midst of an account which is quite historical, is most surprising. That earth and sea may contain creatures which occur so rarely, that one is inclined to take them for fabulous, cannot indeed be positively denied; it may have been a giant serpent. But in all likelihood, this story, like so many others, has its origin in Nævius’ _Bellum Punicum_, which poet himself served as a soldier in that war. At all events, it would be wonderful if the size of the dragon had amounted in ells to exactly that number which is so often met with in Roman measurements, namely, 12 × 10. The Carthaginians had utterly lost courage, and they could not withdraw their army from Sicily without giving up that island altogether: they therefore sent an embassy to Regulus, and sued for peace. Regulus’ fame has been very much exaggerated by apophthegmatical histories; he is undeservedly represented as a martyr: in the heyday of his good fortune, he showed himself ruthless, intoxicated with victory, and ungenerous. We have a story of him, that he had then asked the senate for his recall, that he might attend to his farm; but we know on the contrary from Polybius, that he had particularly set his heart upon bringing the war to a brilliant end, before a successor arrived. So much the more senseless was it in him to ask of the Carthaginians impossibilities, and to offer them much worse terms than they really obtained at the conclusion of the war, just as if he had meant to drive them to despair. Had he stipulated for the evacuation of Sicily and the payment of a contribution, the Carthaginians would have been quite willing; but he had the preposterous idea of crushing Carthage with one blow. His conditions were quite insane: even had they been besieged, the Carthaginians could not have fared worse. They were to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome; to make an offensive and defensive alliance with the Romans; to enter into no treaty without the permission of the Romans; to yield up all their ships of war but one, and to have nothing but triremes; to give up Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Lipari isles; to abandon their Italian allies; to deliver up the prisoners and deserters; to ransom their own captives; to pay all the expenses of the war, and a contribution besides. The Carthaginians declared that they would rather perish; and luckily for them the Romans carried on the war badly. Instead of establishing themselves within the gulf of Tunis, opposite Carthage, as they ought to have done, they had now sent off their fleet; the Carthaginians therefore could make use of their ships to hire troops everywhere. Among these, there were also many from Greece; one of them, the celebrated Xanthippus, who was not, as Diodorus says, a Spartan, but as we learn from Polybius, a Neodamode who in his education had been subjected to the laws of the Spartans (τῆς Λακωνικῆς ἀγωγῆς μετεσχηκώς), and had thereby acquired an inferior right of citizenship. In the case of a Spartan,