Twice ToldOrosius, Histories against the Pagans 4.8.10 to 15: Regulus and the serpent
- Language
- Latin
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
Sections 10 to 15 of chapter 8, as numbered in the margin of Zangemeister’s Teubner text (pp. 113 to 114). Section 16, which follows, goes back to Regulus’s campaign. The edition prints a long dash on each side of “quod fuisse … ferunt” in section 15; it is set here as a spaced hyphen. The 1889 Teubner has no apparatus; the Latin is the same as the Latin Library’s text except for a comma after “alternis” in section 13.
10 Regulus, bellum Carthaginiense sortitus, iter cum exercitu faciens haud procul a flumine Bagrada castra constituit: ubi cum plurimos militum aquandi necessitate ad flumen descendentes serpens mirae magnitudinis deuoraret, Regulus ad expugnandam bestiam cum exercitu profectus est. 11 sed nihil in tergo eius proficientibus iaculis atque omni telorum ictu inrito, quae per horrendam squamarum cratem quasi per obliquam scutorum testudinem labebantur mirumque in modum, ne corpus laederent, ipso corpore pellebantur, cum insuper magnam multitudinem morsu conminui, impetu proteri, halitu etiam pestifero exanimari uideret, ballistas deferri imperauit, per quas murale saxum spinae eius incussum conpagem totius corporis soluit. 12 talis siquidem est natura serpentis, ut, cum pedibus carere uideatur, costis tamen et squamis, quas a summo gutture usque ad imam aluum parili modo dispositas habet, ita instruitur, ut squamis quasi unguibus, costis quasi cruribus innitatur. 13 non enim ut uermis, cui spinae rigor non est, et in directum corpusculi sui partes gradatim porrigendo contractas, contrahendo porrectas motum explicat, sed alternis, intenta conatibus latera sinuosa circumfert, ut per exteriorem spinae curuaturam rigentem costarum aciem tendat, costis autem natura ad summum rectis squamarum ungulas figat; quod uicissim et celeriter agendo non solum plana perlabitur, sed etiam conuexa conscendit, tot uestigiis instructa quot costis. 14 huius itaque rei causa est, ut, si in qualibet corporis parte ab aluo usque ad caput ictu aliquo conlidatur, debilis reddita cursum habere non possit; quia ubicumque ille ictus inciderit spinam soluit, per quam costarum pedes et motus corporis agebantur. unde etiam haec serpens, quae tamdiu tot iaculis inuulnerabilis obstitit, ad unius saxi ictum debilis cessit ac mox circumuenta telis facile oppressa est. 15 corium autem eius Romam deuectum - quod fuisse centum uiginti pedum spatio ferunt - aliquamdiu cunctis miraculo fuit.
Translation
10 Regulus, who had drawn the war with Carthage by lot, made camp on the march with his army not far from the river Bagrada. A serpent of marvellous size devoured a great many soldiers as they went down to the river to fetch water, and Regulus set out with his army to destroy the beast.
11 But javelins did nothing against its back, and every throw of a missile was wasted: they slid off its horrible lattice of scales as off a slanting roof of shields, and by some wonder were driven back by its body itself, so as not to harm it. When Regulus saw, besides, that it was mangling a great many with its bites, trampling them as it charged, and killing them even with its poisonous breath, he ordered ballistae brought up. A wall-stone hurled from them struck its spine and broke the framework of its whole body.
12 For such is the nature of a serpent that, although it seems to have no feet, it is built with ribs and scales laid out in equal rows from the top of the throat to the bottom of the belly, so that it rests on the scales as if on claws and on the ribs as if on legs.
13 It does not move as a worm does, which has no stiffness in its back and moves by stretching its small body forward a little at a time, drawing in what was stretched and stretching what was drawn in. Instead, straining in alternate efforts, it swings its curving sides, so that along the outer curve of its spine it stretches the rigid row of its ribs, and with its ribs naturally straightened to their fullest extent it plants the claws of its scales. By doing this in turn and quickly it glides over level ground and climbs slopes too, having as many footholds as it has ribs.
14 For this reason, if it is struck anywhere on its body between the belly and the head, it is crippled and cannot move, because wherever the blow falls it breaks the spine, through which the feet of the ribs and the movement of the body were driven. So this serpent, which had stood so long unharmed against so many javelins, gave way crippled at the blow of one stone, and soon, surrounded by missiles, was easily overcome.
15 Its skin was carried to Rome, and they say it measured a hundred and twenty feet; for some time it was a marvel to everyone.
Notes
Orosius wrote his Histories about AD 417 (Stothers 2004, p. 223). Stothers and Fowler both take the passage to come from Livy’s lost Book 18, and Fowler uses it to see “what Livy really wrote”. Gsell notes that Zonaras and Orosius put Regulus’s arrival at the Bagrada before his victory at Adys, which does not fit the order Polybius gives (vol. 3, p. 82, n. 2).
Only Orosius has the one stone from a wall that breaks the spine; the authors who describe the killing otherwise give repeated blows (Stothers p. 224). Sections 12 to 14 explain why a blow to the spine disables a snake. Stothers suggests that “the feet of the ribs” in section 14 may be where a rib count of 120 turned into a length of 120 feet (p. 226); the Latin says plainly that the skin “they say” measured a hundred and twenty “pedes”.
“Ferunt” (“they say”) in section 15 is the only place in the passage where Orosius marks the length as hearsay.