Ab urbe condita

The Samnite wars are still with us, those wars which I have been occupied with through these last four books, and which have gone on continuously for six-and-forty years, in fact ever since the consuls, M. Valerius and A. Cornelius, carried the arms of Rome for the first time into Samnium.

It is unnecessary now to recount the numberless defeats which overtook both nations, and the toils which they endured through all those years, and yet these things were powerless to break down the resolution or crush the spirit of that people;