Marcus Atilius Regulus (consul 267 BC)

{{anchor|Biography|History}}

Regulus was first consul in 267 BC. He campaigned with his co-consul (Lucius Julius Libo) against the Sallentini, captured Brundisium, and thence celebrated a double triumph.{{sfn|Broughton|1951|p=200}} During the First Punic War, he was elected suffect consul in 256 BC, in place of Quintus Caedicius, who had died in office.{{sfn|Broughton|1951|p=208}} With his colleague, Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus, he fought and defeated a large Carthaginian fleet off the coast of Sicily – the Battle of Cape Ecnomus – and the two then invaded North Africa, landing at Aspis on the eastern side of the Cape Bon peninsula.{{sfn|Scullard|1989|pp=554–55}}

After the Siege of Aspis, the consuls ravaged the countryside and seized some twenty thousand war captives.{{sfn|Scullard|1989|p=555}} Manlius was recalled to Rome and celebrated a naval triumph, while Regulus captured Tunis and entered negotiations with Carthage.{{sfn|Broughton|1951|pp=208–9}} While crossing the river Bagradas, his forces supposedly fought an enormous serpent.{{harvnb|Klebs|1896|loc=col. 2087|ps=, citing, Val. Max. 1.8ext.19; Plin. HN 8.37; Zon. 8.13.}} During the siege of Adys, some 24 kilometres south of Carthage, the Carthaginians attacked over unfavourable hilly ground, triggering the Battle of Adys, which the Romans won.{{sfn|Scullard|1989|p=555}} Wintering in Tunis, Regulus engaged in negotiations with the Carthaginians but offered very harsh terms that were rejected; Scullard, in the Cambridge Ancient History, rejects the claims given in Dio that Regulus' terms were so harsh as to "amount to a complete surrender" as "scarcely reliable". Scullard believes that it is more likely that the Romans would have required Carthage to vacate Sicily; the Carthaginians, unwilling to leave the western half of the island, would have refused such a demand.{{sfn|Scullard|1989|p=556}}

His command was prorogued into 255 BC. That spring, the Carthaginians, buttressed by the arrival of Spartan mercenaries under Xanthippus and bristling against Regulus' proposals of harsh terms, fought Regulus at the Battle of the Bagradas River.{{Sfnm|Scullard|1989|1p=556|Broughton|1951|2pp=209–10}} On a plain, which gave the Carthaginians space to utilise their war elephants and cavalry, Regulus was defeated and captured; only some two thousand Romans escaped the battle and were picked up by the Roman navy before being wrecked by a storm.{{sfn|Scullard|1989|pp=556–57}} Regulus died of neglect or starvation in captivity, though his fate "was soon embellished by legend".{{sfnm|Drummond|2012|Scullard|1989|2p=556}}

File:Benjamin West (1738-1820) - The Departure of Regulus - RCIN 405416 - Royal Collection.jpg by Benjamin West, 1769.]]

According to legend, the Carthaginians sent him back to Rome, under oath to return. He was to negotiate for a prisoner exchange or peace terms, but he opposed any such exchange or terms, so he returned to the Carthaginians to be tortured to death. This legend is, however, "almost certainly invented, perhaps to palliate his son's torturing of two Carthaginian prisoners in revenge for his death".{{sfnm|Drummond|2012}}{{harvnb|Scullard|1989|p=556|ps=. "The legend may have been designed to obscure the fact that his widow tortured two Punic prisoners entrusted to her in Rome".}} No evidence of the legend appears in the best source on the period, Polybius.{{harvnb|Drummond|2012}}, adding, on the possibility of the legend's appearance in Gnaeus Naevius's Bellum Punicum, that such an appearance is unproven.See also {{Cite journal |last=Bleckmann |first=Bruno |date=1 June 1998 |title=Regulus bei Naevius: Zu frg. 50 und 51 Blänsdorf |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1524/phil.1998.142.1.61/html |journal=Philologus |language=de |volume=142 |issue=1 |pages=61–70 |doi=10.1524/phil.1998.142.1.61 |s2cid=164730948 |issn=2196-7008}}

The first evidence of the legend emerges with fragments of Gaius Sempronius Tuditanus's history in 129 BC; in this account, the Carthaginians have him starved to death.{{Sfn|Frank|1926|p=311}} The legend also appears in Cicero's De Officiis 3.99-115, where it is used as an exemplum of honour before practicality. According to Augustine of Hippo in City of God (5th century AD), using similar wording as Cicero in Pisonem, the Carthaginians "shut [Regulus] up in a narrow box, in which he was compelled to stand, and in which finely sharpened nails were fixed all round about him, so that he could not lean upon any part of it without intense pain".{{Cite book |author=Augustine of Hippo |author-link=Augustine of Hippo |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NoEPAQAAIAAJ |title=City of God |date=1871 |translator-last=Dods |translator-first=Marcus |location=Edinburgh |publisher=T. & T. Clark |pages=23}} See note 1 thereat: "Augustine here uses the words of Cicero ('vigilando peremerunt'), who refers to Regulus, in Pisonem, c. 19".

