Quintus Fabius Maximus (consul 213 BC)

For other people with similar names, see Fabius#Fabii Maximi.

Quintus Fabius Maximus was a consul of the Roman Republic in 213 BC. He was the son of Fabius Maximus, the famous dictator who invented Fabian strategy, and served with his father during the Second Punic War.

The younger Fabius was a military tribune in 216 BC, and was among the survivors of the Battle of Cannae who ended up at Canusium.[1] In 215, he was curule aedile.[2] As praetor in 214, he commanded two legions with which he captured Acuca in Luceria as well as a fortified camp near Ardoneae.[3]

As consul for the following year, he took over his father's command of the army in Apulia and recaptured Arpi.[4] He seems to have remained in Arpi with a few troops as a legatus, a legate or lieutenant, in 212 BC.[5] In 209–208, he was serving still or again as a legatus during his father's fifth consulship. The elder Fabius sent him to recover the survivors of the army under Gnaeus Fulvius Centumalus, who had been killed in a surprise attack by Hannibal in 210. They accompanied him to Sicily, where Fabius took over the legions and fleet assigned to the proconsul Marcus Valerius Laevinus.[6] In 208, he was sent by the senate to the army at Venusia.[7] He may have been the envoy of the consul Marcus Livius Salinator in 207 who reported to the senate that it was safe to withdraw the consular army from Cisalpine Gaul.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Livy, 22.53.1–8; T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association, 1951, 1986), vol. 1, p. 251. Unless otherwise noted, citations of ancient sources are those of Broughton.
  2. ↑ Livy 24.9.4; Broughton, MRR1, p. 255.
  3. ↑ Livy, 24.11.2, 12.6, 20.8; Broughton, MRR1, p. 259
  4. ↑ Livy, 24.44–47; Claudius Quadrigarius frg. 57 in the edition of Peter; Valerius Maximus 2.2.4; Frontinus, Stratagems 3.9.2; Plutarch, Life of Fabius Maximus 24; Appian, Hannibalic War 31; Broughton, MRR1, pp. 262–263.
  5. ↑ Silius Italicus 12.479–482; Broughton, MRR1, p. 272, note 8.
  6. ↑ The consular command of Laevinus in 210 had been prorogued out of military necessity into the following year. Livy 27.8.13; Broughton, MRR1, pp. 280, 287, 288.
  7. ↑ Livy 27.29.1–4; Broughton, MRR1, p. 292.
  8. ↑ The identity of this envoy is not secure. Livy 28.9.1–2; Broughton, MRR1, pp. 297, 298 note 4.
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