whereas Livy describes it as a great victory. The Veientes are said to have been assisted by the other Etruscans in this battle; and according to Dionysius it was, looking to the numbers engaged, the length of the conflict, and the even balance of the result, the greatest battle which the Romans had hitherto fought so that its memory would doubtless have lasted for many years. It is likewise stated to have relieved the Fabii from the unpopularity which had been brought upon them by the accusation of Cassius. (162) § 30 At the beginning of the next year, K. Fabius, now consul for the third time, desirous of promoting concord between the two orders, proposes to the Senate an equal division of the conquered land, but in vain.(163) Virginius, the other consul, having invaded the Veientine territory, is surprised and surrounded; but is afterwards relieved by his colleague, who marches from the Equian country. After the armies have been disbanded, the Veientes ravage the land as far as the Tiber, and Mount Janiculum. (164) The incursions of the Veientes into the Roman territory upon the northern bank of the Tiber are now felt to be so serious, that the Senate deliberate upon the means of their prevention. It is agreed that a permanent border-guard is necessary for the purpose, and the Fabian clan offer to perform this service. They muster 306 members; and march out of Rome, according to Livy, under the command of K. Fabius the consul. Ovid likewise, who relates this story in his Fasti, limits the expedition to the 306 Fabii.(165) Diony to deceive fate especially, have an antique air;' Niebuhr, Lect. vol. i. p. 162. The account in Dionysius is more detailed than that in Livy, and he alone mentions the attempt to cheat the prodigy; his belief in the truth of his narrative was doubtless as absolute as Livy's. It may be observed that Niebuhr's judgment on the credibility of this narrative rests entirely upon internal grounds. Compare Hist. vol. ii. p. 199. (162) Dion. Hal. ix. 7-13; Livy, ii. 44-7. Dionysius states that Fabius the consul, being severely wounded, abdicated his office two months before the end of his year. (163) Livy, ii. 48. (165) (164) Livy, ib. Dion. Hal. ix. 14. Fast. ii. 195-8. sius however, in order to soften the improbability of the story, describes the 306 Fabii, led by M. Fabius, the consul of the previous year, as accompanied by a body of clients and companions 4000 strong; he states moreover that K. Fabius, the consul, followed them with a consular army.(166) The Fabii march out of Rome by the right opening of the Porta Carmentalis; which obtained the name of Porta Scelerata, and remained an ill-omened gate, from the time of this fatal expedition. (167) Thence they proceed to the Cremera, a small stream near Veii, and build a fort upon a hill, from which they ravage the Veientine country. In the next year there are operations against the Volscians, Equians, and Etruscans. The latter are defeated by the consul Emilius, and their camp is taken, which, it is remarked, yielded much plunder, on account of the skilful and luxurious habits of their nation. (168) According to Dionysius, Æmilius, after this victory, compelled the Veientes to furnish a war contribution to his army, but being empowered by the Senate to conclude a treaty with them, gave them easy terms, and did not effectually cripple their power. The Senate are displeased at this conduct, and send him against the Vol (166) Dion. Hal. ix. 15. Festus, indeed, in the abridgment of Paulus, gives a similar account: Scelerata porta, quæ et Carmentalis dicitur, vocata, quod per eam sex et trecenti Fabii cum clientium millibus quinque egressi adversus Etruscos ad amnem Cremeram omnes sunt interfecti; p. 335. See the mutilated text in p. 334. The name of the Vicus Sceleratus was traced to the wicked deed of Tullia in driving over her father's dead body. See above, vol. i. p. 506, and p. 508, n. 101. (167) Livy, ii. 49; Florus, i. 12; Ovid, Fast. ii. 201-2; Serv. Æn. viii. 337. It is stated by Dio Cass. xxi. 3, that the Romans placed the day of their destruction among the unlucky days, and set a stigma upon the gate out of which they marched. Festus connects with this expedition another legend, respecting the temple of Janus: Religioni est quibusdam portâ Carmentali egredi; et in æde Jani, quæ est extra eam, Senatum haberi; quod eâ egressi sex et trecenti Fabii apud Cremeram omnes interfecti sunt, cum in æde Jani senatusconsultum factum esset, uti proficiscerentur; p. 285. If the restoration of the text in p. 334, adopted by Müller, is correct, it was unlucky to leave or enter Rome by this gate. Compare Niebuhr's explanation, Hist. vol. ii. p. 196; Becker, vol. i. p. 138. (168) Dion. Hal. ix. 16. Livy is silent as to the armies sent against the Volscians and Equians, but mentions this battle, in which he says the Etruscans were driven back to the Saxa Rubra,' where they were encamped; ii. 49. VOL. II. L scians, but he disbands his army, and stirs up the people to discontent, by referring to the suspended agrarian decree.(169) In the meantime, the other eleven Etruscan states complain of Veii for making a separate treaty with Rome, and give her the option of abandonment of the treaty or war. The Veientes use the fortification on the Cremera as a pretext for making the treaty; and they demand that their territory should be evacuated. The Romans answer this demand by sending a consular army to the relief of the place, but before it arrives, the fort is taken by the Veientes, and the Fabii are cut off to a man. (170) Of this catastrophe, there were, according to Dionysius, two accounts: both of which were related by trustworthy writers, but one of them seemed to him much worthier of belief than the other.(171) One story was that the Fabii set out for Rome, in a body, with a few clients, in order to perform there some hereditary religious rites; but that on the way they fell into an ambush of the Veientes, and were all killed. This version of the story is rejected by Dionysius, because he thinks that the Fabii would have deputed three or four of their number to go to Rome for the religious solemnity, and that the whole body would not have left the fort. The other (which he prefers) was that the Veientes, having enticed them into the open country by leaving cattle and horses at large, fell upon them unawares, and destroyed them.