CHAPTER XL.: deceit in the conduct of a war is meritorious.

Although deceit is detestable in all other things, yet in the conduct of war it is laudable and honorable; and a commander who vanquishes an enemy by stratagem is equally praised with one who gains victory by force. This is proved by the judgment of those who have written the lives of great men, and who give much credit to Hannibal and others who were most remarkable in that respect. History gives so many examples of this that I need not cite any of them here. But I will say this, that I do not confound such deceit with perfidy, which breaks pledged faith and treaties; for although states and kingdoms may at times be won by perfidy, yet will it ever bring dishonor with it. But I speak of those feints and stratagems which you employ against an enemy that distrusts you, and in

the employment of which properly consists the art of war. Such was that practised by Hannibal when he feigned flight on the lake of Perugia (Thrasimene), for the purpose of hemming in the Consul and the Roman army; and when he attached blazing fagots to the horns of his cattle to enable him to escape from the hands of Fabius Maximus. Such was also the stratagem of Pontius, general of the Samnites, to draw the Romans into the defiles of the Caudine Forks. Having concealed his army behind a mountain, he sent a number of his soldiers disguised as herdsmen with droves of cattle into the plains. These, on being captured and interrogated by the Romans as to the whereabouts of the Samnite army, answered, according to the instructions of Pontius, that it was engaged in the siege of the town of Nocera. The Consuls, believing it, entered the defiles of Caudium, where they were promptly hemmed in by the Samnites. This victory won by stratagem would have been most glorious for Pontius had he followed the advice of his father, who wanted him either to allow the Romans to pass out entirely free, or to kill them all; but not to take any half-way measures, which, as we have said elsewhere, are always pernicious, “and never make a friend nor rid you of an enemy.”