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GEORG PENCZ Attilius Regulus.
Engraving, 1535. 117x76 mm; 4 3/4x3 1/4 inches. Ex-collection George M. La Monte (Lugt 1181c, verso). Trimmed on the plate mark. A very good impression of this scarce engraving.
Marcus Atilius Regulus was a Roman statesman and general who was a consul of the Roman Republic in 267 BC and 256 BC. He negotiated a peace treaty with the Carthaginians after the First Punic War (256 BC), during which he was captured and held in Tunis. When he returned to Rome on parole with the treaty details, he urged the Roman Senate to refuse the proposal. Over the protests of his own people, to have fulfilled the terms of his parole, rather than break his word, he returned to Carthage, where, according to Roman tradition and Livy, he was tortured to death. In Tertullian's To the Martyrs and Augustine of Hippo's The City of God, it is said the Carthaginians packed him into a tight wooden box, spiked with sharp nails on all sides so that he could not lean in any direction without being pierced and rolled it down a steep hill. Bartsch 77.
