BAGRADA, AFRICAE, IUXTA OPPIDUM MUSTI: VIBIUS SEQUESTER ON THE LOCATION OF THE GIANT SNAKE INCIDENT DURING THE FIRST PUNIC WAR.

In 256 BCE, 15,000 Roman troops waged a war in Africa under the command of M. Atilius Regulus. Despite being initially successful, they ultimately lost in 255 BCE to the Carthaginian army of mercenaries under the command of the Lacedaemonian Xanthippus. One of the episodes of the campaign of 256 BCE was a fight on the Bagradas (Medjerda) River with a huge serpent (serpens, bestia, monstrum, drakon), which killed many Roman soldiers. Vibius Sequester, the author of the De fluminibus, fontibus, lacubus, nemoribus, paludibus, montibus, gentibus per litteras, who wrote at the end of the 4th or in the beginning of the 5th century CE, is the only source who mentioned the oppidum Musti as the site nearest to the location of the serpent "myth". This paper provides a Quellenforschung of the name oppidum Musti in order to support the hypothesis of a likely relationship between De fluminibus and the lost Book XVIII of Livy (Periocha, 18). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]