Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus

Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (died 203 bce) was a Roman military commander and statesman whose cautious delaying tactics (whence the nickname “Cunctator,” meaning “delayer,” which was not his official cognomen) during the early stages of the Second Punic War (218–201 bce) gave Rome time to recover its strength. When Rome resumed the offensive against the invading Carthaginian army of Hannibal, Fabius waged a war of slow attrition, avoiding direct engagement whenever possible. Fabianism or Fabian strategy has come to mean a gradual or cautious policy.

Fabius was consul in 233 and 228 as well as censor in 230. After Hannibal’s victory over the Romans at Lake Trasimene (217), Fabius was elected dictator; he then initiated his strategy of attrition against the invaders. Maneuvering among the hills, where Hannibal’s cavalry was useless, Fabius cut off his enemy’s supplies and harassed Hannibal’s raiding parties regularly. Fabius’s tactics aroused controversy in Rome, and incessant public criticism from his immediate subordinate, Minucius Rufus, his master of horse (magister equitum), led to a command divided between Minucius and Fabius. True to his strategy of fostering exhaustion, Fabius allowed Hannibal to roam Campania almost at will.

These actions led to perhaps the most famous encounter between Fabius and Hannibal, at the hill boundary of the Falernian Plain in Campania. During the summer of 217, Hannibal raided farms and took thousands of cattle to bolster his supplies for the coming winter. When Fabius blocked Hannibal’s exit from the valley at the hills near Callicula, the Roman general believed that he might have finally gained the better of his enemy. The main Roman army went into camp because the tight pass could be defended by a relatively small force. Hannibal had his men gather dry firewood and tinder and then fashion torches that were affixed to the horns of some of the captured cattle, In the middle of the night, Hannibal ordered the firebrands lit, and a group of his men drove some 2,000 “torch-wielding” cattle over a nearby hill in full view of the Romans. The Roman sentries, thinking the torches represented Hannibal’s whole army, moved in that direction, where they were met by Hannibal’s cattle-prodding skirmishers. The bulk of Hannibal’s army, well experienced at maneuvering at night, quickly moved through the now unguarded pass and escaped with almost no losses. Hannibal later dispatched a cavalry detachment to collect his skirmishers and most of the cattle before wintering in Apulia. Although Hannibal respected Fabius as the one Roman who understood how to stymie him with an avoidance strategy, he had also correctly guessed that Fabius’s conservative nature would root the commander and the bulk of his forces in camp until daybreak. Thus, a great Roman opportunity was lost to Hannibal’s wily tactics.

After the end of Fabius’s dictatorship, the Romans again attempted to annihilate the invaders. The result was a disastrous Roman defeat at Cannae (216) and the reintroduction of Fabian strategy. Elected consul for a third and fourth time (215 and 214), Fabius commanded troops in Campania and Samnium. In his fifth consulship (209) he captured Tarentum (modern Taranto, Italy), which Hannibal had held for three years. In the process, Fabius was made princeps senatus, the first to speak during debates in the Senate. Fabius strenuously but unsuccessfully opposed Publius Cornelius Scipio’s preparations for an invasion of Africa (205). By the time of his death, Fabius had been a pontifex for 12 years and an augur for 62, a combination unique until the time of Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Julius Caesar in the late republic.