Thread by @ajcdeane

#Deanehistory 193 h/t @CoriniumMuseum. The Battle of Caudine Forks.

The Samnites were old rivals of Rome, and did pretty well for a while before they went the way of the rest of Rome’s enemies for the centuries of their pomp - defeat, assimilation, obliteration.

This is a story of their success, which was also their failure - with not one but two lessons.

The Samnites were commanded in 321 BC by Gaius Pontius, who learned that the Roman army in the field against him was presently to be found at Calatia.

He had ten of his men disguised as local herdsmen who, approaching the Romans separately by varying routes at different times, all told them the same thing - that the Samnites were busy laying siege to the town of Lucera.

Here’s the first lesson. The same lie, repeated to you ten times from different sources, is still a lie. It gains nothing in the retelling and repetition.

Having not read their #Deanehistory, the Romans fell for it and marched on Lucera to relieve the town.

The fastest route there was by the road we have come to call the Appian Way. So their predictable route took them through a narrow pass in the Campanian mountains called the Caudine Forks.

The dilemma is easily understood. The Romans marched into the pass. Getting to the other end, they found it barricaded. Turning about face, the end by which they’d entered was now barricaded too. The whole Roman army was trapped.

But what do you do when you have the tiger by the tail? Pontius had realised a success with his scheme he’d never quite imagined. So he did as many of us do when faced with an adult conundrum. He asked his Dad for advice.

Pontius was rather nonplussed by the reply he got to his letter. His father Herennius said, you should let them all go, ASAP.

Well I don’t really fancy that, Dad - we don’t notch up wins against the Romans all that often, I don’t want to let this slide - what’s option B, please?

Option B, came the reply, is also clear: kill them all, every last man. Leave no survivors.
Pontius, not surprisingly, asked his father - who by this point had been summonsed to the pass within which the Romans were still stewing - why he had two such opposing recommendations.

Herennius explained that if they let the army go, they’d win Rome’s friendship. If they slaughtered them they’d weaken Rome terribly and show the Samnites weren’t to be trifled with.
I hate both these options, Dad - isn’t there a middle way?

The Herennian answer is our second lesson.

No. In such things there isn’t a middle way. Don’t leave your opponent still equipped whilst still your enemy. No half measures. You have to commit, one way or the other.

Pontius didn’t listen. He continued with his desire for a middle way. He let the Romans surrender to him but forced them to pass under a yoke as symbol of their humiliation, going on their way insulted and demeaned rather than with the hand of friendship.

Thus his bloodless solution ended the Second Samnite War - but its insult led to the Third. There was no fourth, as there were no more Samnites.