Fabia gens

The gens Fabia was one of the most ancient patrician families at ancient Rome. The gens played a prominent part in history soon after the establishment of the Republic, and three brothers were invested with seven successive consulships, from 485 to 479 BC, thereby cementing the high repute of the family. Overall, the Fabii received 45 consulships during the Republic. The house derived its greatest lustre from the patriotic courage and tragic fate of the 306 Fabii in the Battle of the Cremera, 477 BC. But the Fabii were not distinguished as warriors alone; several members of the gens were also important in the history of Roman literature and the arts.

The family is generally thought to have been counted amongst the gentes maiores, the most prominent of the patrician houses at Rome, together with the Aemilii, Claudii, Cornelii, Manlii, and Valerii; but no list of the gentes maiores has survived, and even the number of families so designated is a complete mystery. Until 480 BC, the Fabii were staunch supporters of the aristocratic policies favoring the patricians and the senate against the plebs. However, following a great battle that year against the Veientes, in which victory was achieved only by cooperation between the generals and their soldiers, the Fabii aligned themselves with the plebs.

One of the thirty-five voting tribes into which the Roman people were divided was named after the Fabii; several tribes were named after important gentes, including the tribes Aemilia, Claudia, Cornelia, Fabia, Papiria, Publilia, Sergia, and Veturia. Several of the others appear to have been named after lesser families.

The most famous legend of the Fabii asserts that, following the last of the seven consecutive consulships in 479 BC, the gens undertook the war with Veii as a private obligation. A militia consisting of over three hundred men of the gens, together with their friends and clients, a total of some four thousand men, stationed itself in arms on a hill overlooking the Cremera, a small river between Rome and Veii. The cause of this secession is said to have been the enmity between the Fabii and the patricians, who regarded them as traitors for advocating the causes of the plebeians. The Fabian militia remained in their camp on the Cremera for two years, successfully opposing the Veientes, until at last, on the fifteenth day before the kalends of Sextilis—July 18, 477 BC—they were lured into an ambush and destroyed. Three hundred and six Fabii of fighting age were said to have perished in the disaster, leaving only a single survivor to return home. By some accounts he was the only survivor of the entire gens; but it seems unlikely that the camp of the Fabii included not only all of the men, but the women and children of the family as well. They and the elders of the gens probably remained at Rome.

This story was considerably embellished at a later date in order to present the Battle of the Cremera as a Roman counterpart to the Greek Battle of Thermopylae. However, historian Tim Cornell writes that there is no reason to doubt the historicity of the battle, because the tribus Fabia—presumably where the Fabii had their country estates—was located near the Cremera, on the border with Veii. The day on which the Fabii perished was forever remembered, as it was the same day that the Gauls defeated the Roman army at the Battle of the Allia in 390 BC. The Gauls had marched on Rome only in retaliation after Quintus Fabius Ambustus, sent as an ambassador, broke a truce to attack the Gauls at Clusium.

Throughout the history of the Republic, the Fabii made several alliances with other prominent families, especially plebeian and Italian ones, which partly explains their long prominence. The first of such alliances that can be traced dates from the middle of the fifth century and was with the Poetelii; it lasted for at least a century. In the fourth century, the Fabii were allied to the patrician Manlii and the plebeian Genucii and Licinii, whom they supported during the Conflict of the Orders. They then occupied an unprecedented leading position in the third century, as three generations of Fabii were princeps senatus—a unique occurrence during the Republic. During this period, they allied with the plebeian Atilii from Campania, where the Fabii had significant estates, the Fulvii and Mamilii from Tusculum, the Otacili from Beneventum, the Ogulnii from Etruria, and the Marcii. They also sponsored the emergence of the Caecilii Metelli and Porcii, who owed their first consulate to the Fabii, as well as the re-emergence of the patrician Quinctii. The main direction of the second war against Carthage was disputed between the Fabii and the Cornelii Scipiones. The death of Fabius Verrucosus in 203 marks the end of the Fabian leadership on Roman politics, by now assumed by their rivals: Scipio Africanus and his family. After the consulship of Fabius Maximus Eburnus in 116, the Fabii entered a century-long eclipse, until their temporary revival under Augustus.

The name of the Fabii was associated with one of the two colleges of the Luperci, the priests who carried on the sacred rites of the ancient religious festival of the Lupercalia. The other college bore the name of the Quinctilii, suggesting that in the earliest times these two gentes superintended these rites as a sacrum gentilicum, much as the Pinarii and Potitii maintained the worship of Hercules. Such sacred rites were gradually transferred to the state, or opened to the Roman populus; a well-known legend attributed the destruction of the Potitii to the abandonment of its religious office. In later times the privilege of the Lupercalia had ceased to be confined to the Fabii and the Quinctilii.

According to legend, the Fabii claimed descent from Hercules, who visited Italy a generation before the Trojan War, and from Evander, his host, through Fabius. This brought the Fabii into the same tradition as the Pinarii and Potitii, who were said to have welcomed Hercules and learned from him the sacred rites which for centuries afterward they performed in his honor.