To sacrifice everything to patriotism is the first duty. By devoting themselves to the gods of Hades, like Curtius and the two Decii, people believed they bought, at the price of their lives, the safety of the others or victory.[238] Discipline is enforced even to cruelty: Manlius Torquatus, after the example of Postumius Tubertus, punishes with death the disobedience of his son, though he had gained a victory. The soldiers who have fled are decimated; those who abandon their ranks or the field of battle are devoted, some to execution, others to dishonour; and those who have allowed themselves to be made prisoners by the enemy are disdained as unworthy of the price of freedom.[239] Surrounded by warlike neighbours, Rome must either triumph or cease to exist; hence her superiority in the art of war, for, as Montesquieu says, in transient wars most of the examples are lost; peace brings other ideas, and its faults and even its virtues are forgotten; hence that contempt of treason and that disdain for the advantages it promises: Camillus sends home to their parents the children of the first families of Falerii, delivered up to him by their schoolmaster; the Senate rejects with indignation the offer of the physician of Pyrrhus, who proposes to poison that prince;--hence that religious observance of oaths and that respect for engagements which have been contracted: the Roman prisoners to whom Pyrrhus had given permission to repair to Rome for the festival of Saturn, all return to him faithful to their word; and Regulus leaves the most memorable example of faithfulness to his oath!--hence that skilful and inflexible policy which refuses peace after a defeat, or a treaty with the enemy so long as he is on the soil of their country; which makes use of war to divert people from domestic troubles;[240] gains the vanquished by benefits if they submit, and admits them by degrees into the great Roman family; and, if they resist, strikes them without pity and reduces them to slavery;[241]--hence that anxious provision for multiplying upon the conquered territories the race of agriculturists and soldiers;--hence, lastly, the improving spectacle of a town which becomes a people, and of a people which embraces the world. CHAPTER IV. PROSPERITY OF THE BASIN OF THE MEDITERRANEAN BEFORE THE PUNIC WARS. [Sidenote: Commerce of the Mediterranean.]