History of Rome

​In the same year, a lectisternium was held at Rome, the fifth since the founding of the city, for the purpose of placating the same gods as before.

​Then the new consuls, having sent messengers by order of the people to declare war on the Samnites, themselves prepared everything with greater effort than against the Greeks; and other new auxiliary forces, of which they were at that time thinking nothing of the kind, were added to them:

​The Lucanians and Apulians, nations which up to that day had had no relations with the Roman people, came into their alliance, promising arms and men for the war; they were therefore received into friendship by a treaty. At the same time, affairs in Samnium also went prosperously.

​Three towns came into their power, Allifae, Callifae, and Rufrium, and the rest of the territory was thoroughly devastated far and wide upon the first arrival of the consuls.

​With this war begun so successfully, the end was now also near for the other war, in which the Greeks were besieged. For, besides the fact that by the cutting off of their fortifications one part of the enemy had been severed from the other, inside the walls there were things far more hideous than those ​with which the enemy was terrorizing them, and those who, as if captured by their own garrisons, were already suffering unworthy treatment even towards their children and wives, and all the extremities of captured cities.

​Therefore, although there was a report that new auxiliary forces would come both from Tarentum and from the Samnites, they reckoned that there were more Samnites within the walls than they wished, and they were expecting the youth of the Tarentines, ​Greeks expecting Greeks, no less that they might resist the Samnites and Nolans through them than that they might oppose their Roman enemies; finally, surrender to the Romans seemed the lightest of evils.

​Charilaus and Nymphius, the leading men of the state, having shared their counsel, divided the parts for executing the plan, so that the one should desert to the Roman general, while the other should remain behind to keep the city in a state favorable to their design.

​It was Charilaus who came to Publilius Philo and, praying that it might be good, auspicious, and happy for the Palaepolitans and the Roman people, said that he had resolved to deliver up the walls.

​He said that whether his country appeared betrayed or preserved by that action was placed in the hands of Roman good faith. For himself privately, he was neither bargaining for nor asking anything; but publicly, he was asking rather than bargaining, ​namely, that if the undertakings succeeded, the Roman people should consider with how much zeal and danger they had returned to their friendship, rather than with what folly and rashness they had departed from their duty.

​Highly praised by the general, he received three thousand soldiers to occupy that part of the city which the Samnites were holding; Quinctius, a military tribune, was placed in command of this force.