Vibulanus

the name of the most ancient family of the Fabia gens. It was so powerful in the early times of the republic that three brothers of the family held the consulship for seven years in succession, B. C. 485_479. The last person of the gens who bore this surname was Q. Fabius Vibulanus, consul, B. C. 412. This Vibulanus assumed the agnomen of Ambustus; and his descendants dropt the name of Vibulanus and took that of Ambustus in its place. In the same way Ambustus was after a time supplanted by that of Maximus. [Ambustus; Maximus.]

1. Q. Fabius Vibulanus, K. F., consul B. C. 485 with Ser. Cornelius Cossus Maluginensis, carried on war with success against the Volsci and Aequi; but instead of dividing the booty among the soldiers, he sold it, and deposited the money arising from the sale in the public treasury. In this year Sp. Cassius Viscellinus was condemned to death. In B. C. 482 Fabius Vibulanus was consul a second time with C. Julius Julus. Both consuls marched against the Veientes, but as the enemy did not appear in the field, they devastated their land and returned home. In B. C. 480 Fabius fought under his brother Marcus [No. 3] against the Etruscans, and was killed in battle. (Liv. 2.41_43, 46; Dionys. A. R. 8.77, 82, 90, 9.11.)

2. K. Fabius Vibulanus, K. F., brother of the preceding, was quaestor parricidii in B. C. 485, and along with his colleague L. Valerius accused Sp. Cassius Viscellinus, who was in consequence condemned by the votes of the populus. Although the name of the Fabii had become hateful to the plebeians in consequence of Q. Fabius, who was consul this year, depriving the soldiers of the booty they had gained in the war, nevertheless the patricians carried the election of K. Fabius, who was accordingly consul in the following year B. C. 484 with L. Aemilius Mamercus. Kaeso took an active part with his colleague in opposing the agrarian law, which the tribunes of the people attempted to bring forward. According to Dionysius Kaeso came to the assistance of his colleague, who had been defeated by the Volsci, but Livy says nothing of Kaeso, and represents Mamercus as conquering the Volsci. (Liv. 2.41, 42; Dionys. A. R. 8.77, foil., 8.82-86.) Niebuhr supposes that a great change in the constitution was effected on the election of K. Fabius and his colleague to the consulship. He maintains that the election of the consuls was then transferred from the Comitia Centuriata to the Comitia Curiata, and that the choice of the latter assembly was only ratified by the former. He further supposes that a compromise took place three years afterwards, B. C. 482, in virtue of which the centuriae had the election of one consul and the curiae of the other, and that this continued to be the practice till the decemvirate. (His. of Rome, vol. ii. p. 177, foll.) Our limits do not permit us to go to an investigation of this point, and we can only remark that Niebuhr's view is supported by no positive testimony, and has been rejected by most subsequent scholars. (Göttling, Römische Staatsverfassung, p. 308 ; Becker, Handbuch der Römischen Alterthümer, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 93.) There can be little doubt that the consuls were at all times, without exception, elected by the comitia centuriata; and there is no difficulty in understanding how the patricians were able to carry the elections of their own candidates at these comitia. (Comp. Becker, ibid. p. 12, note 19.)

In B. C. 481 K. Fabius was consul a second time with Sp. Furius Medullinus Fuscus. At the beginning of his consulship he opposed the attempts of the tribune Sp. Icilius (Licinius), who endeavoured to carry an agrarian law by preventing the consuls from levying troops against the Veientes and Aequi, who had taken up arms and made an inroad into the Roman territory. Icilius was likewise opposed by his own colleagues, and thus the troops were inrolled, and K. Fabius marched against the Veientes. (The common editions of Livy have (exercitus) ducendus Fabio in Aequos, but the MSS. have in Veientes, and this in accordance with Dionysius and Zonaras.) Fabius conducted the war with success, and put the enemy to the rout with his cavalry alone; but when he commanded his infantry to pursue the defeated army, they refused obedience to his orders, on account of his opposition to the agrarian law, and returned to their camp, which they soon afterwards deserted, to the astonishment of the enemy. (Liv. 2.43 ; Dionys. A. R. 9.1, foil.; Zonar. 7.17; V. Max. 9.3.5.) In the following year, B. C. 480, he again fought against the Veientes, serving under his brother Marcus, who was then consul, and his colleague Cn. Manlius Cincinnatus. The soldiers were still indisposed to obey the commands of a Fabius, but the dangers of their situation and the scoffs of the enemy turned their purpose, and they demanded to be led forth against the foe. On that day the Fabii were an example to the whole army. Quintus, who had been consul two years before, fell in the hottest of the fight; but his brothers Kaeso and the consul Marcus rushed forth to the front, and by their heroic bravery so fired the courage of their soldiers that the enemy were turned to flight. The bravery of the Fabii in this battle won the hearts of the soldiers, and they still further gained their love by the attention which they paid to the wounded, whom they divided among the dwellings of the patricians : their own house took the greater number. The Fabii had been hitherto the champions of the patricians, but they now resolved to espouse the cause of the plebeians, and secure for them the rights which they had so long taken an active part in resisting. The real reasons of their change it is impossible to determine, with the deficient information which has come down to us, but of the fact there can be no doubt. (Liv. 2.46, 47; Dionys. A. R. 9.11, 13.)

