Flamma, Calpurnius
a tribune of the soldiers, who, in the first Punic war, with 300 men, extricated a Roman consular army on its march to Camarina, in Sicily, from a defile similar to the Furcae Caudinae. After the legions were rescued, the body of Flamma was found under a heap of dead, and although covered with wounds, none of them were mortal, and he survived and served the republic afterwards. The act is often mentioned by Roman writers, but there is great discrepancy as to its author. Cato (apud Gell. 3.7) calls him Q. Caedicius; Claudius Quadrigarius (ib.) Laberius or Valerius; but Frontinus (Stratag. 4.5.) says most named him Calpurnius Flamma. (Liv. Epit. xvii, 22.60; Plin. Nat. 22.6; Oros. 4.8; Florus, 2.2; Aur. Vict. de Vir. Ill. xxxix.; Senec. Epist. 82.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.