If their troops would depart, and their colonies be withdrawn out of the territories of the Samnites; for the future, the Romans and Samnites, under a treaty of equality, shall live according to their own respective laws.
On these terms he was ready to negotiate with the consuls: and if any of these should not be accepted, he forbade the ambassadors to come to him again." When the result of this embassy was made known, such general lamentation suddenly arose, and such melancholy took possession of them, that had they been told that all were to die on the spot, they could not have felt deeper affliction.

After silence continued a long time, and the consuls were not able to utter a word, either in favour of a treaty so disgraceful, or against a treaty so necessary; at length, Lucius Lentulus, who was the first among the lieutenants-general, both in respect of bravery, and of the public honours which he had attained, addressed them thus: "Consuls, I have often heard my father say, that he was the only person in the Capitol who did not advise the senate to ransom the state from the Gauls with gold; and these he would not concur in, because they had not been enclosed with a trench and rampart by the enemy, (who were remarkably slothful with respect to works and raising fortifications,) and because they might sally forth, if not without great danger, yet without certain destruction.

Now if, in like manner as they had it in their power to run down from the Capitol in arms against their foe, as men besieged have often sallied out on the besiegers, it were possible for us to come to blows with the enemy, either on equal or unequal ground, I would not be wanting in the high quality of my father's spirit in stating my advice.

I acknowledge, indeed, that death, in defence of our country, is highly glorious; and I am ready, either to devote myself for the Roman people and the legions, or to plunge into the midst of the enemy.

But in this spot I behold my country: in this spot, the whole of the Roman legions, and unless these choose to rush on death in defence of their own individual characters, what have they which can be preserved by their death?
The houses of the city, some may say, and the walls of it, and the crowd who dwell in it, by which the city is inhabited.