The campaign of Regulus is an instance how singularly they adhered to the idea that superiority in tactics decides everything.

There are few generals who have had such successes thrown as it were into their lap by fortune: in the year 498 he stood precisely where Scipio stood fifty years later, with this difference, that he had no Hannibal and no experienced army arrayed against him.

But the senate withdrew half the army, as soon as they had satisfied themselves of the tactical superiority of the Romans; in blind reliance on that superiority the general remained where he was, to be beaten in strategy, and accepted battle when it was offered to him, to be beaten also in tactics.
This was the more remarkable, as Regulus was an able and experienced general of his kind.

The rustic method of warfare, by which Etruria and Samnium had been won, was the very cause of the defeat in the plain of Tunes.

The principle, quite right in its own province, that every true burgher is fit for a general, was no longer applicable; the new system of war demanded the employment of generals who had a military training and a military eye, and every burgomaster had not those qualities.