he had been in the Eastern countries.

1. This year is marked by the convention of Caudium, which is so memorable due to the misfortune of the Romans, when Titus Veturius Calvinus and Spurius Postumius were consuls. The Samnites had as their commander that year Caius Pontius, the son of Herennius—a man born of a father highly renowned for wisdom, and a consummate warrior and commander himself. When the ambassadors who had been sent to make restitution returned without concluding a peace, he said, “So that you may not think this embassy has achieved nothing, let it be known that whatever degree of anger the deities of heaven had conceived against us on account of the breaking of the treaty, it has now been atoned for.”