[QUINTUS]: Senator Braden, your impatience to get at our enemy and your desire to see our borders expand is admirable. But while wrestling in your youth, did not your learn to use your enemy's strength against him?

Yes, Pyrrhus will quickly overrun Corfinium and Paestum. But in so doing he will take losses - the term Pyrrhic victory has not been coined for nothing. More importantly, he will surely divide his army in order to take both prizes. And when he marches on us, as again I agree he will quickly do, he will further deplete his armies due to the requirement to garrison his new conquests. Why, he may even tarry awhile in one of them himself, leaving inexperienced captains to lead the invasion of our lands. His probes will reach Capua, but its walls will hold them for a season. Ancona is further away from him and so we will have sufficient notice if he marches on it. The full Consular army and the Praetorian army I propose to bring against him are protection enough for Latium - you need not be unduly alarmed.

Your valour and concern is admirable, but I urge you - we must not strike hastily. To march south now will compell Pyrrhus to keep his army concentrated and perhaps even reinforce it so that it rivals a Consular army in size. Attacking his army while it is concentrated will cost us dear, though I am sure we will nonetheless prevail. My Fabian strategy of delay and counter-strike will cost us less in Roman blood.

And one final point, good Senator: regrettably some settlements can never be made properly defensible by walls. It is not a function of the size or resources of the settlement, but simple geography. If you consult the Senate library, information has been submitted by our scribes that implies that no settlement currently without defensible walls will ever be capable of building them. Hence, your haste to move before defences are constructed is without foundation.