In B. C. 479 Kaeso was consul a third time with T. Virginius Tricostus Rutilus. As soon as he entered upon his consulship, he gave a proof that his house was sincere in their professions of reconciliation to the commonalty; for he called upon the patricians to divide the conquered land among the plebeians, before any tribune should bring forward an agrarian law. But powerful as the Fabii were, they could not induce the rest of the patricians to listen to their advice : on the contrary, they were regarded as traitors to their order, and Kaeso was told by them that his recent glory had intoxicated his mind. The plebeians were all the more anxious to do him honour. They flocked to his standard when he marched against the Aequi, and served under him with the greatest zeal. The Aequi retreated before him into their towns; and after devastating their territory, he returned just in time to save the army of his colleague, which was surrounded by the Veientes, and in great peril. After this campaign Kaeso renewed his conciliatory propositions, but as they were still rejected with scorn, he and his house resolved to quit Rome altogether, where they were regarded as apostates by their own order. They determined to found a settlement on the banks of the Cremera, a small stream that falls into the Tiber a few miles above Rome. According to the legend, the consul Kaeso went before the senate and said, that the Fabii were willing to carry on the war against the Veientes, alone and at their own cost. Their offer was joyfully accepted, for the patricians were glad to see them expose themselves voluntarily to such dangers. The departure of the Fabii from the city was celebrated in Roman story. On the day after Kaeso had made the proposal to the senate, 306 Fabii, all patricians of one gens, assembled on the Quirinal at the house of Kaeso, and from thence marched with the consul at their head through the Carmental gate. They proceeded straight to the banks of the Cremera, where they erected a fortress. Livy and the writers who follow him speak of the 306 patrician Fabii as departing alone to the Cremera; but other authorities with more probability represent them as accompanied by their wives, children and clients. The latter were undoubtedly very numerous; and Dionysius says that the Fabii with their dependants amounted to 4000 persons. It seems nearly evident, as has been already stated, that the Fabii intended to form a settlement, which might become a powerful Latin town on the borders of the Etruscan territory; and that they ought not to be regarded as simply an advanced guard occupying a fort in the enemy's territory, for the purpose of ravaging the country. Even if it had not been stated that the Fabii had left Rome with their families and clients, it might fairly have been inferred from the unanimous tradition that only one of the family, who had remained at Rome, survived the entire destruction of the gens. As soon as the Fabii had fortified their settlement on the Cremera, they commenced their inroads and continued to lay waste the Veientine territory without cessation. The Veientes collected a powerful army from the Etruscan states and besieged the fortress, but the Romans sent an army to their relief under the command of the consul L. Aemilius Mamercus, who defeated the Etruscans, B. C. 478. Thereupon a truce was concluded for a year; but at its expiration the Etruscans again took up arms, and the Fabii were all destroyed in the consulship of C. Horatius Pulvillus and T. Menenius Lanatus, B. C. 477. The manner of their death is variously related by the ancient writers. According to one tradition, preserved but rejected by Dionysius, the Fabii set out from the Cremera on a certain day in order to offer up a sacrifice in their sanctuary on the Quirinal at Rome : trusting to the sanctity of their mission, they went without arms, as in a time of peace, but on their road they were attacked by a great army which had been placed in ambush and perished by the darts of the enemy, for although unarmed none of the Etruscans dared come near the heroes. According to another tradition the Fabii, who had repeatedly gained victories in the open field, were enticed to follow some cattle, which were purposely driven under a weak escort into the mountains, and they thus fell into an ambush, where many thousand men had been placed. Although scattered when the enemy attacked them, the Fabii made an heroic resistance and only fell after a long struggle overwhelmed by superior numbers. This account of the death of the Fabii has been followed by Dionysius who has worked up the tale in his usual manner, as well as by Livy, Ovid, and other ancient writers. The fortress on the Cremera must have been taken immediately afterwards, and the whole of the settlement have been put to the sword. In whatever way the Fabii may have perished, it seems clear that they might have been saved, for the consul Menenius Lanatus was in the neighbourhood with an army, and was condemned in the following year as the guilty cause of the disaster. [Lanatus, No. 2.] (Liv. 2.48_50; Dionys. A. R. 9.14_22 ; Gel. 17.21; Ov. Fast. 2.195, foll.; Dio Cass. Fragm. No. 26, ed. Reim.; Festus, s. v. Scelerata porta.) Ovid says (l.c.) that the Fabii perished on the Ides of February; but all other authorities state that they were destroyed on the day on which the Romans were subsequently conquered by the Gauls at the Allia, that is, on the fifteenth before the Kalends of Sextilis, June the 18th (Liv. 6.1; Tac. Hist. 2.91; Plut. Camill. 19) : hence Niebuhr supposes that Ovid mistook the day of their departure for that of their destruction (Hist. of Rome, vol. ii. note 441).

