# 42. That Promises extracted by Force ought not to be kept

When with an army that had been stripped of its arms and had suffered such ignominious treatment, the consuls returned to Rome, the first person to speak in the senate said that the peace made at Caudium ought not to be observed. This was the consul, Spurius Postumius. He said that the Roman people were not bound by it, but that he and the others who had promised peace, were bound by it. Hence, if the people wanted to be free from any obligation, they should send him and all those who had made the promise, back to the Samnites as prisoners. He defended this view with such tenacity that the senate yielded; sent him and the others as prisoners to Samnium, and protested to the Samnites that the peace was invalid. Fortune favoured Postumius in this case, for the Samnites did not keep him, and on his return to Rome he gained more glory in the eyes of the Romans by having surrendered than Pontius gained in the eyes of the Samnites by his victory.

Two things should here be noted. One is that glory can be gained by either kind of action, for it is acquired by victory in the ordinary course, and in defeat it is acquired if you can either show that the defeat was not your fault, or can at once perform some virtuous action which cancels it out. The other is that it is not shameful to fail to keep a promise which you have been forced to make. Forced promises affecting the public will, in fact, always be broken when the force in question is removed, and this without shame to those who break them. Everywhere in history one comes across examples of this of one kind or another, and everyone is aware that it happens also at the present day. And not only are forced promises not observed by princes when the force in question is no longer operative; but we also find that all other promises are broken when the reasons which caused such promises to be made no longer hold good. Whether this is praiseworthy or not, and whether a prince should or should not behave in this way, we have discussed at length in our treatise on The Prince. Here, therefore, nothing will be said about it.





Book Three



[DISCOURSES 43–8]


[Further Reflections Based on the Samnite Wars]