by Plutarch
54. the Ardeates: The people of Ardea, a Latin city of considerable wealth. It was brought inside Rome’s sphere of influence by Tarquinius Superbus and became an ally of Rome by treaty in 444.
55. most ancient of all laws … the weak: This sentiment reprises Plato, Gorgias 482c–486d.
56. many denounced Fabius: In the version recorded by Diodorus (14.113.5–6), the senate seeks to accommodate the Gauls but is thwarted by the people.
57. Fetiales … justly make war: See Numa 12 and notes 83–5 there.
58. sacrifices … before the perils of battle: Roman battles were preceded by ritual practices designed to diagnose whether the gods permitted them to fight on the day.
59. River Allia: The modern Fosso delle Bettina, which flows into the Tiber about 11 miles (18 km) north of Rome.
60. Fabian disaster … had taken place: In 477, 300 members of the Fabian clan fell in battle at the Cremera river and the catastrophe was remembered on the Day of Cremera (dies Cremerensis). Ovid (Fasti 2.195–242), diverging from the usual tradition, dates this event to 13 February.
61. the Day of Allia: (Dies Alliensis) The darkest day in Roman history, 18 July 390. Plutarch is unspecific here, possibly because he wants to exhibit his learned conclusion that the battle was fought near the time of a full moon, but it is not obvious that he diverges from the traditional date.
62. the topic of unspeakable days … examined elsewhere: Hesiod discusses the nature of various days in his Works and Days (765–825). Heracleitus’ reproach is not otherwise known. Ill-omened days as well as historical synchronicities, the topics of the following digression, invited learned investigation – and Plutarch was an expert. He recurs to these subjects frequently, including in his (now lost) works On Days and On the Works and Days of Hesiod. See A. T. Grafton and N. M. Swerdlow, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 51 (1988), pp. 14–42.
63. Boeotians: Inhabitants of Boeotia, a region in central Greece whose major city was Thebes. Plutarch’s native Chaeronea was a Boeotian city.
64. their month … Hecatombaeon: Each Greek city had its own calendar with its own months. Hippodromius and Hecatombaeon correspond very roughly with July.
65. two glorious victories … Thessalians: At Leuctra (in Boeotia) in 371 the Thebans, under the command of Epaminondas, defeated the Spartans, at that time the dominant power in Greece. Little is known of the Thessalian commander Lattamyas. In his essay On the Malignity of Herodotus (Moralia 866e), Plutarch dates his defeat at Ceressus to just before 480 (much later than the date indicated here).
66. Persians were defeated … at Marathon: The battle of Marathon occurred in 490. The Athenian month Boedromion corresponds very roughly with September; on the sixth the Athenians annually offered sacrifice to Artemis in thanksgiving for their victory over the Persians.
67. Persians were defeated … at … Mycale: In 479 the Persians were defeated on land at Plataea (in southern Boeotia) and at sea off Mycale (a mountain in western Anatolia, opposite Samos). In his Aristeides, Plutarch dates the battle of Plataea to the fourth of the month.
68. also defeated at Arbela: The battle of Arbela of 331 is better known as the battle of Gaugamela (a site in modern Iraq, possibly Tell Gomel), Alexander the Great’s decisive victory over the Persians (Alexander 31).
69. Naxos: The largest island of the Cyclades.
70. Chabrias: Athenian admiral who defeated the Spartans in battle in 376.
71. Salamis: The Athenians decisively defeated the Persian navy at the battle of Salamis in 480. Elsewhere Plutarch dates the battle to the sixteenth day of the Athenian month Munichion (Lysander 15, Moralia 349f). Plutarch’s On Days is no longer extant.
72. Thargelion: This Athenian month corresponds very roughly with May.
73. Granicus: Alexander the Great defeated the Persians at the River Granicus (in northwest Asia Minor: the modern Biga Çayi) in 334.
74. Carthaginians were beaten … in Sicily: Timoleon won this victory in 341 (Timoleon 27).
75. Ephorus … Malacas: Ephorus (c. 405–330) was a widely influential historian of Greece. Callisthenes was the nephew of Aristotle and a historian of Alexander the Great’s exploits until he was implicated in a conspiracy against the king and put to death in 327. Damastes was a fifth-century BC historian and geographer, roughly contemporary with Herodotus. For the fourth name the manuscripts divide: Malacas (FGrH 442), the likelier reading, was a historian of Siphnos (an island in the Cyclades) about whom very little is known; Phylarchus (FGrH 81), the alternative, was a third-century BC historian whose work concentrated on the period from 272 to 219 (and was much consulted by Plutarch: see Aratus).
