Livy, writing in Rome in the last decades before Christ, tells the early story of the city: kings, then a Republic run by a senate and elected officials, not a king. This is Book 9 of that history. Book 8 left Rome after the Latin War, when its nearest Italian neighbors were forced into unequal alliances and one city began to lead the peninsula.

In the mountains of south-central Italy, Samnite highlanders trap a Roman army in a pass called the Caudine Forks and send it under the yoke: spears planted, heads bowed, a ritual of disgrace. Livy makes this the great shame of the long Samnite Wars for Italy’s spine. The Senate argues whether a trapped consul — one of two officials elected to run Rome for a year — can bind the people to that peace. Papirius Cursor and Fabius Rullianus then claw the honor back in oak woods and stone passes. Appius Claudius the Blind lays the Via Appia toward Capua, near Naples. Livy even asks whether Alexander the Great could have beaten these consuls. After shame, they levy again and refuse a peace that smells of the yoke.