Fabius

Roman military leader

• Born: c. 275 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Unknown
• Died: 203 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Possibly Rome (now in Italy)

During the Second Punic War (218-202 b.c.e.) between Carthage and Rome, Fabius, nicknamed “the Delayer,” using feint-and-run tactics, carried on a fairly successful war of attrition against Hannibal, the great Carthaginian general whose army ravaged the Italian peninsula and threatened Rome itself.

Early Life

Quintus Fabius (FAY-bee-uhs) Maximus was born into the patrician Fabii gens, or clan, in about 275 b.c.e. Although the Fabii traced their ancestry back to a mythic origin, to Hercules, their actual origin is obscure. However, they became an important family group with a distinguished history in Roman affairs. Fabius was the great-grandson of Fabius Rullianus (fl. c. 325-290 b.c.e.), the first of the Fabii to append the title Maximus to his surname and the most famous of Fabius’s forebears.

In his youth, Fabius seemed to show little promise. He was nicknamed Verrucosus (“Warty”) because he bore disfiguring warts on his upper lip, and also Ovicula (“Lambkins”) because he was docile and unassuming. He readily submitted to the will of childhood friends and to some of them seemed both slow and dim-witted. His apparent placidity would later mature into an admirable forbearance that served him well in the turmoil of Roman politics. In his deliberate, plodding manner, he studied and mastered military tactics and oratory, important disciplines for the public offices for which he quietly and diligently prepared himself. In time, perceptive colleagues came to see that his outward lethargy masked great inner strengths, including quiet persistence, fortitude, and a nearly inexhaustible patience.

Fabius’s political career also proved slow in developing. He did not serve as consul until 234, when he was about forty, and even though he drove the Ligurians from Cisalpine Gaul in 233 and was awarded a triumph, he garnered little support from the Roman populace. He lacked the more flamboyant manner and aggressive style of many soldier-statesmen, and his cautionary counsel was often ignored. In fact, his political star rose rather late, starting in 221, when, in his fifties, he was elected dictator for the first time. Thereafter, with the military failures of rivals during the Second Punic War (218-201 b.c.e.), he gained prominence as the conservative leader in the Roman senate and the primary architect of a strategy designed to wear down Rome’s great adversary, Hannibal of Carthage.

Life’s Work

In 219, the Carthaginian warrior Hannibal provoked Rome by attacking its Spanish ally, Saguntum. The next year, in one of history’s boldest military ventures, he crossed the Alps, invading northern Italy. Aided by Cisalpine Gauls, his army won battle after battle, including, in 217, a major engagement at Lake Trasimene, where the Roman army under Flaminius was destroyed.

Flaminius had been a proponent of an aggressive military policy opposed by Fabius, and his defeat and death prompted the reelection of Fabius as dictator. To the Romans, hunkering down in anticipation of Hannibal’s imminent siege of the city, Fabius’s defensive tactics finally made good sense.

Fabius’s strategy was to erode Hannibal’s strength by denying him access to supplies and fresh troops while constantly harassing his army with hit-and-run sorties against his flanks. Fabius knew that time was on Rome’s side, and he studiously avoided a general engagement that promised less than certain victory. He kept his legions in the hills, protected by the terrain from assaults by Hannibal’s vaunted calvary.

Fortunately for Rome, Hannibal deferred an assault on that city. Instead, he drove further down the Italian peninsula, hoping to capture Mediterranean ports and strengthen his army by turning or neutralizing Rome’s allies. At first his strategy faltered, for Rome’s allies remained steadfast.

Meanwhile, Fabius was nicknamed “Cunctator,” or “the Delayer,” an appellation used mockingly by his opponents. The nickname was not entirely just, however, for at one point, having Hannibal at a distinct disadvantage, Fabius was ready to risk a pitched battle. He had the Carthaginians outnumbered and trapped near Casilinum, on the Campania frontier; using a celebrated ruse, however, Hannibal escaped the snare. He had his soldiers attach burning kindling to the horns of two thousand oxen and drive the frantic animals against the bewildered Roman troops guarding his escape route. In the resulting confusion, Hannibal’s army broke out of the trap and vanished.

As the threat of a siege of Rome faded, its citizens again clamored for a more aggressive policy, turning against Fabius’s cautious strategy. Hannibal helped fuel the ire of Fabius’s critics. By carefully protecting Fabius’s provincial property from pillage and burning, he deliberately created the impression that Fabius, worse than a coward, was an out-and-out traitor in league with the enemy.

While the ever-hostile Roman tribunes fanned the flames of suspicion toward Fabius, the dictator’s master of the horse, Lucius Minucius, acting against the express orders of his absent superior, sought open battle with a detachment of Hannibal’s troops and achieved a minor victory. When word of Minucius’s success arrived in Rome, Fabius, in the city on official business, came under vicious verbal attack from the tribune Metilius, a close friend and kinsman to Minucius. He wanted Fabius stripped of power, but the senate instead opted to give Minucius joint control of the army.

Fabius, on his return from Rome, rejected Minucius’s demand that each of them assume command on alternate days. By then, Minucius was openly bragging of his superiority to Fabius in military strategy and leadership, and Fabius feared that his rival, when in command, would imperil the whole army through some rash venture. Fabius therefore would agree only to divide the army into two separate commands, each composed of two legions.

Minucius quickly justified Fabius’s fears by leading his two legions into one of Hannibal’s clever traps. Surrounded, with escape routes cut off, Minucius’s army faced annihilation, but Fabius attacked and forced Hannibal’s forces to retreat. Reportedly, the narrow escape from disaster humbled Minucius, who, apologizing for his imprudence, ceded supreme command of the army to Fabius alone.

