Twice Told
Tale
Type
Beasts
Period
256 or 255 BC

The serpent of the Bagradas: Regulus's monster without a witness

Pliny says a 120-foot serpent held off Regulus's army and that its skin hung in a Roman temple. Polybius, who tells the same campaign, never mentions it.

Contents
  1. A war narrative without a monster
  2. Two lost histories
  3. Pliny’s sentence
  4. Details that move
  5. Whether anyone saw the skin
  6. What the beast was supposed to be
  7. What we could not verify
  8. Sources

Published 23 Oct 2026. Sources checked 18 Oct 2026.

Pliny the Elder calls it well known that a Roman army under Regulus took a serpent a hundred and twenty feet long at the river Bagrada in Africa, attacking it with ballistae as if it were a town, and that its skin and jaws stayed in a temple at Rome until the Numantine War.7 Polybius tells the same campaign at length and has no serpent in it.2 None of the texts we read says its writer saw the skin.

The fullest telling is Orosius’s, written about AD 417.89 The writers who tell the story mention two authorities, Tubero and Livy, and Livy’s Book 18, where it would stand, is lost.110

Orosius tells it this way in his Histories.8

Regulus, who had drawn the war with Carthage by lot, was marching with his army when he made camp not far from the river Bagrada. A serpent of marvellous size lived there, and it devoured a great many soldiers as they went down to the river for water.8

Regulus led the army out against it. Javelins and darts did nothing: they slid off the lattice of its scales as off a slanting roof of shields. The serpent mangled men with its bites, trampled them in its charge, and killed even with its poisonous breath, until Regulus ordered ballistae brought up.8

A wall-stone hurled from a ballista struck its spine and broke the frame of its body. Soon, surrounded by missiles, the serpent was easily destroyed.8

Its skin was carried to Rome. They say it measured a hundred and twenty feet, and for some time everyone marvelled at it.8

Engraving of horsemen and archers shooting arrows at a coiled serpent with a long scaly body, a crowd of foot soldiers and two wheeled engines behind them

The Roman consul Attilius Regulus fighting a giant African serpent, plate 25 of the Venationes Ferarum series, engraving by Karel van Mallery after Jan van der Straet (Stradanus), published by Philips Galle, 1596 or after. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 1952-37-15, CC0.

A war narrative without a monster

Polybius tells Regulus’s campaign in Book 1 of his Histories: the landing at Aspis, the battle at Adys, the capture of Tunis, the peace talks and the arrival of Xanthippus.2 We searched the whole of Book 1 for “serpent” and “snake” and found neither.2 Diodorus’s fragments on Regulus in Africa and Eutropius’s summary of the war have no serpent either.11

Stothers calls Polybius, who wrote about 150 BC, our main authority for the war.29 That is roughly a century after the landing, which Stothers dates to 256 BC (our arithmetic).12 Stothers adds that Polybius never says the army camped on the Bagradas, and that he blamed other historians for reporting sensational incidents merely to entertain.2 Gsell says Polybius left this marvellous story aside.2

Why he left it aside is not in his text. Either he knew the story and rejected it, or it was not yet told; nothing we read settles which. The order of events also differs: Orosius and Zonaras put the arrival at the Bagrada before the fight at Adys, and Gsell wonders whether the sequence was reversed in them.13

Two lost histories

Stothers notes that none of the many writers who mention the incident lived before the first century AD, and that they cite as their authorities only Tubero and Livy.1 Gsell identifies the first as Q. Aelius Tubero, a contemporary of Caesar.1

Tubero’s version reaches us through Aulus Gellius, who wrote this sentence about it:14

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.14

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.

Our translation

Gellius reports one serpent, one long assault and one skin sent to Rome. His sentence has no dead soldiers, no poison, no jaws and no temple.14

Livy’s account stood in Book 18 of his history, which is lost.10 His summary says that Regulus “killed a serpent of portentous size with great loss of soldiers”.10 Valerius Maximus, who says he is repeating Livy, tells it at more length: the serpent kept the army from the river, seized many soldiers in its jaws and crushed others in its tail coils, and thrown weapons could not pierce it.15 Ballistae and blows from flint stones finally brought it down, and its blood and breath fouled the district so that the Roman camp had to move.15

Fowler and Stothers both take Orosius’s account to come from Livy’s lost Book 18.16

Pliny’s sentence

nota est in Punicis bellis ad flumen Bagradam a Regulo imperatore ballistis tormentisque, ut oppidum aliquod, expugnata serpens CXX pedum longitudinis; pellis eius maxillaeque usque ad bellum Numantinum duravere Romae in templo.7

Well known is the serpent of a hundred and twenty feet that, in the Punic wars at the river Bagrada, was stormed by the general Regulus with ballistae and siege engines, as if it were a town. Its skin and jaws lasted at Rome, in a temple, until the Numantine war.