The myth of Regulus' capture and patriotic defiance later became a favourite tale for Roman children and patriotic story-tellers, developed and polished through the years by Roman historiographers and orators.{{Sfnm|Frank|1926|1p=311|Klebs|1896|2loc=col. 2092}}

The Atilii Reguli were a plebeian family. This Regulus was the brother of the Gaius Atilius Regulus who was consul in 257 and 250 BC.{{harvnb|Scullard|1989|p=554|ps=, noting, "M. Atilius Regulus (probably a brother of the consul of 257)".}} With a wife named Marcia, he had at least one son, also named Marcus, who later became consul in 227 and 217 BC before also being elected censor in 214 BC. Klaus Zmeskal, in Adfinitas, includes no linkage between this Regulus and the homonymous consul of 294 BC.{{sfn|Zmeskal|2009|p=39}}

• Cato the Elder
• Cincinnatus
• Horatii
• Publius Decius Mus

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• {{cite book |last=Broughton |first=Thomas Robert Shannon |year=1951 |title=The magistrates of the Roman republic |location=New York |publisher=American Philological Association |author-link=Thomas Robert Shannon Broughton |volume=1}}
• {{Cite book |last=Drummond |first=Andrew |chapter=Atilius Regulus, Marcus |title=The Oxford classical dictionary |year=2012 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bVWcAQAAQBAJ |editor-last1=Hornblower |editor-first1=Simon |display-editors=etal |isbn=978-0-19-954556-8 |edition=4th |oclc=959667246 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199381135.013.930 }}
• {{Cite journal |last=Frank |first=Tenney |date=1926 |title=Two Historical Themes in Roman Literature |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/263676 |journal=Classical Philology |volume=21 |issue=4 |pages=311–316 |doi=10.1086/360824 |jstor=263676 |s2cid=161639862 |issn=0009-837X}} Cited by {{harvnb|Broughton|1951|p=210}}.
• {{cite wikisource |last=Klebs |first=Elimar |wslink=RE:Atilius 51 |title=Atilius 51 |encyclopedia=Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft |year=1896 |volume=II,2 |publisher=Butcher |location=Stuttgart |wslanguage=de |at=cols. 2086–92 }}
• {{Cite book |last=Lazenby |first=JF |title=The First Punic War: a military history |date=1996 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=0-8047-2673-6 |oclc=34371250 }}
• {{Cite book |last=Scullard |first=HH |chapter=Carthage and Rome |title=The rise of Rome to 220 BC |series=Cambridge Ancient History |volume=7 Pt. 2 |edition=2nd |date=1989 |editor-first1=FW |editor-last1=Walbank |display-editors=etal |isbn=0-521-23446-8 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=486–572 }}
• {{cite book |last=Zmeskal |first=Klaus |title=Adfinitas |volume=1 |year=2009 |location=Passau |publisher=Verlag Karl Stutz |isbn=978-3-88849-304-1 |language=de }}

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{{EB1911|wstitle=Regulus, Marcus Atilius|volume=23|page=48}}

• {{DPRR |id=703 |name=M. Atilius (51) M. f. L. n. Pup.? Regulus}}

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{{s-bef|before=Publius Sempronius Sophus|before2=Appius Claudius Russus}}

{{s-ttl|title=Roman consul|years=267 BC
with Lucius Julius Libo}}

{{s-aft|after=Decimus Junius Pera|after2=Numerius Fabius Pictor}}

{{s-bef|before=Quintus Caedicius}}

{{s-ttl|title=Roman consul|years=256 BC (suffect)
with Lucius Manlius Vulso Longus}}

{{s-aft|after=Servius Fulvius Paetinus Nobilior|after2=Marcus Aemilius Paullus}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Atilius Regulus, Marcus consul 487 AUC}}

Category:4th-century BC births

Category:250 BC deaths

Category:3rd-century BC Roman consuls

Regulus, Marcus consul 487 AUC

Category:Characters in Book VI of the Aeneid

Category:Roman Republican admirals

Category:Roman commanders of the First Punic War

Category:Year of birth uncertain