IV
When these terms were communicated to the camp there was wailing and lamentation, long and loud, for they considered the disgrace of passing under the yoke worse than death. Afterwards, when they heard about the knights who were to be held as hostages, there was another long lament. Yet they were compelled by want to accept the conditions. Accordingly they took the oaths, Pontius on the one side, and the two consuls, Postumius and Veturius, on the other, together with two quaestors, four division commanders, and twelve tribunes,—all the surviving officers. When the oaths had been taken, Pontius opened a passage from the defile, and having fixed two spears in the ground and laid another across the top, caused the Romans to go under it as they passed out, one by one. He also gave them some animals to carry their sick, and provisions sufficient to bring them to Rome. This method of dismissing prisoners, which they call sending under the yoke, seems to me to serve only to insult the vanquished.
