by Plutarch
In the senate, although there was a fierce clash of opposing opinions, in the end the more moderate view, which was for yielding to the people, prevailed. Thus it was granted that one of the consuls should be chosen from the plebeians. When the dictator announced this decree of the senate to the people, they were of course very happy to be reconciled with the patricians, and they escorted Camillus to his house with cheers and applause. On the following day the people assembled and voted to build a temple of Concord, just as Camillus had vowed, and, in commemoration of what had taken place, they decided it should face the forum and the place of assembly.141 They also voted to add a day to the feast called the Latin Festival142 and thereafter to celebrate it for four days, during which all Romans should perform sacrifices with garlands on their heads. At the elections subsequently conducted by Camillus, Marcus Aemilius was elected consul from the patrician order, while Lucius Sextius became the first plebeian consul.143 This was the last of Camillus’ public actions.
43. In the very next year144 a terrible epidemic afflicted Rome, taking the lives of countless numbers of the common people and most of the magistrates. Camillus, too, died at this time. His end was hardly untimely, in view of his many years and his great attainments, yet his death inspired more grief among the Romans than did the deaths of all the others who perished of the plague during this time.
FABIUS MAXIMUS
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Introduction to Fabius Maximus
The Fabius of History
Quintus Fabius Maximus was a leading statesman and general during the Hannibalic, or Second Punic, War (218–201 BC) who remained a venerated figure in subsequent Roman tradition. He derived from the most distinguished family of the time. Although his father died too young to have reached the consulship, his grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather each held multiple consulships and enjoyed the prestige of being designated the leading man in the senate (princeps senatus).1 Fabius was probably born around 275 BC, was chosen to be an augur during his boyhood (in 265) and was consul for the first time in 233. Thereafter he was censor in 230, consul for the second time in 228 and dictator around 221, although it is unclear for what purpose, and in any case he resigned almost immediately on religious grounds (Marcellus 5). It is unknown what Fabius achieved while holding these magistracies, so sparse is our historical record of them. Nevertheless, it is obvious that he was a senior and notable personage even before the Second Punic War began.
For Rome, no war could match in significance its desperate struggle with Hannibal (247–183 or 182 BC). No sooner had the Romans made themselves masters of Italy than they came into conflict with the north African state of Carthage, long the leading power in the western Mediterranean. The two cities fought a long war over Sicily, the First Punic War (264–241 BC), during which Rome for the first time campaigned outside Italy.2 After losing Sicily to Rome, Carthage built a new empire in Spain – and it was out of Spain that Hannibal marched when he invaded Italy in 218 BC. The Second Punic War was fought on many fronts, Spain, Sicily and Italy itself, where in the early years of the war Hannibal seemed certain to prevail. But the leadership of Romans like Fabius Maximus and Claudius Marcellus gave Rome the time and resolution eventually to gain an advantage in every theatre. When Publius Scipio invaded Africa, Hannibal rushed to his city’s defence, but was decisively defeated at the battle of Zama in 202 BC. Publius was hailed as Scipio Africanus, and Carthage was reduced to a second-rate power. Few, however, in the first years of the war, could have foreseen such a victory.3
Hannibal’s startling invasion of Italy and the crushing defeats he inflicted on Rome at the Trebia and Lake Trasimene in 218 and 217 BC led to Fabius’ emergency appointment as dictator (for the second time). It was at this moment that he imposed his strategy of attrition: Fabius was convinced that Hannibal could not long sustain an offensive posture with his relatively small army – unless further victories inspired defections among the allies. Consequently, Fabius pursued a policy of harassment and, ultimately, containment, allowing Hannibal to ravage the wealthy and fertile region of Campania yet blocking the plain’s exits. But Hannibal outfoxed Fabius, and in escaping from Campania discredited Fabius’ policy. In reaction, Rome fielded a massive army in 216 BC, which was devastatingly defeated by Hannibal at Cannae.
