whole weight of the enemy's resentment. And grant, that the consuls
and legions of Rome may wage war against the Samnites, with the same
fortune with which every war has been waged before we became consuls."
On his concluding this speech, men's minds were so impressed with both
admiration and compassion, that now they could scarce believe him to
be the same Spurius Postumius who had been the author of so shameful a
peace; again lamenting, that such a man was likely to undergo, among
the enemy, a punishment even beyond that of others, through resentment
for annulling the peace. When all the members, extolling him with
praises, expressed their approbation of his sentiments, a protest was
attempted for a time by Lucius Livius and Quintus Maelius, tribunes of
the commons, who said, that "the people could not be acquitted of the
religious obligation by the consuls being given up, unless all things
were restored to the Samnites in the same state in which they had been
at Caudium; nor had they themselves deserved any punishment, for
having, by becoming sureties to the peace, preserved the army of the
Roman people; nor, finally, could they, being sacred and inviolable,
be surrendered to the enemy or treated with violence."

9. To this Postumius replied, "In the mean time surrender us as
unsanctified persons, which ye may do, without offence to religion;
those sacred and inviolable personages, the tribunes, ye will
afterwards deliver up as soon as they go out of office: but, if ye
listen to me, they will be first scourged with rods, here in the
Comitium, that they may pay this as interest for their punishment
being delayed. For, as to their denying that the people are acquitted
of the religious obligation, by our being given up, who is there so
ignorant of the laws of the heralds, as not to know, that those men
speak in that manner, that they themselves may not be surrendered,
rather than because the case is really so? Still I do not deny,