Consuls and Res Publica by Hans Beck & Antonio DuplÁ & Martin Jehne & Francisco Pina Polo

Author:Hans Beck & Antonio DuplÁ & Martin Jehne & Francisco Pina Polo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

Post, magis, nunc: fabius revalued and exemplified

The most detailed exposition of the alternative forms of glory is found in the speech Livy gives to Fabius, where Fabius encourages Aemilius Paullus (cos. 216) to follow his example and adopt the strategy he pioneered as dictator the previous year: “The matter stands thus: the only method of waging war against Hannibal is the one I employed.”66 For just as Fabius had to contend with Hannibal as well as his magister equitum/co-dictator Minucius, Fabius notes that Aemilius will face opposition from his consular colleague M. Terentius Varro no less than from Hannibal. “But you will withstand them,” says Fabius, “if you stand firmly enough against [sc. bad] reputation and people's criticisms, and if neither your colleague's empty glory nor your own false ill-repute troubles you.”67 This, of course, is exactly Fabius’ own approach, despising as false the infamia that was heaped upon him and deeming his colleague's gloria to be “empty” (vana) – both reputations, in his view, standing on illegitimate grounds. Most striking, however, is the sententious conclusion, two sentences later, that “he who spurns <empty> glory will have the real thing.”68 This assertion confidently predicts that the current linking of gloria with displays of virtus in battle will eventually be recognized as incorrect and hence be abandoned, while the Fabian pursuit of safety for the good of the commonwealth will ultimately be judged the “correct” basis for gloria. This shift, indeed, is essential if Fabius is to become a positive exemplum: his strategy, and its associated values, must come to be accepted as correct and valid. The difficulty is that performance in battle can be observed and evaluated immediately; this kind of gloria is quickly, decisively and visibly won or lost. But the gloria associated with enabling the state to survive can only be assessed in a longer time frame. In waiting out the necessary lapse of time, it is almost inevitable that one who takes this approach will incur infamy of the “false” sort, precisely because he refuses to join battle.

The tradition insists, however, that Fabius won this ethical and ideological battle – that his contemporaries and successors did finally revalue his actions and dispositions as morally positive, and those of his detractors as negative, at least under the conditions that then held. The idea that gloria (of the “true” variety) later came to him is already present in the Ennian fragment. Here the speaker says that Fabius made salus his top priority, and that therefore (ergo), in the speaker's own day (nunc), which is after Fabius’ day (post), Fabius’ gloria “shines out the more” (magis…claret).69 Other texts indicate even more explicitly that such a revaluation occurred. When Polybius introduces Fabius and his strategy for the first time, he immediately remarks that the initial unpopularity of this approach later turned to admiration.70 Polybius indicates more precisely the circumstances of this revaluation in narrating how Fabius saved Minucius and his soldiers from Hannibal's trap. He says that observers of the battle

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