Our translation

Pliny names no source for it.7 His verb for the attack is the one used for storming a town, which the Bostock and Riley translation softens to “taken … being besieged, like a fortress”.17 He sets the story beside the boa, which he says grows so large in Italy that a whole child was found in one killed on the Vatican hill under Claudius.18

Pliny gives the 120 feet as the length of the animal. Gellius, Valerius and Orosius give it as the length of the skin.4 The verb for the skin and jaws is in the past tense. They lasted until the Numantine War, which ended in 133 BC, and Stothers dates Pliny’s book to AD 77, so the relics were gone about two centuries before he wrote (our arithmetic).7199 He does not say which temple.6

Details that move

Almost every writer who gives a size says 120 feet.3 Silius Italicus says a hundred ulnae, which Stothers reads as cubits, about 150 feet.20 Seneca and Florus say only that it was huge.2122 The 120 feet stays put while the weapons and the setting change from teller to teller.352223

The killing is told a different way almost every time. In Orosius one stone from a wall breaks the spine.8 Stothers counts seven authors who have it felled by repeated blows from more than one ballista.5 Seneca, in a letter, has arrows and slings fail against it until it was broken by rocks the size of millstones.21 The Dio fragment in Zonaras has Regulus overcome it with a crowd of soldiers and catapults.24 In Silius, Regulus wounds it with a spear from horseback, and ballista fire and a beam finish it.25

So is the place where it struck. Florus says a serpent of wonderful size was born as if to avenge Africa and harassed the camp.22 In John of Damascus’s quotation of Dio it creeps out of the Roman palisade.23 Silius gives it a grove by the river and has a soldier tell the story, with named men among the dead.25

In the same Dio passage the Romans flay it and send the skin to the senate, which has it measured at 120 feet, its thickness in proportion.23 Valerius has it sent to the city, Gellius to Rome.1514

Whether anyone saw the skin

Orosius, the fullest teller, does not claim to have seen it either. He writes that “they say” it measured 120 feet and that for some time it was a marvel to everyone:8

corium autem eius Romam deuectum - quod fuisse centum uiginti pedum spatio ferunt - aliquamdiu cunctis miraculo fuit.8

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.

Our translation

The nearest thing to a witness is the senate in the Dio passage that John of Damascus preserves, which is said to have measured it.23 Stothers’s point about the chain of authorities fits that: the later writers cite Tubero and Livy, not the skin.1

Where it was kept is a guess. Fowler proposes the temple of Aesculapius on the Tiber Island, as the one place where such an offering would fit; Stothers lists the Capitoline temple as another possibility and calls the temple unidentified.6

What the beast was supposed to be

Niebuhr thought the whole tale was invented by the poet Naevius, who wrote a verse history of the First Punic War.26 Fowler thought a real animal lay behind it, possibly the survivor of a water-serpent species then nearly extinct, and would halve the length or more.27 Stothers argues for a python, notes that no snake today passes about 30 feet, and suggests that the 120 may have been a count of ribs misread as feet.2728 Gsell writes that no modern zoologist can accept a length of 120 feet, more than 35 metres.29 Stothers reports that Lazenby and Le Bohec dismiss the story outright and that several others stay noncommittal.30

Vibius Sequester, in his list of rivers, puts it at the Bagrada beside a town called Musti, and the Musti Gsell knows lay far from the river.31 Gsell cannot say whether there was another Musti on the Bagrada.31 The date is not fixed either: Stothers puts the incident in 256 BC, while Lendering’s translation of the periochae brackets the crossing under 256 and the serpent under 255.12

What we could not verify

Sources we have not seen

  • Karol Kłodziński, “Bagrada, Africae, iuxta oppidum Musti”, Eirene 60 (2024), on Vibius Sequester and the place of the fight. It would show whether Vibius depends on Livy’s Book 18. The publisher’s page returned an access error for us, and no open copy turned up.

Seen only where others quote them

  • Lazenby, The First Punic War (1996), and Le Bohec, Histoire militaire des guerres puniques (1996), known only from Stothers’s summary that both dismiss the story. They would show their reasons; both are in copyright, and a title search on the Internet Archive found neither.

Questions we could not settle

  • Which temple held the skin, and whether anyone who wrote about it had seen it.
  • Whether Polybius knew the story and chose to leave it out.
  • Whether Vibius Sequester took the place from Livy’s Book 18 or from elsewhere.

Sources

Documents quoted