the
Romans to contend only with men, but with monsters also; for a serpent
of vast size, born, as it were, to avenge Africa, harassed their camp on
the Bagrada. But Regulus, who overcame all obstacles, having spread the
terror of his name far and wide, having killed or taken prisoners a
great number of the enemy's force, and their captains themselves, and
having despatched his fleet, laden with much spoil and stored with
materials for a triumph, to Rome, proceeded to besiege Carthage itself,
the origin of the war, and took his position close to the gates of it.
Here fortune was a little changed; but it was only that more proofs of
Roman fortitude might be given, the greatness of which was generally
best shown in calamities. For the enemy applying for foreign assistance,
and Lacedaemon having sent them Xanthippus as a general, we were
defeated by a captain so eminently skilled in military affairs. It was
then that by an ignominious defeat, such as the Romans had never before
experienced, their most valiant commander fell alive into the enemy's
hands. But he was a man able to endure so great a calamity; as he was
neither humbled by his imprisonment at Carthage nor by the deputation
which he headed to Rome; for he advised what was contrary to the
injunctions of the enemy, and recommended that no peace should be made,
and no exchange of prisoners admitted. Even by his voluntary return to
his enemies, and by his last sufferings, whether in prison or on the
cross, the dignity of the man was not at all obscured. But being
rendered, by all these occurrences, even more worthy of admiration, what
can be said of him but that, when conquered, he was superior to his
conquerors, and that, though Carthage had not submitted, he triumphed
over Fortune herself?

The Roman people were now much keener and more ardent to revenge the
fate of Regulus than to obtain victory. Under the consul Metellus,
therefore, when the Carthaginians were growing insolent, and when the
war had returned into Sicily, they gave the enemy such a defeat at
Panormus that they thought no more of that island. A proof of the
greatness of this victory was the capture of about a hundred elephants,
a vast prey, even if they had taken that number, not in war, but in
hunting.[56] Under the consulship of Appius Claudius, they were
overcome, not by the enemy, but by the gods themselves, whose auspices
they had despised, their fleet being sunk in that very place where the
c