Even the Samnites were at a loss what course to follow in such happy circumstances; and accordingly they agreed unanimously to dispatch a letter to Herennius Pontius, the father of their general, asking his advice. This man, bowed down with years, had already withdrawn not only from military but even from civic duties; yet, despite his bodily infirmity, his mind and judgment retained their vigour. When he learned that the Roman armies had been hemmed in between two defiles at the Claudine Forks, and was asked by his son’s messenger for his opinion, he advised that they should all be dismissed unscathed, at the earliest possible moment. This policy having been rejected, and the messenger returning a second time to seek his counsel, he recommended that all, to the last man, be slain. Having received these answers, as inconsistent as the riddling responses of an oracle, the younger Pontius was among the first to conclude that his father’s mind had now given way along with his failing body, but yielded to the general desire and sent for him to advise with them in person. The old man made no objection; he was brought to the camp in a waggon – so the story runs – and being invited to join the council of war, spoke to such purpose as merely, without changing his opinion, to add there to his reasons: if, he said, they adopted his first proposal – which he held to be the best – they would establish lasting peace and friendship with a very powerful people by conferring an enourmous benefit upon them; by adopting the other plan they would postpone the war for many generations, in which time the Roman State, having lost two armies, would not easily regain its strength; there was no third plan. When his son and the other leading men pressed him to say what would happen if they took a middle course, and while letting them go unhurt imposed terms upon them by the rights of war, as upon the vanquished, «That» he answered «is in sooth a policy that neither wins men friends nor rids them of their enemies. Spare, if you will, those whom you have stung to anger with humiliation; the Roman race is one that knows not how to be still under defeat. Whatever shame you brand them with in their present necessity, the wound will ever rankle in their bosoms, nor will it suffer them to rest until they have exacted many times as heavy a penalty of you». Neither proposal was accepted, and Herennius was carried home from the camp.
In the other camp the Romans, finding themselves now, after many fruitless efforts to break out, in want of everything, were reduced to the necessity of sending envoys; who were first to treat for an equal peace, and, if peace could not be had, to provoke the enemy to fight. To them Pontius made answer, that the war was already fought and won; and since they knew not how to admit their plight, even when beaten and made prisoners, he intended to send them unharmed and with a single garment each under the yoke; in all else the peace should be one o f equal terms to the vanquished and the victors; for it the Romans would evacuate the Samnite territory and withdraw their colonies, Romans and Samnites should thenceforward live by their own laws in an equal alliance. On these terms he was ready to conclude a treaty with the consuls; ifthey were any of them unacceptable, he forbade the envoys to return to him.