In 217, momentarily assured that his defensive strategies would be followed, Fabius stepped down from his dictatorship. In 216, however, Terentius Varro, another headstrong but popular soldier, was elected consul and gained joint control of the army with his less popular co-consul, Lucius Aemilius Paulus. With the support of the senate, which authorized an offensive policy, he engaged Hannibal in an all-out battle at Cannae, a village located near the Aufidus River in southeastern Italy. Fabius had hoped that Paulus, whom he supported, could prevent Varro from making such a costly mistake. Because command of the army alternated between the commanders, however, Varro was able to ignore Paulus’s advice. The result was the worst Roman debacle of the war, with the loss of upward of sixty thousand men. The defeat also allowed Hannibal to take Capua, the second most important city in Italy, and to roam freely through the rich provinces in the southern part of the Italian peninsula, forcing some of Rome’s former allies into his camp.

The Roman senate, again fearing an attack on the capital, once more turned to Fabius. He quickly took measures to steel the citizens’ resolve to survive the expected siege, stopping a panic and flight from the city. Fortunately for Rome, against the advice of his lieutenants, Hannibal once more passed up the opportunity to take advantage of his victory. Rome took heart and again sent Fabius into the field. His cautionary tactics soon found balance in the bolder stratagems of another general, Claudius Marcellus, who led attacks against the main body of Hannibal’s army and in 211 captured Syracuse, greatly eroding the Carthaginian influence in Sicily. Marcellus and Fabius became known, respectively, as “the Sword and Shield of Rome.” Marcellus was eventually led into one of Hannibal’s tactical snares and killed. Fabius, meanwhile, eluded all traps that Hannibal set for him and, in 209, during his fifth consulship, won an important victory at Tarentum, one of Hannibal’s important strongholds. The tide of war by that time had turned in Rome’s favor.

Up until his death, Fabius remained circumspect in his policies. He vigorously opposed the plans of Cornelius Scipio, who, after winning renown by driving the Carthaginians out of Spain, was elected consul in 205. Scipio proposed an invasion of Africa and, against the strong objections and blocking maneuvers of Fabius and his faction, undertook the expedition in 204. He defeated the Punic army in 203, with the result that Carthage, in the ensuing armistice, recalled Hannibal from Italy. Fabius died before Scipio’s great victory over Hannibal at Zama in 202, the battle that effectively ended Carthage’s Mediterranean dominance and earned for Scipio the cognomen “Africanus.”

Significance

The only blemish on Fabius’s career came in his final years, when his caution and superstition led him to oppose Scipio, whose achievements would finally eclipse his own. By then, he was about seventy and securely bound to his delaying tactics by virtue of their past successes. He had sought to outlast Hannibal and to force his withdrawal from Italy when it became impossible for the invader to meet the logistical needs of his marauding army or win over Rome’s unstable allies. Once shorn of him, Fabius saw little need to pursue Hannibal or attack Carthage.

Clearly, in his policies, Fabius placed a high value on the lives of his soldiers. He was unwilling to risk them for personal glory or political advantage. Legends concerning him relate that he also won the loyalty of his soldiers by a leniency uncharacteristic of Roman discipline. He was also generous; on one occasion, when the senate refused to honor an obligation, he sold some of his own lands to ransom 240 soldiers held prisoner by Hannibal. Moreover, Fabius seemed remarkably free of grudges, bearing with great patience the most vituperative political attacks on him. Although too vain for popular tastes, Fabius was an honorable man. He never abused his power by exacting revenge on his political adversaries.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to both his policies and his genius lies in the fact that it was in Fabius that Hannibal saw his greatest threat. He is said to have told his followers that Fabius was like a terrible cloud, ever hovering in the mountains, threatening to storm down on them with terrible destruction. The acknowledged fear of such an enemy as Hannibal constitutes the highest kind of praise.

Bibliography

De Beer, Sir Gavin. Hannibal: Challenging Rome’s Supremacy. New York: Viking Press, 1969. A richly illustrated, approachable study treating its subject figure as tragic and inevitably doomed to fail in his efforts to save Carthage in the rise of Rome. Gives a solid account of the major battles and the part played by Fabius in Hannibal’s Italian campaign.

Jones, Peter. “Ancient and Modern.” The Spectator 291, no. 9113 (April 3, 2003): 21. Examines Fabius’s military tactics and compares them with those employed by the Iraqi army in the 2003 conflict with the United States.

Livy. The War with Hannibal: Books XXI-XXX of The History of Rome from Its Foundation. Translated by Aubrey de Sélincourt and edited by Betty Radice. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972. A full account of the Second Punic War from the vantage point of a major Roman historian who flourished at the time Rome became an empire. Although prone to romanticizing the events and major figures, Livy’s narrative is both vivid and detailed. Includes maps and a chronological index.

Plutarch. The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. Translated by John Dryden and revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. New York: Modern Library, 1992. The famous work of a major first century Roman biographer and moralist, whose “parallels” included a comparison of Fabius with Pericles of Athens. Gives a very positive assessment of Fabius’s character. Includes index.

Scullard, H. H. Roman Politics: 220-150 B.C. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. An in-depth study of the various political factions in Rome at the time of the Second and Third Punic Wars. Devotes chapters to the patrician family groupings and the conservative strategies and politics of Fabius and his followers. Includes genealogical charts and year-by-year listings of consuls, censors, and praetors.

Scullard, H. H. Scipio Africanus: Soldier and Politician. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970. A biographical study of Fabius’s final rival. Useful for its analysis of Scipio’s military success in Spain, leading to the final discrediting of Fabius’s more timorous tactics and Scipio’s expedition into Africa. Includes extensive notes, plus maps and photographs.