Thereafter Rome recurred to Fabian tactics, which proved effective in blunting Hannibal’s menace and allowed Rome to exploit its vast superiority in manpower.4 Fabius was consul in 215 and again in 214 BC, and he served as an officer under the command of his son, who was consul in 213. In later traditions he was hailed as the Delayer (Cunctator), and the epic poet Ennius praised him as unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem (the one man who, by delaying, preserved for us our nation’: Ennius, Annals 363, see Skutsch, p. 102). Fabius did not hold office again until 209 BC, when he was consul for his fifth and final time. In that year he captured Tarentum, brutally sacked the city and celebrated a triumph for the deed.
Fabius was abundantly honoured in his own lifetime. In 215 BC he dedicated to Venus Erycina a temple that he had vowed during his second dictatorship. And in the census of 209 BC he was designated the leading man of the senate (princeps senatus), a position to which he was reappointed in 204 BC. And in 203 BC, when Hannibal at last forsook Italy, the senate and people of Rome awarded Fabius a ‘crown of grass’ (corona graminea), a distinction granted to a general who has rescued a besieged city, because Fabius had, in effect, saved Rome from its Hannibalic siege.5 In the very final phase of his career, however, Fabius found himself on the wrong side of history, when he bitterly opposed Scipio’s proposal to invade North Africa. Fabius died in 203 BC, before the final victory won by Scipio’s success at the battle of Zama in the next year.
Plutarch’s Fabius
In this pairing, Fabius is matched with Pericles, the famous Athenian statesman who dominated his city’s politics from 444 until his death in 429 BC. Plutarch’s admiration for each man is indicated by the lengthy and formal prologue that precedes their paired biographies (Pericles 1–2). There he concludes his prologue by observing:
These two men possessed many virtues in common, but above all, through their moderation, their uprightness, and their ability to endure the follies of their peoples and their colleagues in office, they rendered the very greatest service to their countries.
(Pericles 2)
It is on these individual qualities that Plutarch’s Fabius Maximus concentrates, even in moments when its protagonist fails to exhibit them. Uprightness and honesty (dikaiosyne) and especially mildness and moderation (praotes) are stressed throughout this Life.6 Fabius is incorruptible and committed to honouring his obligations, even to Hannibal: for instance, at chapter 7 he sacrifices his own estates to fulfil his agreement to ransom hostages because he ‘could not tolerate the idea of cheating Hannibal or of abandoning the Roman prisoners to their fate’.7
Praotes is Fabius’ chief virtue. For the Greeks, the man who was moderate and gentle was a man who, although he experienced genuine and even deep feelings, nonetheless managed to keep them under control (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1125b26), and Plutarch uses the word to describe an admirable self-restraint in all matters.8 It is because Fabius is moderate that he is able to endure the follies of others and remains indifferent to public opinion.9 This is clearest when, in chapter 5, his friends urge him to attack Hannibal in order to wipe out aspersions against his courage. He answers:
In that case I should be an even greater coward than they say I am, if I were to abandon the plans I believe to be right because of a few sneers and words of abuse.
In chapter 10, when the Romans have shown their preference for Minucius’ more aggressive approach to dealing with Hannibal and, in essence, have demoted Fabius, he continues unbowed:
Fabius endured these vexations calmly and without stress, in so far as they concerned him personally, thus confirming the truth of the philosophical maxim that a truly good man can neither be insulted nor disgraced
.
Related to Fabius’ moderation is his caution – his asphaleia.10 This is not the same as timidity: the word implies security and safeness, and Fabius is an opponent who remains so steady that he cannot be overthrown. Plutarch underscores this quality by using the imagery of wrestling (chs. 5, 19, 23). Fabius and Hannibal are competing athletes – and throughout this Life, fascinatingly, it is Hannibal who best understands the merits of his Roman adversary (chs. 5, 7, 12, 19, 23). In the end, when Fabius outwits Hannibal to recapture Tarentum,
The Romans saw that he was dealing with Hannibal like an experienced wrestler, and had mastered the technique of frustrating his opponent’s moves, now that his grips and holds had lost their original force.
