This was no unusual humiliation, but was the custom in those days, and equal to our demand that arms should be laid down on the surrender of a garrison. Pontius was indeed strangely kind to his conquered foes, ordering carriages for the wounded, and giving them food to eat on the march back to Rome. But nothing could comfort the Romans, whose pride had been gravely wounded by being forced to pass beneath the yoke. In silence, shame written clear upon their faces, they marched gloomily along, with no desire to reach the end of their journey. When they drew near to Rome, those who lived in the country slipped away to their homes, hoping that none would notice them. Those who lived in the city waited until it was dark that they might enter unseen. The Consuls were not able to shun the attention of the crowd, for they entered the city during the day. But they, too, were so ashamed that they deemed themselves no longer fit to be Consuls, and escaping from the people as soon as possible, they shut themselves up in their homes. Rome was a gloomy city for days after the return of the disgraced army. The senators laid aside their gold rings, and no longer wore on their robes the red border which was the sign of their rank. In sombre attire and with grave faces they sat in the Senate-house, or paced the streets, thinking of the disgrace that had overtaken their people. Shops were shut, business was laid aside, while the citizens mourned alike for those who had returned as for those who had been slain. Ere long new Consuls were elected, and they, with the Senate, agreed that the treaty made with Pontius must not be kept. Postumius then offered to go back to the Samnites, with his colleague and officers, as a punishment for agreeing to so humiliating a treaty. To this proposal the Senate gave its approval. The Consuls and officers were then stripped of all save the kilt which they had worn when they passed beneath the yoke, and thus, with their hands tied behind them, they were sent back to the Samnites.’ ‘These men are forfeited to you in atonement for the broken treaty,’ cried those who accompanied the miserable penitents, when at length they stood in the presence of Pontius. But the Samnite general refused to receive such atonement. ‘Either,’ said he, ‘you must put your army back in the Caudine Forks, or you must keep the treaty to which your Consuls agreed.’ As the Romans refused to do this, the second Samnite war continued to be waged. CHAPTER XLIII THE DISGRACE OF THE CAUDINE FORKS AVENGED A year after the Romans had been, as they felt, disgraced at the Caudine Forks, they determined to blot out their humiliation. The old annalists, whose one desire was to increase the glory of Rome, wrote of great victories and marvellous deeds achieved by the legions, but historians of a later day say that not all the stories told by these ancient writers are true.