# CHAPTER 42 — That Promises Exacted by Force Need Not Be Kept

After the consuls returned to Rome with their army disarmed and themselves in disgrace, the first man in the senate who said that the peace made at Caudium should not be kept was the consul Spurius Postumius, who declared that the Roman people were not obligated to do so, but that he was clearly obligated to do so, along with the others who had promised peace; and that if the people, however, wished to free themselves of such an obligation, they had to give himself and all the others who had made such a promise to the Samnites as prisoners. He affirmed this conclusion with such obstinacy that the senate was happy to do so, and sending him and the others back to Samnium as prisoners, they protested to the Samnites that the peace was not valid. Fortune was so favourable to Postumius in this instance that the Samnites did not detain him, and once he had returned to Rome, Postumius enjoyed more glory among the Romans for having lost than Pontius enjoyed among the Samnites for having triumphed. Here two things are to be noted: first, glory can be acquired from any action; it is ordinarily acquired through victory, but in defeat it is acquired either by demonstrating that such a defeat did not occur through any fault of yours, or by immediately executing some worthy action that cancels it; the other is that it is not shameful to avoid keeping those promises you were constrained to make by force; for promises exacted by force that regard the state are always broken when the force is removed, and they are broken without shame on the part of the one who breaks them. Various examples of this can be read in all the histories, and at the present more of them are seen every day. Not only are promises exacted by force never kept between princes, when the force is removed, but no other promises are observed when the causes for them are removed. Whether or not this is a praiseworthy thing, and whether or not similar methods should be observed by a prince, is examined by us at length in our treatise De Principe; * I shall therefore remain silent at the present.