BOAS. 185 



injury from his fangs and the mere force of his 

 jaws." 



In one of the books of Livy, now lost, there 

 was an account of a terrible serpent, which kept 

 the whole Roman army at bay. Valerius Maxi- 

 mus gives us this abridgment of the story : " And 

 since we are on the subject of uncommon phe- 

 nomena, we may here mention the Serpent so 

 eloquently and accurately recorded by Livy; who 

 says, that near the river Bagrada, in Africa, a 

 Snake was seen of so enormous a magnitude, as to 

 prevent the army of Attilius Regulus from the 

 use of the river ; and after snatching up several 

 soldiers with his enormous mouth, and devouring 

 them, and killing several more by striking and 

 squeezing them with the spires of its tail, was at 

 length destroyed by assailing it with all the force 

 of military engines and showers of stones, after it 

 had withstood the attack of their spears and darts : 

 that it was regarded by the whole army as a more 

 formidable enemy than even Carthage itself ; and 

 that the whole adjacent region being tainted with 

 the pestilential effluvia proceeding from its re- 

 mains, and the waters with its blood, the Roman 

 army was obliged to remove its station. He also 

 adds, that the skin of the monster, measuring one 

 hundred and twenty feet in length, was sent to 

 Rome as a trophy-"* Silius Italicus and other 

 writers mention this Serpent, which was doubtless 

 a Python ; and Pliny speaks of its existence as a 

 matter of notoriety, adding, that its skin and jaws 

 were preserved in a temple at Rome till the 

 Numantine war. 



Diodorus Siculus mentions a Serpent which was 



* Val. Max. i., 8. § 19. 