76. Metageitnion: This Athenian month, like Panemus, corresponds very roughly with August.
77. Antipater: (c. 397–319) One of the successors of Alexander the Great, who crushed a Greek uprising against Macedon at the battle of Crannon (a city in Thessaly) in 322.
78. Philip: Philip II (382–336), the father of Alexander, made himself master of Greece at the battle of Chaeronea in 338.
79. Archidamus: Archidamus III, king of Sparta from 360 until his death in 338, when he was defeated in Italy while fighting in support of Tarentum (modern Taranto) against the Lucanians, an Oscan people of southern Italy.
80. Chalcedonians: Inhabitants of Chalcedon (modern Kadiköy), a Greek city on the Asian side of the Bosporus. According to a fragment of Arrian (FGrH 156 F 79), the Persian satrap Pharnabazus (late fourth and early third centuries BC) seized the boys of the city in order to make them into eunuchs.
81. the Mysteries … Iacchus: The Eleusinian Mysteries took place each year in Athens, from the 14th to the 23rd of Boedromion, in the sacred precinct of Eleusis. Iacchus was a divinity celebrated in the procession from Athens to Eleusis, when participants shouted out iakcho iakche (see Aristophanes, Frogs 316). Alexander destroyed Thebes in 335; the Macedonians installed a garrison in Athens in 322.
82. Caepio … Tigranes: Quintus Servilius Caepio (consul in 106) suffered a crushing defeat at the battle of Arausio (modern Orange) on 6 October 105. On that same day in 69 BC, Lucius Licinius Lucullus (consul in 74 BC) won a brilliant victory over Tigranes (Lucullus 27).
83. Attalus … birthday: It is unclear which Attalus Plutarch has in mind here. At Moralia 717e Plutarch reports a controversy over whether Pompey died on his birthday or on the day after; at Pompey 79 he prefers the day after.
84. Roman Questions: At Moralia 269e–270d.
85. Vestal Virgins: See Numa 9–11.
86. with the Muses … activates all things: See Numa 8–9 and 13.
87. everything … kept hidden: The objects guarded by the Vestals were secret. Nevertheless, ancient writers offered many suggestions.
88. Palladium: A wooden image of Pallas Athena that fell from the sky and was kept by the Trojans.
89. Samothracian images … came to Italy: Dion. Hal. (1.68–9) reports how the mysteries of the Great Gods were established on Samothrace (an island in the northern Aegean) by the Arcadians, where ultimately there was a famous Panhellenic sanctuary devoted to them. Dardanus was said to have devoted a temple to these gods on Samothrace before he went on to found Troy; their sacred images were later removed to Troy and Aeneas ultimately carried them to Italy. See further H. Bowden, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World (2010), pp. 49–67.
90. Quirinus: The god came to be identified as the deified Romulus. His temple was located on the Quirinal Hill near what is now the Via del Quirinale (Romulus 28–9).
91. Jars: The Doliola was apparently a place in the Forum Boarium near the Cloaca Maxima under which were buried jars (dolia). Accounts of their origin and purpose varied.
92. a Greek city: Other sources name the Vestals’ destination as Caere (modern Cerveteri), a Hellenized Etruscan city.
93. Fabius: The chief priest (pontifex maximus) was Marcus Folius (consular tribune in 433); the name, however, may have already been corrupted in Plutarch’s sources.
94. Heracleides �
�� Great Sea: Heracleides of Pontus was a fourth-century BC philosopher who studied with Plato and Aristotle. His works, especially his dialogues, which incorporated colourful mythical tales, were widely influential though they are now almost entirely lost. The Hyperboreans were a mythical people who dwelt in the very far north. The Great Sea was Heracleides’ strange and apparently misleading expression for the Mediterranean.
95. report of the city’s capture by the Gauls … Marcus: Aristotle recorded this event in a now lost work. What Plutarch takes to be Aristotle’s error owes itself to the reality that, when he wrote, Camillus had not yet been made into Rome’s saviour; scholarly efforts to identify his Lucius bring varying results, though it is possible that Aristotle had in mind an account in which Lucius Albinius played a more substantial role than the one preserved in this Life and in other sources. Other early Greek sources took notice of Rome’s fall, e.g. the Greek historian Theopompus (cited by Pliny, Natural History 3.57).
