was a great grief to him. He was a very poor man, with nothing of his
own but a little farm of seven acres, and the person whom he had
employed to cultivate it had died in his absence; a hired laborer had
undertaken the care of it, but had been unfaithful, and had run away
with his tools and his cattle; so that he was afraid that, unless he
could return quickly, his wife and children would starve. However, the
Senate engaged to provide for his family, and he remained, making
expeditions into the country round, in the course of which the Romans
really did fall in with a serpent as monstrous as their imagination had
depicted. It was said to be 120 feet long, and dwelt upon the banks of
the River Bagrada, where it used to devour the Roman soldiers as they
went to fetch water. It had such tough scales that they were obliged to
attack it with their engines meant for battering city walls, and only
succeeded with much difficulty in destroying it.

The country was most beautiful, covered with fertile cornfields and full
of rich fruit trees, and all the rich Carthaginians had country houses
and gardens, which were made delicious with fountains, trees, and
flowers. The Roman soldiers, plain, hardy, fierce, and pitiless, did, it
must be feared, cruel damage among these peaceful scenes; they boasted
of having sacked 300 villages, and mercy was not yet known to them. The
Carthaginian army, though strong in horsemen and in elephants, kept upon
the hills and did nothing to save the country, and the wild desert
tribes of Numidians came rushing in to plunder what the Romans had left.
The Carthaginians sent to offer terms of peace; but Regulus, who had
become uplifted by his conquests, made such demands that the messengers
remonstrated. He answered, 'Men who are good for anything should either
conquer or submit to their betters;' and he sent them rudely away, like
a stern old Roman as he was. His merit was that he had no more mercy on
himself than on others.