Twice ToldAulus Gellius, Attic Nights 7.3: Tubero on the serpent of the Bagrada
- Language
- Latin
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
The chapter is one sentence under a heading, as printed on p. 286 of Hosius’s edition. The edition marks the fragment (“fr. 8 P.”, Peter’s numbering of Tubero) after “historiis”; that reference is not part of the text and is left out here. Gellius quotes no wording from Tubero here; he reports what Tubero “left written” in his histories. In the apparatus Hosius notes that “missum esse” is Lion’s conjecture and that perhaps “cos.” (consul) dropped out before “corium”; the text printed is “misisse”, as below.
Historia sumpta ex libris Tuberonis de serpente invisitatae longitudinis.
Tubero in historiis scriptum reliquit bello primo Poenico Atilium Regulum consulem in Africa castris apud Bagradam flumen positis proelium grande atque acre fecisse adversus unum serpentem in illis locis stabulantem invisitatae inmanitatis eumque magna totius exercitus conflictione balistis atque catapultis diu oppugnatum, eiusque interfecti corium longum pedes centum et viginti Romam misisse.
Translation
A story taken from the books of Tubero, about a serpent of extraordinary length.
Tubero left written in his histories that in the First Punic War the consul Atilius Regulus, with his camp pitched in Africa by the river Bagrada, fought a great and bitter battle against a single serpent that had its lair in that country, of extraordinary, monstrous size; that the whole army struggled hard against it, and it was attacked for a long time with ballistae and catapults; and that after it was killed he sent its skin, a hundred and twenty feet long, to Rome.
Notes
Gellius is the only surviving source that names Tubero for the serpent. Gsell identifies him as Q. Aelius Tubero, a contemporary of Caesar (vol. 3, p. 83, n. 1); the passage itself says only “Tubero”. The next chapter (7.4) takes Tubero’s account of Regulus’s torture at Carthage from the same histories.
The 120 feet belong to the skin, not to the animal: “corium longum pedes centum et viginti”. The text names no temple, no jaws, no victims among the soldiers and no poison. The Bostock and Riley note on Pliny cites this chapter as “Gellius, B. vi. c. 3”, a different book numbering; the Latin Library and LacusCurtius number it VII.3.