Summer 217 BC
Fabius the Delayer
After Trasimene the Roman assembly elects Quintus Fabius Maximus dictator for six months. His master of horse, Marcus Minucius Rufus, is also chosen by the people, not by Fabius. Fabius has the walls of Rome repaired, takes over the army of Servilius and marches along the Via Appia into Apulia.
Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, marble statue by Johann Baptist Hagenauer, 1773 to 1780, in the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace, ViennaWikimedia Commons, Herzi Pinki, CC BY-SA 4.0 (N26 Fabius Cunctator, Schönbrunn (02).jpg)
Near Arpi he camps at Aecae, about 9 km from the Carthaginians, and refuses the battle Hannibal offers. In the following months he follows the Carthaginian army along the high ground, keeps between it and Rome and cuts down its foragers, but he does not fight a pitched battle. His critics call him Cunctator, the Delayer.
Hannibal marches west through Samnium, past Beneventum, which shuts its gates, and Telesia, and crosses the Volturnus into the Ager Falernus in northern Campania. The plain is closed in by mountains and rivers, and its farms are among the richest in Italy. The Carthaginians plunder it all summer while Fabius watches from the hills.
Central Italy at the time of the Second Punic War, after Beloch, from P. V. N. Myers, Rome: Its Rise and Fall, 1900Wikimedia Commons, Internet Archive Book Images, no known copyright restrictions (Rome - its rise and fall; a text-book for high schools and colleges (1900) (14782414974).jpg)
Sources
- Polybius, Histories, book 3, 86 to 92.
- Livy, History of Rome, book 22, 8 to 13.
- Plutarch, Life of Fabius Maximus.
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