your heads." Neither of these plans was approved, and Herennius was
carried home from the camp.

4. In the Roman camp also, when many fruitless efforts to force a
passage had been made, and they were now destitute of every means of
subsistence, forced by necessity, they send ambassadors, who were
first to ask peace on equal terms; which, if they did not obtain, they
were to challenge the enemy to battle. To this Pontius answered, that
"the war was at an end; and since, even in their present vanquished
and captive state, they were not willing to acknowledge their
situation, he would send them under the yoke unarmed, each with a
single garment; that the other conditions of peace should be such as
were just between the conquerors and the conquered. If their troops
would depart, and their colonies be withdrawn out of the territories
of the Samnites; for the future, the Romans and Samnites, under a
treaty of equality, shall live according to their own respective laws.
On these terms he was ready to negotiate with the consuls: and if any
of these should not be accepted, he forbade the ambassadors to come to
him again." When the result of this embassy was made known, such
general lamentation suddenly arose, and such melancholy took
possession of them, that had they been told that all were to die on
the spot, they could not have felt deeper affliction. After silence
continued a long time, and the consuls were not able to utter a word,
either in favour of a treaty so disgraceful, or against a treaty so
necessary; at length, Lucius Lentulus, who was the first among the
lieutenants-general, both in respect of bravery, and of the public
honours which he had attained, addressed them thus: "Consuls, I have
often heard my father say, that he was the only person in the Capitol
who did not advise the senate to ransom the state from the Gauls with
gold; and these he would not concur in, because they had not been