The primary spheres of foreign activity are the declaration of war, the making of peace, and the framing of alliances. All these powers belonged of right to the people, and, as regards the first, there was never any question that the Senate’s position was merely that of a constant adviser. The two latter powers merge into one another, for a state that was not on some terms of alliance with Rome was, according to the rude notions of the prevailing international law, an enemy of the Republic. There appear at intervals during the Republic signs of a keen but advantageous controversy as to whether the right to conclude binding treaties in the name of the Republic was possessed by the _imperator_ in the field, as well as by Senate and people. To profit by the oath of a general when it entailed success, to disavow it when it meant failure, and in this case to hand the unfortunate commander, who had saved Roman lives but not Roman honour, bound and naked as a scapegoat to the enemy, were the convenient results of this condition of juristic doubt. The Caudine Forks in Samnium, Numantia in Spain, and the neighbourhood of Suthul in Numidia saw Roman generals and their deluded adversaries equal victims of this controversy.[1356] But the opinion finally prevailed that without the consent of the Senate and the people no sworn treaty (_foedus_) could be binding.[1357] The practice as to the division of this authority between the council and the assembly varied from time to time. In the earliest period a treaty of peace seems to be within the competence of the magistrate, and therefore of the Senate; in the constitution of the middle Republic, as revealed to us by Polybius, such an agreement is always submitted to the people for ratification,[1358] but the close of Republican history shows cases where the Senate alone is mentioned as the deciding authority.[1359]