Marcus Atilius Regulus: born before 307 BC, died in 250 BC in Carthage

A Roman Consul, who defeated the Carthaginians, in a great naval battle of Sicily, and reduced that people to a state great distress. He was afterwards taken prisoner by them; said because he would not promote their view: in obtaining an advantageous peace, be was put to death with great torture, in the year 503 of the city, and 251 years of the Christ.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

During the time of Regulus, the power of Rome in Italy was considered irresistible; and she was successfully struggling with Carthage, for the dominion of the Mediterranean sea and its islands.

No event of importance has been recorded concerning him, anterior to the year of the city, 486, when he was elected consul; and when, in conjunction with his colleague, Julius Libo, he had the honour of a triumph, for a victory obtained over the Salentines, a people who inhabited the southern coast of Calabria.

Eleven years afterwards he was again made consul, and, with Lucius Manlius, commanded three hundred and thirty sail of vessels, and one hundred and forty thousand men, against the Carthaginians. The latter, with three hundred and forty ships, engaged them off the coast of Sicily, but were defeated wit a loss of sixty-four galleys taken, and more than thirty sunk.

After this, Regulus and Manlius proceeded to the coast of Africa, where they took possession of the town of Clupea, intending, from its strength and from its vicinity to the sea-coast, to make it their magazine of arms and provisions. At this place they received orders from the senate, that the sole command of the army should be given to Regulus, and that Manlius should return to Rome. These orders further directed, that Regulus, under the title of pro-consul, should continue the was after the expiration of his consulsbip, and that he should re serve such a number of troops and vessels, to aid his operations, as he might think requisite.

He gained over the Carthaginian army an important victory. This was followed by the surrender of two hundred towns, and opened for him an almost uninterrupted line of march, nearly to the Carthaginian capital. He advanced near to the city of Tunis, but fifteen miles distant from Carthage.

In the midst of his successes, and when he believed that be had rendered the course clear for any other general to prosecute and terminate the war, he petitioned the senate for leave to return to Rome, stating, as a reason for his request, that, during his absence, his private property, which consisted but of fourteen acres of land, and from which his family derived their subsistence, lay neglected and uncultivated. This was a small possession to satisfy the wants of a Roman consul; and he had been informed that, even from this, his servants had carried off part of the stock, and that his wife and children, who had no other means of support, were thus reduced to a state of indigence. the only reply which could honourably have been made: they assured him, if he would continue his labours for the public, that his family should be supported, and his little field cultivated at the public expense.

The Carthaginians were now reduced to a most deplorable condition. For, besides their two recent defeats, both of which had been occasioned, not so much by any defect of courage in the troops, as by the unskilful conduct of their generals, the Numidi ans had sent detachments into the Carthaginian territory, that had laid waste the whole country through which they passed. The terrified people left their habitations in the country, and fled to Carthage. Here, the immense increase of numbers soon occasioned a famine, the horrors of which were increased by, an hourly expectation that the place would be besieged by the Romans.

In passing a river on his advance towards Carthage, the Roman historians assert that the arm of Regulus encountered a serpent of such tremendous size, that they were unable to kill it, until they brought against it their great military implements. After it was killed, its skin, which is said to have measured a hundred and twenty feet in length, was sent to Rome. This fact seems scarcely credible; but when we know that authentic accounts have recently been transmitted from Asia and South America, of serpents sufficiently large to destroy and swallow oxen and deer, we must not wholly refuse our faith to the story of the serpent, destroyed by the army of Regulus.

With regard to Carthage we must remark, that it would have been happy for himself, and for many thousands of his fellow-creatures, if Regulus had observed, in the cause of Rome, the same moderation which he exhibited in his own private concerns. But, with grief, it must be related that, when Carthage lay at his feet, supplicating for peace, he refused to grant it, except on the most oppressive terms. He indeed admitted the Carthaginian chiefs to a conference; but he seemed to think that he had only to demand, for them to cede. The Carthaginians, perceiving that even if they should be wholly subdued and reduced beneath the Roman yoke, no conditions more unfavourable could be imposed upon them, rejected the terms.

We know not to what cause we can attribute this conduct of Regulus. whether to orders which he received from his government, or to the erroneous principles of patriotism under which he acted. It was, however, soon made evident, how little dependence can be placed in human success or human foresight. The arrival of one man at Carthage, and he of no considerable rank or celebrity, changed the whole current of events. The Roman pride and power were laid in the dust, by the talents of a single Spartan officer, and this even at a time when Sparta was itself in a very humbled state.

The Carthaginians, after the landing of the Romans in Africa, had sent for assistance into Greece; and they received thence a supply of troops, but chiefly a Spartan officer, named Xantippus. On enquiring into all the circumstances connected with their defeat, Xantippus soon ascertained that the Carthaginians had been indebted, for all their losses, not to any peculiar bravery or talent on the part of the Romans, but to a lamentable want of skill in their own commanders. So perfectly satisfied were the Carthaginian magistrates with the account which he gave, that they committed the whole direction of their army to him; and he trained it with so much skill, and with so strict an attention to discipline, that, in a subsequent battle, the Romans were totally defeated, and Regulus himself was made prisoner.

