“His tactics inspired the Continental cause during the American Revolution, and his statesmanship reminds republics of any age that martial genius is subordinate to civic virtue.”

By Steele Brand

MANY MIGHT consider the best defender of the American way of life to be the highly trained, professional soldier from the permanent “warrior-class.” Historically, however, the heroes that served many of the world’s greatest republics, including the United States, have been citizen-soldiers, most of whom preferred managing their farms or civic affairs to fighting wars.

One of Rome’s greatest commanders, Quintus Fabius Maximus, exemplified this ethos when he defeated the Roman Republic’s nemesis, the Carthaginian Hannibal Barca. He did so by both neutralizing Hannibal on the battlefield and exhibiting superior statesmanship.

For Americans, Fabius’ leadership is more than an interesting story. His tactics inspired the Continental cause during the American Revolution, and his statesmanship reminds republics of any age that martial genius is subordinate to civic virtue.

We don’t know much about Fabius’ early life. As a child, he was noted for his caution, composure and soft-spokenness, earning him the nickname ovicula or “the little sheep.” At first, relatives feared he had a mental disability, but with the passage of time those close to him understood that his dispassion was a sign of a cool temperament and even an iron will.

Over the years, the Fabii family’s fortunes had waxed and waned. They were on a downward slide as young Quintus came of age in the mid-third century BC, possibly due to a diplomatic blunder of his father that disgraced the republic. Nonetheless, the modest young man earned his place among the city’s ruling elite. He even campaigned successfully for the republic against barbarian tribes in northern Italy.

When tensions between Carthage and Rome mounted in the late 230s BC, it probably surprised few that Fabius became a leader of the peace faction in Rome. Throughout the early third century BC, Carthage and Rome had both expanded in the western Mediterranean and a cataclysmic conflict appeared inevitable. The two powers had already fought a lengthy war from 264 to 241 BC. And although the conflict was destructive, neither side had been permanently crippled. More significantly, few of the longstanding issues that precipitated the violence had been resolved.

At this point, one of history’s great generals entered the scene: Hannibal Barca. The son of a successful Carthaginian commander during the first war, Hannibal would later explain how his father made the nine-year-old future conqueror swear an oath of eternal enmity against Rome.

Hannibal lived up to his oath. In 219 BC, he besieged Saguntum, a city in present-day Spain that was a recent ally of Rome’s. After its capture, Hannibal, aged 28, brutalized, slaughtered and enslaved the population.

Rome was incensed and sent its legions out to defeat him. Hannibal eluded them and invaded northern Italy instead, famously crossing the Alps with war elephants, cavalry and infantry. From 218 to 217 BC he won every major skirmish against Rome in addition to two decisive battles.

Despite enormous losses, many Roman senators still argued for an outright confrontation with the Carthaginian army. They failed to understand that they were playing into Hannibal’s strategy of forcing the republic into costly, morale-sapping confrontations.

Hannibal wasn’t trying to capture Rome. Instead, he hoped to shear off the Republic’s allies and force a peace that restored Carthaginian territory and re-established Punic hegemony. Hannibal needed battles because he needed defeated, dishonoured and dead Romans.

The greatest danger to Hannibal’s grand design emerged in the slow-talking, dispassionate Fabius Maximus. Fabius realized that Rome must deny the Carthaginian the battles he sought, thereby neutralizing the enemy’s obvious tactical superiority. Enough Romans agreed with Fabius following the disastrous Battle of Trasimene in 217 BC. In fact, Fabius was soon appointed dictator, a unique office enacted during emergencies that concentrated vast power in the hands of one individual for a limited term.

When Fabius finally marched against Hannibal, he stalked the Carthaginian but refused to accept open battle, except only the most favourable of terms. Hannibal gradually began to fear Fabius as an opponent who understood how to hurt him most: by not fighting. He even tried to provoke the Roman into battle by pillaging the lands around Fabius’ estates. And by shrewdly leaving his adversary’s own properties untouched, Hannibal hoped to further taint the dictator by creating the illusion of bribery or treachery. Fabius countered by selling his lands and using the funds to ransom POWs.

Fortunately for Hannibal, hotter heads in Rome demanded a full-on assault against the Carthaginians. Fabius’ political rivals called him a coward, and the epithet cunctator or “delayer” was added to “little sheep.” A faction in Rome even took the extraordinary step of appointing one of Fabius’ subordinates, Marcus Minucius, as co-commander. Despite the humiliation, Fabius refused to waver.

Predictably, Minucius rushed into a confrontation with the Carthaginians. He scored some minor successes, which Hannibal used to lure yet another Roman army into a well-laid trap. But like so many previous Roman commanders, Minucius discovered his doom too late.

Fabius had every reason to relish his rash colleague’s impending disaster, but instead he bid his officers to forgive Minucius’ and rushed his army to the rescue, stealing a victory from Hannibal. To Minucius’ credit, he responded in humility, hailing his rescuer as a second father.

Minucius had learned his lesson, but the republic had not.

