Pontius proved, indeed, generous to his foes. He supplied carriages for the sick and wounded, and furnished provisions to last the army until it should arrive at Home. When that city was reached the senate and people came out and welcomed the soldiers with the greatest kindness. But the wounded pride of the legionaries could not be soothed. Those who had homes in the country stole from the ranks and sought their several dwellings. Those who lived in Rome lingered without the walls until after the sun had fallen, and then made their way home through the darkness. The consuls were obliged to enter in open day, but as soon as possible they sought their homes, and shut themselves up in privacy.
As for the city, it went into mourning. All business was suspended; the patricians laid aside their gold rings and took off the red border of their dresses which marked their rank; the plebeians appeared in mourning garbs; there was as much weeping for those who had returned in dishonor as for those left dead on the field; all rejoicings, festivals, and marriages were set aside for a year of happier omen.
The final result was such as might have been expected from the earlier record of Rome. The senate refused to recognize the treaty. The defeated consuls themselves sustained this bad faith, saying that they and all the officers should be given up to the Samnites, as having promised what they were unable to perform.
This was done. Half stripped, as when they passed under the yoke, and their hands bound behind their backs, the officers were conducted by the fecialis to the Samnian frontier, and delivered to the Samnites as men who had forfeited their liberty by their breach of faith. The surrender completed, Postumius, one of the consuls, struck a fecialis violently with his knee,—his hands and feet being bound,—and cried out,—
"I now belong to the Samnites, and I have done violence to the sacred person of a Roman fecialis and ambassador. You will rightfully wage war with us, Romans, to avenge this outrage."
This transparent trick was wasted on Pontius. He refused the victims offered him. They were not the guilty ones, he said. The legions must be placed again in the Caudium Valley, or Rome keep the treaty. Anything else would be base and faithless.
The treaty was not kept. The war went on. And nearly thirty years afterwards, as we have told in the preceding story, Pontius, who had behaved so generously to the Romans, was led as a prisoner in a Roman triumph, and then basely beheaded while the triumphal car of the victor ascended the Capitoline Hill. His death is one of the darkest blots on the Roman name. "Such a murder," we are told, "committed or sanctioned by such a man as Q. Fabius, is peculiarly a national crime, and proves but too clearly that in their dealings with foreigners the Romans had neither magnanimity, nor humanity, nor justice."