“ [2] A god humbled this haughty spirit, for soon afterwards the Romans were defeated by the Samnites and compelled to pass under the yoke. The Samnites, under their general Pontius, having shut the Romans up in a defile where they were oppressed by hunger, the consuls sent messengers to him and begged that he should win the gratitude of the Romans, such as not many opportunities offer. He replied that they need not send any more messengers to him unless they were prepared to surrender their arms and their persons. There-upon a lamentation was raised as though a city had been captured, and the consuls delayed several days longer, hesitating to do an act unworthy of Rome. But when no means of rescue appeared and famine became severe, there being 50,000 young men in the defile whom they could not bear to see perish, they surrendered to Pontius and begged him either to kill them, or to sell them into slavery, or to keep
them for ransom, but not to put any stigma of shame upon the persons of the unfortunate. ”
B.C. 321
Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
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