# 40. That it is a Glorious Thing to use Fraud in the Conduct of a War

Although to use fraud71 in any action is detestable, yet in the conduct of a war it is praiseworthy and glorious. And a man who uses fraud to overcome his enemy is praised, just as much as is he who overcomes his enemy by force. This is seen in the judgement pronounced on great men by biographers, who praise Hannibal and others well known for this kind of behaviour. Of this one comes across so many examples that I shall not cite any, I will say but this, I do not mean that a fraud which involves breaking your word or the contracts you have made, is glorious; for, although on occasion it may win for you a state or a kingdom, as has been said in an earlier discourse, it will never bring you glory. I am speaking of fraud used in dealing with an enemy who has not kept faith with you, i.e., of the fraud which is involved in the conduct of a war; such as that which Hannibal used when at the Perugian lake he pretended flight in order to entrap the consul and the Roman army, and when, to escape from the hands of Fabius Maximus he lit up the horns of a herd of cattle.

To this class of fraud belongs that which was practised by Pontius, the general of the Samnites, that he might entrap the Roman army in the Caudine Forks. Having placed his army up against the mountains, he sent some of his soldiers, dressed as shepherds, with a flock of sheep across the plain. They were captured by the Romans, who asked where the Samnite army was. All agreed in saying what Pontius had told them to say, i.e., that it had gone to lay siege to Nocera. The credence given by the consuls to this report led to their being caught between the Caudine cliffs, where, when they got there, they were at once hemmed in by the Samnites. This victory, which Pontius gained by fraud, would have redounded greatly to his credit had he followed his father’s advice, which was that he should either let the Romans go scot-free or should slaughter them all, and that he should not take the middle course which ‘neither makes you friends, nor removes your enemies’; and this middle course has always been harmful in affairs of state, as I have already pointed out in another discourse.