Titus Veturius Calvinus was a Roman statesman, who held the
consulship
A consul held the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic ( to 27 BC), and ancient Romans considered the consulship the second-highest level of the ''cursus honorum'' (an ascending sequence of public offices to which politic ...
in 334 and 321 BC, the latter year during the
Second Samnite War
The First, Second, and Third Samnite Wars (343–341 BC, 326–304 BC, and 298–290 BC) were fought between the Roman Republic and the Samnites, who lived on a stretch of the Apennine Mountains south of Rome and north of the Lucanian tribe. ...
.
As consul in 321, Calvinus and the other consul,
Spurius Postumius Albinus, were defeated by the
Samnites
The Samnites () were an ancient Italic people who lived in Samnium, which is located in modern inland Abruzzo, Molise, and Campania in south-central Italy.
An Oscan-speaking people, who may have originated as an offshoot of the Sabines, they for ...
at the
Battle of the Caudine Forks
The Battle of Caudine Forks, 321 BC, was a decisive event of the Second Samnite War. Its designation as a battle is a mere historical formality: there was no fighting and there were no casualties. The Romans were trapped in an enclosed valley b ...
where they were cornered in a mountain pass and forced to surrender, after which their army was forced to "march under the yoke," a symbolic gesture of submission to an enemy. After returning to Rome, Postumius suggested that the consuls be handed over to the Samnites for having made a disgraceful peace with them, but the Samnites rejected this offer.
[Livy, ''Periochae'', 9.1.]
See also
*
Veturia gens
The gens Veturia, originally Vetusia, was an ancient patrician family of the Roman Republic. According to tradition, the armourer Mamurius Veturius lived in the time of Numa Pompilius, and made the sacred ancilia. The Veturii occur regularly in ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Veturius Calvinus, Titus
4th-century BC Roman consuls
Calvinus, Titus