96. Manius Papirius: In Livy (5.41.9) he is Marcus Papirius; in Valerius Maximus (3.2.7) he is Marcus Atilius.
97. Pontius Cominius: At Moralia 324f Plutarch calls him Gaius Pontius.
98. Carmental Gate: The Porta Carmentalis was located at the southwest corner of the Capitol.
99. appointed Camillus dictator: The procedure for appointing a dictator is described in Marcellus 24.
100. [So it was … enemy]: The sentence in brackets largely reproduces its predecessor. Plutarch cannot have intended to preserve both versions.
101. Manlius, a former consul: Marcus Manlius Capitolinus was consul in 392.
102. reward … of wine: Cf. the reward granted Horatius Cocles at Publicola 16.
103. Sulpicius: Quintus Sulpicius Longus was consular tribune in 390.
104. proverbial saying: Cf. Livy 5.48.9: vae victis.
105. Gabii: A prosperous Latin city, approximately 12 miles (19 km) east of Rome. Plutarch’s situation of the Gallic camp corresponds closely with Livy’s (5.49.6).
106. Ides of … February: Plutarch uses Quintilis instead of July. The Ides fell on 15 July: the battle of Allia took place on 18 July and the sack of Rome on the third day thereafter (ch. 22); in February the Ides also fell on the fifteenth.
107. Rumour and Voice: See ch. 14. Plutarch here translates Aius Locutius, a divinity each of whose names signifies speaking. His altar was on the Palatine.
108. severed … head of all Italy: An enduring Roman belief (Livy 1.55.5 and Dion. Hal. 4.59–61).
109. Lucius Lucretius: Lucius Lucretius Flavus was suffect consul in 393 (and several times thereafter a consular tribune). Plutarch suggests here that, of the senators distinguished by high office, he was the leading member (princeps senatus).
110. in a spirit of religious deference … agreed with the god: A common form of divination was to take up an overheard remark and apply it to one’s own circumstances. Here Lucretius accepts the omen by employing the routine senatorial formula for agreeing with a preceding speaker (‘I agree with so-and-so’).
111. shrine of Mars: This was the Curia Saliorum on the Palatine, a shrine supervised by the Salii (Numa 13), a priesthood associated with the worship of Mars (Cicero, On Divination 1.30, and Valerius Maximus 1.8.11).
112. augural staff … as Romulus … had done with this one: See Romulus 22. The augurs employed this staff in demarcating a templum, a sacred precinct in the sky, in which to observe omens.
113. Romulus vanished: This is discussed in Romulus 27–9 and Numa 2.
114. Sutrium: Modern Sutri, originally an Etruscan city, about 28 miles (45 km) northwest of Rome.
115. appointed dictator for the third time: In 389.
116. fabulous version: Plutarch relates an abbreviated version of this tale at Romulus 29. It is also recounted (with the same uncertainty concerning the slave’s name) by Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.11.36–40; at 3.2.11, however, Macrobius cites the historian Calpurnius Piso, who says the invaders were Etruscans.
117. Capratine Nones: The Nones of July fell on the seventh. This festival was also known as the Ancillarum Feriae, the Festival for Slave Women.
118. recorded in his Life: See Romulus 29 and Numa 2. In all three passages Plutarch confounds the Capratine Nones with the Poplifugia (The Flight of the People), which took place on 5 July and commemorated the disappearance of Romulus, but this confusion may have existed already in Plutarch’s sources, inasmuch as the Poplifugia was well out of fashion by the first century BC (Varro, On the Latin Language 6.18).
119. night attack … Capitolinus: See ch. 27. Manlius was not the first Roman or the first in his family to have the name Capitolinus, which he possessed owing to the family’s residence on the Capitoline.
120. Quintus Capitolinus … dictator: According to Livy (6.11.10 and 15–16), the dictator was Aulus Cornelius Cossus and Titus Quinctius Capitolinus was his master of the horse.
121. again elected consular tribune: In 384.
122. prosecutors: Manlius was prosecuted by the tribunes of the people Marcus Menenius and Quintus Publilius.
123. the Peteline Grove: Immediately outside the Porta Flumentana (the River Gate), where the height of the wall obscured the Capitoline.
124. built … a temple to … Moneta: The temple of Juno Moneta was vowed by Lucius Furius Camillus, dictator in 345, and son or grandson of Camillus.
125. no patrician … dwell on the Capitol: According to a different tradition, reflected in Livy (6.20.13), the family was obliged to surrender its use of the name Capitolinus.
126. sixth time … consular tribune: In 381.
127. Lucius Furius: Lucius Furius Medullinus.
128. Praenestines: Inhabitants of Praeneste (modern Palestrina), a prosperous Latin city and an important religious centre.
