476 BC the gens Fabius was annihilated by the Veintines in the Battle of the Cremerea --
479 BC the Romans found themselves confronted by enemies on several fronts; the Aequi, an Italiote people living up against the foothills of the Apennines about 40 miles or so to the east of Rome, the Volsci, another Italiote people living about 40 miles or so to the south, and the Veientines, the Etruscan inhabitants of Veii, only about a dozen miles or so to the north, who were taking advantage of the situation to conduct occasional raids into Roman territory.
At the time, the Republic probably had no more than 7,000-10,000 men available for military service, most likely some clan warbands and mercenary companies, rather than in the two proto-legions of 3,500-5,000 men found in the works of Livy (c. 60 BC-AD 17) and other ancient writers, who were trying to work out the city’s early history from fragmentary records. To help carry on the war, the leaders of gens Fabia, or Clan Fabius as we might put it in English, offered to cope with the Veientine threat on their own, thus freeing the Consuls to lead the rest of the army against the Aequi and the Volsci. Now this may seem surprising, but military operations by a clan were not unknown. Some years earlier the gens Vitellia had committed itself to a similar mission, to secure a settlement that had been established in Aequian territory. So, according to the Livian tradition the Fabians mustered an army of 306 family members plus some thousands of clients and slaves, and built a stronghold on the River Cremera, a tributary of the Tiber, close by the Veientine frontier.
Over the following year or so, the Fabii were able to beat off most Veientine raids. In 478 BC the Veientines sent an unusually large raiding force against the Romans, but were defeated by the Fabii, who were reinforced by troops led by the Consul Lucius Aemilius Mamercinus. A truce was concluded, which lasted for a while. Then the Veientines resumed occasional raids across the frontier, which were defeated by the Fabians, who in turn began raiding Veientine territory, and may have been doing it all along anyway; In effect, a series of cattle raids was elevated into a “war” in traditional memory, which informed later historians. (Something akin to the Reivers on the Anglo-Scottish border..)
In 477 or 476, the Veientines set a trap. By some ruse, they convinced the Fabii that their army had marched away on an expedition. The Veientines then left a lot of cattle straying around, seemingly unguarded between Veii and the Fabian stronghold. The Fabians attempted to capture the cattle. Naturally this dispersed their forces. As the Fabians were chasing the cattle, the Veientines emerged from their city and attacked. According to Livy, the Veientines managed to surround the Fabians, but the Fabians attacked in a wedge formation, broke the encirclement, and reached the relative security of a nearby hill. There the Fabii made their stand, to be overwhelmed as fresh Veientine troops arrived. Reportedly every single male Fabian died that day but one, Quintus Fabius Vibulanus, who was too young to go to war.
Now there’s a lot of uncertainty about these events. But then, just about everything in Roman history before about 350 BC is pretty uncertain. For example, tradition places the defeat of the Fabii on July 18, 477 BC, which is too coincidental; July 18th was the date of the disastrous Roman defeat by the Gauls on the River Allia in 390 or 387 BC and also of the Roman humiliation by the Samnites at the Caudine Forks in 321 BC, so the date was marked as unlucky in the Roman calendar. Oddly, in his Fasti, an incomplete work on the Roman calendar and religion, the poet Ovid (43 BC-c. AD 18) put the battle on Feb 13, 476 BC, which is perhaps more accurate.
Another problem is the number of Fabii in the battle. Livy says that 306 adult Fabians perished in the “war” with Veii, along with “thousands” of their clients and followers. But if that were so, it would seem improbable that little Quintus was the only male family member not present; there ought to have been some dozens of under aged boys, not to mention a few old geezers unfit to take the field. Livy’s figure for the size of the clan– supposedly 306 – is not out of line if we assume that it includes the clients, hangers on, and slaves of the Fabians, given what we known from tradition about the great families of the early Republic. The famous Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, later consul and twice dictator, was in his 40s at the time of Cremera, and ploughed his own fields despite being a patrician, like the Fabii, and even two centuries later the patrician Caius Atilius Regulus Serranus, twice Consul, had hands calloused from ploughing, hardly suggesting they commanded thousands of clients and slaves.
The details of the battle are also rather curious – if the Fabians scattered to capture the cattle, how was it possible for them to be surrounded with no one escaping? And then there’s that supposed breakout from the encirclement and final stand on the hill, where the Fabians were wiped out – but if that were so, how could the story of what happened be known? Who lived to tell the tale, save the Veintines? Much of this was probably fabrication, cooked up to make a local disaster on the frontier seem more heroic.
This not to deny that some sort of disaster overtook the Fabii around 477 or 476 BC. The consular lists show that from 485 BC until 479 BC three of the Fabii held one or another of the higher offices of state – consul or praetor – each year, an older Quintus and his brothers Kaeso and Marius, all of whom presumably perished on the Cremera. After 479 BC a Fabius is not found listed as consul until the younger Quintus in 467, and although he held the office twice more, in 465 BC and 459 BC, the family appears on the consular lists only sporadically for some time thereafter.
So something happened, but we will probably never know what.
How Old Was “Little” Quintus? Livy tells us that Quintus was too young to go to war. But that doesn’t make sense; Quintus held the first of his three consulships in 467, only a decade after the disaster. If in 477/476, he had been younger than 16 or so, the age at which a Roman of noble family usually first went on campaign, he would have been rather young to be consul in 467. We don’t know what the age requirement for the consulship was at the time, but it certainly wasn’t 25 or so; Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, noted above, was 59 when he attained his first consulship, although his younger brother Titus had secured his when he was 42, which is know to have been the official age requirement in later years. So that’s yet another uncertainty to Livy’s tale.
Evil Omens. The Romans were quite devoted to signs and omens, and Ovid tells us that when they marched out of the city to assume their duties on the Cremera, the Fabians left by the “right hand arch of the Carmentalis Gate,” and adds, for the benefit of his readers, “Let no one go that way: it is unlucky.”
1021 Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, Caliph of Eygpt(996-1021), noted scientist, bibliophile, and eccentric, took a solo walk into the desert and disappeared, c. 36