It is unanimously stated by the ancient writers that all the Fabii perished at the Cremera with the exception of one individual, the son of Marcus, from whom all the later members of the gens were descended. The same accounts relate that he was left behind at Rome on account of his youth; but this could not have been the reason, if we are correct in the supposition that the Fabii migrated from the city with all their families, and it is moreover refuted by the fact that this Fabius was consul ten years afterwards, From the fact of his being raised to the consulship, and from the opposition which he then offered to the tribunes, it is probable, as Niebuhr supposes, that he maintained the former opinions of his gens, when the latter changed their sentiments and refused to leave Rome with them. (Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. ii. p. 194.)

3. M. Fabius Vibulanus, K. F., the brother of the two preceding, was consul B. C. 483 with L. Valerius Potitus. He resisted the efforts of the tribunes to carry the Agrarian law of Sp. Cassius into effect; and as they in consequence impeded the levy of troops, the consuls removed their tribunals outside the city, where the power of the tribunes did not extend, and by heavy punishments compelled the citizens to enlist. The consuls then carried on war against the Volscians, but without any decisive result. (Liv. 2.42 , Dionys. A. R. 8.87, 88.) In B. C. 480 M. Fabius was consul a second time with Cn. Manlius Cincinnatus. The two consuls marched against the Veientes, but did not venture at first to attack the enemy, lest their own soldiers Should desert them as they had done K. Fabius in the preceding year. They accordingly kept their troops in their intrenchments, till the soldiers, roused at length by the taunts and scoffs of the enemy, demanded to be led forth to battle, and swore that they would not leave the field except as conquerors. The bravery of the Fabii in the battle which followed has already been related in the life of Kaeso, who fought under his brother. The Romans gained the victory, but bought it dearly. The consul Cincinnatus and Q. Fabius were killed; and the surviving consul, on account of the loss which lie had sustained, refused the triumph which the senate offered him. The care which M. Fabius showed for the wounded and his reconciliation to the plebeians have been related above [No. 2]. Dionysius says that Fabius resigned his consulship two months before the expiration of his year, because his wounds prevented him from discharging the duties of his office. (Liv. 2.43-47; Dionys. A. R. 9.5-13; Frontin. Strat. 1.11.1; V. Max. 5.5.2.) In the following year, B. C. 479, M. Fabius accompanied the rest of his gens to their fatal settlement on the Cremera and perished along with them two years afterwards. Dionysius (9.15) represents Marcus as the leader of the Fabii in their migration from Rome, but Livy (2.49) undoubtedly follows the genuine legend in making the consul Kaeso head his gens on that occasion.

4. Q. Fabius Vibulanus, M. F., K. F., the son of No. 3, is said to have been the only one of the Fabii who survived the destruction of his gens at the Cremera, but he could not have been left behind at Rome on account of his youth, as the legend relates. [See above, No. 2, sub finem.] He was consul in B. C. 467 with Ti. Aemilius Mamercus, when he supported the patrician party against the tribunes. The latter, having the cooperation of the other consul, made a vigorous effort to carry the agrarian law; but Fabius effected a compromise by proposing that a colony should be founded at Antium, which had been conquered by the Romans in the preceding year. He subsequently marched against the Aequians, who sued for peace, which was granted them; but they soon afterwards broke it and made an inroad into the Latin territory. (Liv. 3.1; Dionys. A. R. 9.59.)

In B. C. 465 Fabius was consul a second time with T. Quintius Capitolinus Barbatus. He was appointed to carry on the war with the Aequians, which had been continued ever since his first consulship. The ambassadors whom he sent to the Aequians were treated with contempt, at which the Romans were so much enraged that Quintius marched out of the city with another consular army to support his colleague. According to Livy the consuls defeated the Aequians, who withdrew from Mount Algidus into their own territory ; but Dionysius says that the battle was not decisive, which is more in accordance with Livy's subsequent narrative, in which it is stated that the Aequians made incursions into the Roman territory for plunder, which were avenged by Fabius devastating the lands of the Aequians. (Liv. 3.2, 3; Dionys. A. R. 9.61.) Three years afterwards, B. C. 462, Fabius was appointed Praefectus Urbi, while the two consuls were absent from the city. The tribune C. Terentillus Arsa took advantage of the absence of the consuls to propose a rogation for appointing five commissioners, who might draw up laws to limit the power of the consuls. Thereupon Fabius called together the senate and inveighed with such vehemence against the rogation and its author, that even both the consuls could not have inspired greater fear. On the advice of his colleagues Terentillus withdrew his proposal. (Liv. 3.9; Dionys. A. R. 9.69.)