(ch. 23)
Yet it is in this moment of triumph that Fabius unexpectedly betrays his natural virtues, and a moral decline sets in.
In order to recover Tarentum, Fabius relied on the disloyalty of a Bruttian officer, a member of Hannibal’s garrison within the city (chs. 21–2). However, when the city was finally taken through treachery, Fabius, frightened of any disgrace this tactic might incur, buried the evidence of his intrigue:
At this point, however, Fabius’ ambition seems to have proved stronger than his principles, for he ordered his men to put the Bruttian contingent to the sword before anyone else, so as to conceal the fact that he had captured the city by treachery.
Fabius failed, however, to mislead anyone, and, consequently, ‘incurred the charge of bad faith and inhumanity’. He goes on to sack the city, in an excess of brutality that leads Plutarch to emphasize his hero’s inferiority to the Roman general Marcellus, since Fabius’ actions at Tarentum ‘proved by the contrast between them that Marcellus was a man of extraordinary mildness [praotes] and humanity [philanthropia], as I have indicated in his Life’ (ch. 22). In this episode, according to Plutarch, Fabius’ cardinal virtues were withered in the glare of his ambition (philotimia).
Another moral failure was Fabius’ contentious reaction to Scipio’s proposal to invade Africa. Plutarch insists that his hero was honestly motivated by his native caution and moderation, but concedes that, when his efforts to block Scipio were unsuccessful, Fabius turned violent and extreme, and once more gave in to ambition as well as contentiousness:
the effort to check his opponent’s rising influence made his attitude more violent and extreme and introduced an element of ambition and personal rivalry into the conflict.
(ch. 25)
There are few vices of which Plutarch disapproves more strongly than unrestrained ambition and rivalry, which renders this assessment nothing short of damning.11 Fabius even went so far as to try to persuade Crassus, Scipio’s colleague in the consulship, to replace Scipio as commander of the forces destined for Africa, but Crassus refused ‘because by nature he was a gentle man [praos] and had no inclination to quarrel with his colleague’ (ch. 25), an explanation that confronts the reader with the reality that, in this section of his Life, Fabius has again become untrue to his central virtue. The Roman public come to the conclusion that Fabius is desperately jealous of Scipio (ch. 25), and whereas, in the early days of the war against Hannibal, Fabius’ moderation more than once gave the people courage, now, at the very moment the Carthaginian retreats from Italy, Fabius suffuses the Romans with dismay (ch. 26).
Between the fall of Tarentum and Scipio’s return, Plutarch discusses the consulship of Fabius’ son, which took place in 213 BC, but has been postponed by the biographer until this final phase of Fabius’ career (ch. 24). The episode is deemed notable – and admirable – on account of Fabius’ studied deference to his son’s consular authority. It furthermore inspires Plutarch to recall the conduct of Fabius’ great-grandfather, the first Fabius Maximus, who served his consular son as a lieutenant and, later, dutifully followed in the procession of his son’s triumph:
he took pride in the fact that while he had authority over his son as a private individual and was himself in both name and in reality the greatest man of the state, yet he was ready to submit himself to the law and the chief magistrate.
(ch. 24)
This is, Plutarch clearly believes, the correct attitude for any Roman. It is quite striking, then, that in the immediately following episode Plutarch lurches forward to 205 BC, when Scipio returns to Rome, is elected consul and is confronted by Fabius’ efforts to subvert his command, clearly an unseemly move by Fabian standards.
