Marcus Atilius Regulus (consul 227 BC)

Marcus Atilius Regulus (fl. 213 BC), a son of Marcus Atilius Regulus, the consul captured during the First Punic War, and a grandson of Marcus Atilius Regulus (consul 294 BC), was a Roman consul for the year 227 BC, together with Publius Valerius Flaccus, and was a consul suffectus in 217 BC, replacing Gaius Flaminius Nepos, who was killed in battle at Lake Trasimene. Marcus Atilius Regulus agreed to accompany the consuls of 216 BC, Gaius Terentius Varro and Lucius Aemilius Paullus, along with the other surviving former consul of 217 BC, Gnaeus Servilius Geminus, when an army of 80,000 Romans and allies was amassed together to smash the Carthaginian army under Hannibal. The historian Polybius records that both he and Servilius died fighting bravely at the Battle of Cannae.^[1]

However, there was a Marcus Atilius Regulus who was Praetor Urbanus (and later also Peregrinus), but it is thought that this person is actually a textual mis-reading of the name Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. It is unlikely that the aged, former consul would become a Praetor again three years after Cannae.^[2]

His younger brother Gaius was killed fighting the Gauls at the Battle of Telamon in 225 BC, while his father, Gaius Atilius Regulus (consul 257 BC), who was executed by Carthage, was a consul twice during the First Punic War.

References

1. Polybius, Book 3.16
2. Magistrates of the Roman Republic, Volume I.

External links

• Livy, History of Rome, Rev. Canon Roberts (translator), Ernest Rhys (Ed.); (1905) London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.