Regulus now severely suffered for the hard terms which he had endeavoured to impose upon his enemy. Notwithstanding his high rank, notwithstanding any dread which the Carthaginians had of retaliation, they treated this once - victorious Roman with a degree of savage and wanton barbarity, which has not often been exceeded.

There is no part of history more deserving of attention, or which affords more instruction, than the reverses sometimes experienced by great men; and the observations of Polybius on this part of the Roman history, would have been creditable even to a Christian writer . How wide a field for reflection ( says he ) ! Does this event open to us, and what an admirable lesson does it convey to us, for the conduct of human life ! From the fate of Regulus, we discern how little confidence ought to be placed in Fortune, even when she seems to flatter us with the fairest hopes. For he, who, but a few days before, had, without remorse, beheld the Carthaginians reduced to the lowest state of wretchedness, was now himself led captive by them was compelled to implore mercy from those very enemies to whom he had show sed none. In this event we may also remark, ( he says,) the truth of a maxim of Euripides, that one wise counsellor is better than the strength of numbers. For here, by the wisdom of one man, legions were defeated which had been considered invincible; new life was infused into a people, whose losses had rendered them almost insensible even of misery; and their tottering state was saved from ruin. The historian instructs his readers how to derive advantage from examples like this; which, without exposing us to the experience of suffering, instruct us how to form our actions upon the truest models, and to direct our judgment aright in the various occurrences of life.

The Carthaginians obtained some further successes against the Romans, and particularly over their naval forces. These reverses induced them to imagine that they should soon prove superior to them, both by land and by sea. Information of their disasters having been sent to Rome, the consuls set sail for Africa, with a new fleet of three hundred and fifty galleys. On their arrival off that coast, they obotained two great victories, one by sea, and the other by land. The latter was near Clupea, which the Carthaginians had been anxious to recover from the Romans, but by which they had lost no fewer than one hundred and twenty elephants, the chief strength of their land forces. Now, in their turn, again humbled by adversity, they began to use their prisoner with more lenity, hoping now to obtain, through his mediation, a peace which would relieve them from their misfortunes and liberate him from a prison. At their solicitation he was sent to Rome, with the Carthaginian ambassadors, to negotiate a peace, having, previously to his departure, taken an oath to return to his prison, if the negotiation proved unsuccessful.

In entrusting Regulus with this commission, they were totally ignorant of the character of the man, through whom they vainly expected to reap advantage. They imagined that the terrors of a prison would operate upon his mind, and induce him to obtain for them terms more advantageous than they could have obtained through the mediation of any other person. But the mind of Regulus was not to be biassed by his personal feelings or interest. When he arrived at the gates of Rome, he, for some time, refused to enter the city, as he said he was but a slave to the Carthaginians. The senators, when they were assembled to give audience to the Carthaginian ambassadors, requested him to take his seat among them; but he refused to do this, till he was commanded by them to do so. When he was called upon by the senate, to give his opinion respecting the terms that should be granted to the enemy, he strongly urged them not to grant any, but such as would have led to the entire destruction of the Carthaginian government. To the utmost of his power, both publicly and privately, he supported what he imagined to be the interests of his country, wholly inattentive to his personal danger; and he obeyed, even to death, what he considered to be the strictest laws of honour and of justice.

Though they were induced to act, with regard to the negotiation, according to his suggestions, the senators were unwilling to send back to his dungeon so noble - minded a citizen; and a subterfuge was suggested to him, by which he might be released from his oath; but he instantly rejected it as base, and unworthy both of them and of himself, and declared his resolution to return to Carthage, to suffer the punishments which he knew awaited him there. Voluntarily did he resign himself into the hands of his enemies, taking leave of his friends and his country for ever.

When the Carthaginians were informed that their offers of peace had been rejected, and chiefly through the means of Regulus, it is said that they resolved to punish him with hitherto - unheard - of torments. The accounts that have been given of his death are so horrible, that some writers have been led to doubt whether be did not die in prison, and that the Romans invented the particulars of his tortures, for the purpose of heaping disgrace upon the Carthaginians. It is asserted that he was confined in a deep and dark dungeon, and, his eyelids being cut off, that he was suddenly brought into the glare of the midday sun, and compelled to fix his eyes upon that luminary : that, afterwards, he was enclosed in a large kind of barrel, the sides of which were every where lined with iron spikes, and there confined till he died, in the most excruciating agony. The historians state, that, when the Roman senate were informed of his sufferings, they decreed that Marcia, his widow, should be permitted to inflict whatever punishment she thought proper, on some of the most illustrious of the Carthaginians, who were at that time prisoners in Rome; and she is said to have taken so severe a revenge, that the senate were, at last, obliged to interpose, and put a stop to the barbarity of her panishments.

Authorities- Polybius, Appian and Aulus Gellius.