Ab urbe condita

While they were uttering these indignant protests, the hour of their humiliation arrived which was to make everything more bitter for them by actual experience than they had anticipated

or imagined. First of all they were ordered to lay down their arms and go outside the rampart with only one garment each. The first to be dealt with were those surrendered as hostages who were taken away for

safe keeping. Next, the lictors were ordered to retire from the consuls, who were then stripped of

their paludamenta. This aroused such deep commiseration amongst those who a short time ago had been cursing them and saying that they ought to be surrendered and scourged, that every man, forgetting his own plight, turned away his eyes from such an outrage upon the majesty of state as from a spectacle too horrible to behold.

The consuls were the first to be sent, little more than half-clothed, under the yoke, then each in the order of his rank was exposed to the same disgrace, and finally, the legionaries one after another.

Around them stood the enemy fully armed, reviling and jeering at them; swords were pointed at most of them, and when they offended their victors by showing their indignation and resentment too plainly some were wounded and even killed.

[*](The Return of the Roman Army). —Thus were they marched under the yoke. But what was still harder to bear was that after they had emerged from the pass under the eyes of the foe, though, like men dragged up from the jaws of hell, they seemed to behold the light for the first time, the very light itself, serving only to reveal such a hideous sight as they marched along, was more gloomy than any shape of death.

They could have reached Capua before nightfall, but not knowing how their allies would receive them, and kept back by a feeling of shame, they all flung themselves, destitute of everything, on the sides of the road near Capua.

As soon as news of this reached the place, a proper feeling of compassion for their allies got the better of the inborn disdain of the Campanian;

they immediately sent to the consuls their own insignia of office, the fasces and the lictors, and the soldiers they generously supplied with arms, horses, clothes, and provisions.

As they entered Capua the senate and people came out in a body to meet them, showed them all due hospitality, and paid them all the consideration to which as individuals and as members of an allied state they were entitled.

But all the courtesies and kindly looks and cheerful greetings of their allies were powerless to evoke a single word or even to make them lift up their eyes and look in the face the friends who were trying to comfort them.

To such an extent did feelings of shame make their gloom and