Book 9
4.3
Pontius replied that all war was at an end, and since even now that they were vanquished and captured they were incapable of acknowledging their true position, he should deprive them of their arms and send them under the yoke, allowing them to retain one garment each.
4.4
The other conditions would he fair to both victors and vanquished. If they evacuated Samnium and withdrew their colonists from his country, the Roman and
4.5
the Samnite would henceforth live under their own laws as sovereign states united by a just and honourable treaty. On these conditions he was ready to conclude a treaty with the consuls, if they rejected any of them he forbade any further overtures to he made to him.
4.6
When the result was announced, such a universal cry of distress arose, such gloom and melancholy prevailed, that they evidently could not have taken it more heavily if it had been announced to them all that they must die on the spot.
4.7
Then followed a long silence. The consuls were unable to breathe a word either in favour of a capitulation so humiliating or against one so necessary.
