Aulus Atilius Caiatinus

Aulus Atilius Caiatinus, or Calatinus, probably belonged to an aristocratic family from Campania which had been welcomed to Roman high society following the region's conquest by Rome during the Samnite Wars in the 4th century BC.

[8] Friedrich Münzer, in his influential study of the role of family relationships in Roman Republican politics, argued that this quick rise to prominence was the result of an alliance with the long-established patrician clan of the Fabii.

[1] Atilius Caiatinus himself seems to have been a maternal grandson of Fabius Rullianus, one of Rome's heroes during the Samnite Wars;[ii] his parents' marriage is one of the earliest recorded unions between patricians and plebeians.

Atilius afterward resumed the siege of Mytistraton, which Florus had tried to take without success the previous year, and obtained its surrender after the Carthaginian garrison withdrew during the night.

[17] He and his colleague in office, Cornelius Scipio Asina, at the head of a newly built fleet, sailed to Sicily and took Cephaloedium by treachery, but their subsequent attack on Drepana was repulsed by the Carthaginian Carthalo.

This was a sharp decline from the number recorded in the 252 BC census – 297,797 – indicating the heavy toll that the war with Carthage had taken on the Roman population.

[26] In 241 BC Atilius mediated a dispute between two commanders, the proconsul Lutatius Catulus and the propraetor Valerius Falto, regarding whom should celebrate a triumph for the Roman victory at the Battle of the Aegates.

[23] T. Corey Brennan says that "there was simply no other man in Rome so qualified to judge" the dispute, with Atilius having had a distinguished career and obtained the highest military and state honors.