(172) The latter account is related by Livy, without allusion to the existence of a discordant version: it is also followed (169) Dion. Hal. ix. 17. He calls the agreement of the Senate respecting the agrarian question, αἱ περὶ τῆς κληρουχίας ὑποσχέσεις, Livy does not mention these proceedings of Æmilius, or the treaty with Veii. (170) Livy, ii. 49, says that the Veientes implored for peace; and having obtained it, they repented of their own act, from fickleness, before the Roman garrison was withdrawn from Cremera. He does not recognise the interference of the other Etruscan states. Concerning the situation of the river Cremera, see Gell and Nibby, art. Veii. (171) ix. 18, 21. As to double accounts in the history of Cambyses, see Herod. iii. 32. Herodotus says that with respect to the history of Cyrus, he shall relate the unadorned truth, ἐπιστάμενος περὶ Κύρου καὶ τριφασίας ἄλλας λόγων ὁδοὺς φῆναι, i. 95. (172) Dion. Hal. ix. 19, 20. by Ovid, though its circumstances are less poetical than those of the other. But whatever was the cause of the destruction of the Fabii, it was an essential part of the story, that 306 died at the fort, and that only one child, which had been left at Rome, survived to save the Fabian name from extinction. (173) Dionysius treats this latter circumstance as fabulous, and has no difficulty in proving the improbability of there being only one child to so many adult men of fighting age: but he makes no attempt to show that this particular does not rest on the same attestation as the rest of the narrative. (174) The account given by Diodorus is that a war having arisen between the Romans and the Veientes, a great battle took place near the place called Cremera. The Romans were defeated, and many were slain, among whom (as some of the historians reported) were the three hundred Fabii, belonging to the same kindred, and therefore bearing the same name.(175) This is the earliest notice of Roman history in Diodorus after the time of the kings, though he mentions some of the previous consuls. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that a numerous and powerful clan, such as that of the Fabii, should have undertaken to garrison a fort at a short distance from Rome, though within a hostile territory, for the sake of harassing the enemy, and protecting the Roman frontiers. It is equally conceivable that they may have been surprised, their stronghold (173) Fabii cæsi ad unum omnes, præsidiumque expugnatum; trecentos sex perisse satis convenit: unum prope puberem ætate relictum; Livy, ii. 50. Although Livy, c. 49, speaks of the Fabii being followed by a crowd of cognati and sodales, when they left Rome, he conceives the garrison of the hill-fort to have been limited to the 306 Fabii; hence he speaks of their 'paucitas insignis,' when attacked by the Etruscans. The brief account in Zonaras, vii. 17, speaks of the 306 Fabii having fortified a place in the Etruscan territory, and having fallen into an ambush, where they were all killed, except one youth who had been left at Rome. See also Eutrop. i. 16. (174) Ib. 22; he says: μύθοις γὰρ δὴ ταῦτά γε καὶ πλάσμασιν ἔοικε θεατρικοῖς. (175) xi. 53. He agrees with the other authorities in referring this event to the consulship of Horatius and Menenius. Niebuhr, Hist. vol. ii. n. 457, thinks that the destruction of the Fabii and the subsequent defeat of Menenius are confounded by Diodorus, and mixed up into one battle. taken, and themselves overpowered and slain. But when we are told that there were two discordant accounts of the mode of their destruction-a fact about which their contemporaries could have had no doubt-and we meet with the romantic incident of the one surviving boy, (176) it is difficult to know how far we are entitled to consider the narrative as historical. We cannot assume that the events were preserved by any contemporary records ; and although Fabius Pictor, when he wrote his history, may have been induced, by hereditary feelings, to collect all the extant accounts respecting this adventure, he could have obtained nothing authentic from oral tradition at a distance of two centuries and a half. The presence of a Fabius in the consulship for the seven successive years, from 485 to 479 B.C., (177) combined with the expedition to the Cremera, proves the great pre-eminence of the clan at this period; but it cannot be shown, nor is it likely, that they possessed authentic family annals, before a contemporary history had been composed for the state itself. (178) The anniversary of the catastrophe at the Cremera was observed in later times on the same day as that of the battle of the Allia ;(179) a suspicious coincidence, which (176) Q. Fabius Vibulanus, son of one of the three brothers killed at the Cremera, was consul in 467 B.C., the eleventh year after the disaster at the Cremera, according to Livy, iii. 1; Dion. Hal. ix. 59. If he was a boy in 477 B.C., he could not now have been more than 23 or 24 years of age; but at this time there were probably no leges annales, and (as Crevier remarks) M. Valerius Corvus is stated by Livy to have been consul in 348 B.C., when he was only 23 years old; vii. 26. The statement as to the consulship is therefore not inconsistent with the other story. Compare Niebuhr, Hist. vol. ii. p. 194. According to a notice in Festus, p. 170, this Fabius married the rich daughter of a citizen of Maleventum, and their son bore the prænomen of Numerius from his maternal grandfather. Its truth is doubted by Madvig, Opuscula, p. 274, cited by Müller. (177) Kæso, Quintus, and Marcus Fabius Vibulanus, three brothers. Kæso was consul three times, the others were each consul twice. They are all supposed to have been killed at the Cremera. (178) See Niebuhr, Hist. vol. ii. p. 198. (179) Dion. Hal. ix. 23, says that the Roman state treats the day on which this calamity occurred, as black and ill-omened, and would not begin any good work upon it. As to the anniversary of the Cremera coinciding with that of the Allia, and falling on the fifteenth day before the Calends of Sextilis, or August, see Livy, vi. 1; Plut. Cam. 19; Tac. Hist. ii. 91. Nevertheless Ovid places it on the ides of February; Fast. ii. 195. This discrepancy cannot be explained. See Merkel ad Fast. præf. p. lxiii. |