In B. C. 459 Fabius was consul a third time with L. Cornelius Maluginensis. In this year he defeated the Volscians, who had laid siege to Antium, and also the Aequians, who had taken Tusculum, and on account of these victories celebrated a triumph on his return to Rome. In the following year, B. C. 458, when the two consuls marched with their two armies against the Sabines and Aequians, Fabius was left behind with a third for the protection of Rome. This is the account of Dionysius, but Livy simply says that he was one of the three ambassadors sent in that year to Cloelius Gracchus, the leader of the Aequians. (Liv. 3.22_25; Dionys. A. R. 10.20-22.)

In B. C. 450 Fabius was elected a member of the second decemvirate, and along with his colleagues continued illegally in power in the following year. Ap. Claudius and Fabius were the two leading members of the second decemvirate, and Fabius supported his colleague in all his tyran nical acts. When the war with the Aequians and Sabines broke out Fabius was appointed to the command with two colleagues, while Appius remained in the city. Fabius must have ordered the murder of L. Siccius [Siccius], who was serving in the army against the Sabines, but his name is not mentioned in connection with this foul deed. This probably arose from Livy and Dionysius having the Annals of Fabius Pictor before them, in which the virtues of the Fabii were extolled and their faults omitted. After the abolition of the decemvirate and the death of Ap. Claudius and Oppius, Fabius shared the fate of his remaining colleagues; he went into exile and his property was confiscated. (Liv. 3.35, 41, 58; Dionys. A. R. 10.58, 11.23, 46.)

Q. Fabius is said to have married the daughter of Numerius Otacilius of Maleventum on account of her wealth, with the condition that his first child should receive the praenomen of its maternal grandfather ; and it is stated that it was in this way that Numerius became a praenomen in a patrician gens, which it had not been before. (Festus, s. v. Numerius, pp. 170,173, ed. Müller.) We find however that the elder of his two sons bore the praenomen Marcus, and the younger that of Numerius [Nos. 5 and 6]; but it has been conjectured that the elder may have been a son by a former marriage.

5. M. Fabius Vibulanus, Q. F. M. N., eldest son of No. 4, was consul B. C. 442 with Postumus Aebutius Elva Cornicen, in which year a colony was founded at Ardea. In B. C. 437 he served as legatus of the dictator Mam. Aemilius Mamercinus in the war against the Veientes and Fidenates. In B. C. 433 he was one of the consular tribunes; and in B. C. 431 he served as legatus of the dictator A. Postumius Tubertus in the great war against the Aequians and Volscians. He lived till the capture of Rome by the Gauls, B. C. 390, where he is spoken of as pontifex maximus, and is said to have rehearsed the solemn formula, which was repeated after him by the aged senators who had resolved to await the entrance of the Gauls into the city, and who accordingly dedicated themselves to death. (Liv. 4.11; Diod. 12.34; Liv. 4.17, 19, 25 ; Diod. 12.58; Liv. 4.27, 28, 5.41.)

6. N. Fabius Vibulanus, Q. F. M. N., second son of No. 4, was consul B. C. 421 with T. Quintius Capitolinus Barbatus. He carried on war against the Aequians, whom he put to flight without any difficulty : he was refused a triumph, but received the honour of an ovation. It was in this year that the consuls proposed that in addition to the two city quaestors, two others should be appointed to attend upon the consuls in time of war. This proposal gave rise to great contests, as the tribunes insisted that some of the quaestors should be chosen from the plebeians. In B. C. 415 Fabius was one of the consular tribunes, and again in B. C. 407. (Liv. 4.43, 49, 58; Diod. 13.24, 14.3.)

7. Q. Fabius Vibulanus, Q. F. M. N., third son of No. 4, was consul B. C. 423 with C. Sempronius Atratinus, consular tribune for the first time B. C. 416 (omitted through accident by Livy, 4.47), and for the second time B. C. 41 4. (Liv. 4.37, 49; Diod. 13.9, 38.) At the beginning of the following year he was interrex. (Liv. 4.51.)

8. Q. Fabius Vibulanus Ambustus, M. F. Q. N., son of No. 5, was consul B. C. 412 with C. Furius Pacilus. (Liv. 4.52.) He was the last Fabius of the name of Vibulanus. Ambustus now became the name of the family. [Ambustus.]