IV
When these terms were communicated to the camp there was wailing and lamentation, long and loud, for they considered the disgrace of passing under the yoke worse than death. Afterwards, when they heard about the knights who were to be held as hostages, there was another long lament. Yet they were compelled by want to accept the conditions. Accordingly they took the oaths, Pontius on the one side, and the two consuls, Postumius and Veturius, on the other, together with two quaestors, four division commanders, and twelve tribunes,—all the surviving officers. When the oaths had been taken, Pontius opened a passage from the defile, and having fixed two spears in the ground and laid another across the top, caused the Romans to go under it as they passed out, one by one. He also gave them some animals to carry their sick, and provisions sufficient to bring them to Rome. This method of dismissing prisoners, which they call sending under the yoke, seems to me to serve only to insult the vanquished.
IV
When the news of this calamity reached the city there was wailing and lamentation like a public mourning. The women mourned for those who had been saved in this ignominous way as for the dead. The senators discarded their purple-striped tunics. Feasts, marriages, and everything of that kind were prohibited for a whole year, until the calamity was retrieved. Some of the returning soldiers took refuge in the fields for shame, others stole into the city by night. The consuls entered by day according to law, and they wore their usual insignia, but they exercised no further authority.Livy, ix. I seq.
V
Y.R. 464 On account of admiration for his bravery a multitude of B.C. 290 chosen youths numbering eight hundred were in the habit of following Dentatus, ready for anything. This was an embarrassment to the Senate at their meetings.
