But this appointment must be made by a consul. One consul was with the defeated army, perhaps dead. It was necessary to apply to Fabius, the other consul, and the declared enemy of the proposed dictator. To overcome his personal feelings, a deputation of the highest senators was sent him, who read him the senate's decree and strongly urged him to support it. Fabius listened in dead silence, not answering by word or look. When they had ended, he abruptly withdrew from the room. But at dead of night he pronounced, in the usual form, the nomination of Papirius as dictator. When the deputies thanked him for his noble conquest over his feelings, he listened still in dead silence, and dismissed them without a word in answer.
We must now pass over years of war, in which both Fabius and Papirius gained honor and fame, and come to an occasion in which the son of Fabius led a Roman army as consul, and met with a severe defeat by a Samnite army. He had been tricked by the Samnites, and great indignation was aroused against him in Rome. It was proposed to remove him from his office, a disgrace which no consul ever experienced in Roman history. It was also proposed that old Fabius should be appointed dictator. But the aged soldier, to preserve the honor of his son, offered to go with him as his lieutenant, and the offer was accepted by the senate.
A second battle ensued, in the heat of which the consul became surrounded by the enemy, and his aged father led the charge to his rescue. His example animated the Romans, they followed him in a vigorous assault, and a complete victory was won. Twenty thousand Samnites were slain, four thousand taken prisoners, and with them their general, C. Pontius. After other victories the younger Fabius returned to Rome and was given a triumph, while behind him rode his old father on horseback, as one of his lieutenants, delighting in the honor conferred on his son. The Samnite general was made to walk in the procession, and at its end was taken to the prison under the Capitoline Hill and there beheaded. It was thus that Rome dealt with its captured foes.
THE CAUDINE FORKS.
Westward from Rome rise the Apennine Mountains, the backbone of Italy; and amid their highest peaks, where the snow lies all the year long, and whence streams flow into the two seas, dwelt the Sabines, an important people, from whom came the mothers of the Roman state. There is a legend concerning this people which we have now to tell. For many years they had been at war with their neighbors, the Umbrians; and at length, failing to conquer their enemies by their own strength, they sought to obtain the help of the divinities. They made a vow that if victory was given to them, all the living creatures born that year in their land should be held as sacred to the gods.
The victory came, and they sacrificed all the lambs, calves, kids, and pigs of that year's birth, while they redeemed from the gods such animals as were not suitable for sacrifice. But, as it appeared, the deities were not satisfied. The land refused to yield its fruits, and the Sabines were not long in deciding why their crops had failed. They had neither sacrificed nor redeemed the children born that year, and had thus failed in their duty to the gods.
To atone for this fault, all their children of that year's birth were devoted to the god Mamers, and when they had grown up they were sent away to make themselves a home in a new land. As the young men started on their pilgrimage a bull went before them, and, as they fancied that Mamers had sent this animal for their guide, they piously followed him. He first lay down to rest when he had come to the land of the Opicans. This the Sabines took for a sign, and they fell on the Opicans, who dwelt in villages without walls, and drove them out from their country, of which the new-comers took possession. They then sacrificed the bull to Mamers; and in after-ages they bore the bull for their device. They also took a new name, and were afterwards known as Samnites.
While the Romans were extending their dominion in Central Italy, the Samnites were conquering the peoples farther south. Their dominion became great, and at one time included the famous cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii and many others of the cities of the southern plains. In the centre of the Samnite country stood a remarkable mountain mass, an offshoot from the Apennines. This mountain, now called the Matese, is nearly eight miles in circumference, and rises abruptly in huge wall-like cliffs of limestone to the height of three thousand feet. Its surface is greatly varied in character, now sloping into deep valleys, now rising into elevated cliffs, of which the loftiest is six thousand feet high. It is rich in springs, which gush out in full flow, and disappear again in the caverns with which limestone rocks abound. Its valleys yield abundant pasture and magnificent beech forests, while on its highest summits the snow tarries till late summer, and in the hottest months of summer the upland pastures continue cool.