01-21-2009, 12:46 AM
Regarding 'historians' mentioning Regulus, the entire narrative does seem to have been in Livy as well...
The Periochae for Book 18 notes:
"In Africa, [Marcus] Atilius Regulus killed a serpent of portentous dimensions, and suffered great losses among his soldiers. But although he had fought successfully against the Carthaginians in several battles, the Senate did not send him a successor. He complained in a letter to the Senate, in which he compared his request to a piece of land that had been left by its workers. In the person of Regulus, Fortuna wanted to to give an example of both sides of fate: he was defeated and captured by Xanthippus, a Spartan leader that had been invited by the Carthaginians to support them. After this, the Roman commanders pursued the war successfully on land and sea, although the effects were spoiled by shipwreck of the fleet.
Tiberius Coruncanius was the first plebeian to be made pontifex maximus.
The censors Manius Valerius Maximus and Publius Sempronius Sophus edited the list of senators, and removed sixteen members from the Senate. The lustrum ceremony was performed and 297,797 citizens were registered.
The Carthaginians sent Regulus to the Senate to conduct peace negotiations or (if he could not obtain peace) the exchange of prisoners. Although he was bound by an oath to return to Carthage if he did not obtain the exchange, he advised the Senate against both proposals. When he returned to imprisonment, he was executed by the Carthaginians."
And while the Periochae are clearly not the same as having Livy's actual text, they do follow the surviving books reasonably closely suggesting that Livy did in fact spend an entire book almost exclusively on the Regulus narrative. Again Livy is a relatively late source (200 years after the fact) but the length and depth of the narrative does suggest a very strong tradition for the Regulus narrative in the later Latin annalists, and clearly by the 1st century BC. Not conclusive proof of Regulus' return after capture etc... but pretty solid evidence!
As for it's absence in Polybius, while this might indicate the story was relatively late in origin (more than one scholar has suggested this), it might also simply be the result of Polybius' purpose in writing. He was not writing a universal history of Rome but a treatise on the rise of Rome, and as such he doesn't mention a lot of things!
The Periochae for Book 18 notes:
"In Africa, [Marcus] Atilius Regulus killed a serpent of portentous dimensions, and suffered great losses among his soldiers. But although he had fought successfully against the Carthaginians in several battles, the Senate did not send him a successor. He complained in a letter to the Senate, in which he compared his request to a piece of land that had been left by its workers. In the person of Regulus, Fortuna wanted to to give an example of both sides of fate: he was defeated and captured by Xanthippus, a Spartan leader that had been invited by the Carthaginians to support them. After this, the Roman commanders pursued the war successfully on land and sea, although the effects were spoiled by shipwreck of the fleet.
Tiberius Coruncanius was the first plebeian to be made pontifex maximus.
The censors Manius Valerius Maximus and Publius Sempronius Sophus edited the list of senators, and removed sixteen members from the Senate. The lustrum ceremony was performed and 297,797 citizens were registered.
The Carthaginians sent Regulus to the Senate to conduct peace negotiations or (if he could not obtain peace) the exchange of prisoners. Although he was bound by an oath to return to Carthage if he did not obtain the exchange, he advised the Senate against both proposals. When he returned to imprisonment, he was executed by the Carthaginians."
And while the Periochae are clearly not the same as having Livy's actual text, they do follow the surviving books reasonably closely suggesting that Livy did in fact spend an entire book almost exclusively on the Regulus narrative. Again Livy is a relatively late source (200 years after the fact) but the length and depth of the narrative does suggest a very strong tradition for the Regulus narrative in the later Latin annalists, and clearly by the 1st century BC. Not conclusive proof of Regulus' return after capture etc... but pretty solid evidence!
As for it's absence in Polybius, while this might indicate the story was relatively late in origin (more than one scholar has suggested this), it might also simply be the result of Polybius' purpose in writing. He was not writing a universal history of Rome but a treatise on the rise of Rome, and as such he doesn't mention a lot of things!
