Aulus Atilius Calatinus

Aulus Atilius Calatinus (d. by 216 BC) was a politician and general in Ancient Rome. He was the first Roman dictator to lead an army outside Italy (then understood as the Italian mainland), when he led his army into Sicily. He was consul in 258 BC and again in 254 BC, a praetor and triumphator in 257 BC, and finally a censor in 247 BC. Calatinus must have died by 216 BC, because Marcus Fabius Buteo (censor in 241 BC) was named the oldest living ex-censor; Calatinus would have been senior to him in terms of the date of censorship and their respective ages.

Elected consul in 258 BC with Gaius Sulpicius Paterculus, he was given Sicily as his province. During his first consulship, he had several successes, taking many Sicilian towns, but fell into an ambush from which he and his army were saved by a tribune, Marcus Calpurnius Flamma. He conquered more towns after his narrow escape from the Carthaginians, and was granted a triumph on his return. He was elected or appointed praetor in 257 BC in the year of his triumph.

He was reelected consul in 254 BC with Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Asina, and the two co-consuls rebuilt the Roman fleet with 220 ships, after the earlier fleet had been lost in a storm off cape Pachynum. Both consuls sailed to Sicily, where they captured Panormus the same year. However, only Asina was granted the triumph (possibly because Calatinus had already triumphed three years before).

In 249 BC, following the disastrous naval losses of Publius Claudius Pulcher and Lucius Junius Pullus, Pulcher was fined 120,000 asses and his colleague committed suicide. Both consuls were now unfit for command or deceased; the dictator Marcus Claudius Glicia, appointed by Pulcher, was removed on the grounds that he was Pulcher's freedman, and thus not even a Senator, let alone a senator of some status. Calatinus was therefore elected dictator and led an army into Sicily, becoming the first dictator to lead a Roman army outside Italy. He had no great military successes, or at least none noted by Roman historians or in Smith.

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