Fabius’ transformation at Tarentum is perplexing, and the harsh portrayal of the last phase of his career is surprising. And, unless the biographer is relying for this section of the Life on a source now lost to us, Fabius’ moral collapse in his final days is Plutarch’s own innovation.12 Now the conflict between Scipio and Fabius was a historical fact, and enough evidence subsists to make it clear that ancient writers elaborated their rivalry, yet this competition did not routinely come at the expense of Fabius’ dignity or rectitude.13 Quite the contrary. In Livy, it is Scipio, not Fabius, whose conduct is troubling when the two men clash,14 and in Cicero’s On Old Age, a piece known to Plutarch, Fabius is the paradigm of a man whose virtuous life carried him to a satisfying old age.15 Fabius’ moral meltdown in this Life, then, is plainly at odds with what Plutarch knew to be a prevailing version of his hero’s maturity.
Plutarch does not offer an explanation for his hero’s forceful and foolish – and in certain respects unethical – opposition to the strategy of Scipio, the indispensable victor in the Second Punic War. Nevertheless, the reader can only experience unease when watching a man who has heretofore been a paradigm of old age’s wise counsel degrade into something of a caricature. Still, Plutarch stresses, Fabius’ motives were not wholly disreputable, and in any case this ultimate lapse does not vitiate the whole of his career. Although his hostility to Scipio incurs unpopularity in Rome, these feelings vanish at the moment of his death, when the whole of the city remembers him as a father, so that ‘in his death he received the honour and regard which he had earned by the conduct of his life’ (ch. 27).
Fabius and Pericles
Although, as critics of Plutarch have observed, the careers of Pericles and Fabius ostensibly share little in common, Plutarch infuses his pairing with an abundance of similarities, significant and superficial alike. Each man has the heart of a lion, and each bears a physical peculiarity. Both (in very different ways) experience almost monarchical power. Fabius and Pericles alike eschew superstition, exhibit fortitude in the face of personal misfortune, employ oratory effectively – and each embodies moderation and honesty, qualities which they put to work for the greater good of their respective nations.16
And yet Pericles, unlike Fabius, remained steadfast and unalterable throughout his life, even in the teeth of hostile public opinion. Plutarch, in an extended simile, represents him as the skilful helmsman of the ship of state, who trusts his own expertise and remains indifferent to the fears of his passengers (Pericles 34). This image recurs near the end of Fabius Maximus, but there it is the victorious Scipio, not the jealous and carping Fabius, who is the captain (ch. 27). Pericles dies before his city falls, Fabius before his city triumphs. Although he was an agent – perhaps, according to Plutarch, the key agent – of Rome’s salvation, Fabius nevertheless ended his life in a role unworthy of the statesmanship and moral excellence exhibited in all but its final chapters.
Sources
In this Life, Plutarch cites none of his sources explicitly, apart from his passing reference to Poseidonius’ report that Fabius was known as the shield, Marcellus the sword, of Rome (ch. 19). Most of what we know about Fabius’ career we find in Livy’s and Polybius’ narratives of the Second Punic War, and there is no reason to doubt that Plutarch consulted these writers.17
There are moments in Fabius Maximus, however, when Plutarch diverges from both Polybius and Livy. In some instances, these differences probably reflect carelessness or error. In others, they result from Plutarch’s own amplification and artistry. Still, some critics prefer to explain these v
ariations by invoking other, now lost, sources for the Second Punic War, which is certainly possible if not really demonstrable or necessary.18 Because Plutarch explicitly names Poseidonius, the distinguished philosopher and polymath who flourished in the first century BC, it is sometimes suggested that he was a significant source for this Life. This seems unlikely, however: Poseidonius is mentioned only by way of a single, striking phrase, also cited in Plutarch’s earlier Marcellus, and there is no good evidence that, even for that Life, Poseidonius was an important source.19
Hannibal plays a significant role in Fabius Maximus. Not only is he Fabius’ adversary, his is often the gaze through which we are allowed to see the Roman’s true military talents. During the Second Punic War, Hannibal was accompanied by two Greek historians, Silenus of Caleacte and Sosylus of Sparta, each of whom composed accounts (now lost) of the war, and their works made their way into the Romans’ accounts.20 Polybius, for instance, consulted Silenus, and he read (and criticized) Sosylus. They were also available to Plutarch, though it is unclear whether he went so far as to consult them for himself.
