Regarding Marcus Atilius Regulus

[SigniferOne]

Your suspicions are well founded.The 'legend' of Regulus' heroism is just that.

The truth is that we really don't know what happened either way. It would be as unlikely to assume a non-event. Polybius doesn't state it, but he doesn't state a lot of things, and his book is pocked with very large lacunae, even in the first 6 books which survived more than the others. If Horace stated it that means the story had currency at least by 1st century BC.

Also if memory serves me correctly, there was a play written about Regulus either by Accius or Pacuvius. Now what "material" do you think they would've had to work with? One doesn't pick a pedestrian person and write a play about him.

and it has been suggested that the story was a family cover-up to exonerate Regulus' widow, who on hearing of her husband's death, and believing it to be from neglect, apparently had two Carthaginian prisoners in the custody of the family tortured to death in revenge ( c.f. Diodorus XXIII.16 for a story of Regulus tortured and killed;XXIV.12 for the widow's revenge)

If we're not trusting Diodorus about Regulus, why are we trusting him him about Regulus' wife?

Some Greeks had been eager at accusing Romans of every infamy and barbarism (exactly which it was that prompted Dionysius to write his reply).