129. Satricum: Modern Le Ferriere, a Latin town frequently fought over in accounts of the fourth century BC.
130. Tusculans: Inhabitants of Tusculum, located near modern Frascati, 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Rome; it was a formidable Latin city in the fifth and fourth centuries. An early Roman ally, Tusculum was annexed to Rome in 381.
131. the city was disturbed by a radical controversy: Plutarch’s narrative becomes severely concise here. From 376 to 367, Gaius Licinius Stolo and Lucius Sextius Lateranus were tribunes of the people and proposed a programme of legislation reducing debt, regulating the occupation of public land and opening the consulship to plebeians; the particulars of this episode are no longer discoverable and in any case are of dubious historicity, but the event was remembered by the Romans as a significant watershed in their history.
132. elections were thwarted by the multitude: No consuls or consular tribunes were elected from 375 to 371.
133. dictator for the fourth time: In 368, though by then the election of consular tribunes had again begun.
134. appointed another dictator: Publius Manlius Capitolinus. His master of the horse was named Gaius Licinius. Cassius Dio agrees with Plutarch that this was the tribune of the people Stolo, but Livy’s evidence (6.39.3) points elsewhere, probably to Gaius Licinius Calvus (consul in 364 or 361).
135. 500 iugera of land: Somewhat more than 300 acres; this law actually regulated the amount of public land (i.e. land owned by the state) that anyone could rent, not the total amount of land that an individual could possess.
136. appointed dictator for the fifth time: In 367.
137. River Anio: The modern Aniene, which ultimately joins the Tiber.
138. thirteen years after Rome was sacked: Presumably Plutarch meant to write twenty-three not thirteen.
139. exempting priests … against the Gauls: This was a state of emergency called a tumultus Gallicus by the Romans. Plutarch mentions it again at Marcellus 3.
140. Velitrae: Modern Velletri, a Volscian town located in Latium, perhaps most famous as the birthplace of the emperor Augustus.
141. temple … forum and the place of assembly: The temple of Concord was situated at the foot of the Capitoline, overlooking the Roman
Forum, where it is still evident.
142. add a day to … the Latin Festival: According to Livy (6.42.12), an additional day was added to the Roman Games, not to the Latin Festival.
143. Marcus Aemilius … plebeian consul: In 366 the patrician consul was Lucius Aemilius Mamercinus; his plebeian colleague was Lucius Sextius Lateranus.
144. the very next year: In 365, the year after the first plebeian actually held his consulship (not the year after his election).
FABIUS MAXIMUS
Further Reading
There is a useful Italian commentary by P. A. Stadter, R. Guerrini and A. Santoni, Plutarco, Vite Parallele: Pericle e Fabio Massimo (1991). Without question, the most important interpretative essay on this Life is P. A. Stadter, ‘Plutarch’s Comparison of Pericles and Fabius Maximus’, in Scardigli, Essays, pp. 155–64. More recently, R. Scuderi, ‘L’humanitas di Fabio Massimo nella biografia plutarchea’, Athenaeum 98 (2010), pp. 467–88, provides a close reading of the whole of the Life. The virtue of mildness, crucial to Fabius’ character, is explained by H. Martin, ‘The Concept of Praotes in Plutarch’s Lives’, GRBS 3 (1960), pp. 65–73. This Life has an obvious relationship with Marcellus, which is discussed (in German) by H. Beck, ‘Interne Synkrisis bei Plutarch’, Hermes 130 (2002), pp. 467–89. The conflicting strands of Fabius’ reputation in the Roman tradition are examined by M. B. Roller, ‘The consul(ar) as exemplum: Fabius Cunctator’s paradoxical glory’, in H. Beck, A. Duplá, M. Jehne and F. Pina Pola (eds.), Consuls and Res Publica: Holding High Office in the Roman Republic (2011), pp. 182–210.
On the historical background, see A. Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars (2000), and J. Briscoe, ‘The Second Punic War’, in CAH viii (1989), pp. 44–80. An important review of the so-called Fabian strategy is offered by P. Erdkamp, ‘Polybius, Livy and the Fabian Strategy’, Ancient Society 22 (1992), pp. 127–47. In view of Polybius’ importance, there is much to be gleaned from the relevant portions of Walbank, Commentary, vols. 1 and 2. Livy’s view of Fabius is well treated by D. S. Levene, Livy on the Hannibalic War (2010), pp. 111–18, 198–210 and 229–31.