The year 216 BC saw the election of two new consuls (Rome’s political and military heads of state), one of whom was determined to be the man to crush Hannibal in battle. Disaster ensued.

Both consular armies were united in the hopes that a huge force could finally defeat Hannibal. Instead, they blundered into a perfect encircling maneuver outside Cannae that led to the deaths of up to 70,000 Roman citizen-soldiers and their allies.

The republic should have capitulated after this third decisive defeat. After all, when Alexander the Great won three large, set-piece battles in Asia, the mighty Persian Empire crumbled. Hannibal had good reason to believe the envoys he sent to Rome after Cannae would open a successful round of negotiations.

Fabius was only one of hundreds of thousands of Italian men serving and sacrificing for the Roman Republic. Throughout much of its history, Rome routinely put up to a fifth of its citizens on the battlefield. Scholars estimate that between 15 to 33 per cent of Italy’s male population perished in the first years of the second war with Carthage, which could have been as many as 250,000 men.

Like many states in the multipolar anarchy of the ancient Mediterranean, Rome fought wars on a near annual basis. What made Rome unique was that it created a republican government that invested its farmers and fathers in the common good. These men in turn heartily defended the republic as part-time soldiers. By using citizens instead of professionals or mercenaries, and then by expanding its base of citizens and allies, Rome created a larger manpower base than any other state in the Mediterranean.

But that’s only half of the story.

Rome also needed good men to lead. Defeating Hannibal could only be achieved if someone was wise enough not to fight him, while being brave enough to face down accusations of cowardice by political opponents at home. Fabius was just such a statesmen. He was the man who stood by his principles and the people, even when they refused to stand by him.

Fabius saved the republic in its darkest hour. Immediately after word arrived from Cannae, Rome was gripped with panic and despair. As a leading senator, Fabius immediately took the helm, encouraging the Senate to convene, walking the streets confidently, placing guards at the gates, banning public displays of mourning, and purifying the city with sacred ceremonies. When Hannibal’s envoys arrived, instead of finding a city on the verge of collapse and eager to negotiate, they found a republic that had steeled itself to fight even harder and even smarter.

The historian Polybius hints that when Hannibal learned of Rome’s disposition, he foreboded that for all his victories, there was nothing he could do to defeat such a republic led by such men.

For 14 more years, Hannibal fought an increasingly pointless war in Italy. The republic now embraced Fabius’ strategy of denying Hannibal victories with a gruelling war of attrition. And as the fighting wore on in Italy, Rome struck Carthage elsewhere.

The republic had no singular general—no Alexander, no Hannibal. Instead, like other republics, it could count on a plurality of statesmen to lead the state and the armies. Such men would go on to great success against Carthage in Macedonia, Sicily, Spain and North Africa, where they eventually threatened the city of Carthage itself. Hannibal was eventually summoned back home, where he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC.

Unfortunately, the old, stoic statesman never saw Hannibal’s final defeat, having died the year before. After Cannae, Fabius was elected consul three more times, and he continued his unremarkable tactical career, although he did succeed in recapturing the city of Tarentum.

Other generals rose to fame with the overseas conquests, but none of them would ever be remembered as fondly by the citizens of Rome as Fabius.

By the time he died, he’d earned his last nickname: the “Shield of Rome.” At his funeral, the people of the city flocked to bury a man they saw as a father, with each of them giving a small coin to pay for the ceremony at public cost.

In the Aeneid, the poet Virgil gave special attention to Fabius in his catalogue of virtuous Roman statesmen, describing him as “the greatest, that one man alone, who through delaying saved our republic.”

The Roman Republic earned its status among America’s founders as the most revered ancient model. There were so many qualities to emulate: respect for aged statesmen and their wisdom, a willingness to adapt by learning from battlefield mistakes, the expectation that all citizens would serve, and the requirement that any political leader must demonstrate his devotion to the republic by serving in the front lines of combat. Fabius embodied all of these attributes, and his life modelled the kind of virtue that made Rome the greatest ancient republic.

Alexander Hamilton once called Washington an “American Fabius,” and the parallels are not hard to see. Such a compliment would not score many points today. Instead, another famous commander, Julius Caesar, is usually remembered as Rome’s greatest general. As a shrewd tactician, audacious risk-taker, and soldier’s soldier, Caesar deserves his reputation among the world’s great commanders. But Caesar was no republican. Instead, he concentrated all of his talents into the preservation of his own image and the consolidation of his own power.

That Caesar garners so much appreciation today illustrates how America is drifting away from the citizen-soldier model of the Roman Republic and the virtuous Fabius. With few citizens choosing to defend our republic, few politicians facing combat, and un-winnable forever wars feeding a professional class of technocrats and specialists, it is time we remembered what it means to be a republic and what we must expect of every citizen and every leader. It’s time to hearken back to the model of Fabius and the citizen-soldiers who showed that being virtuous at statecraft is more fundamental than being valorous in war.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steele Brand is an assistant professor of history at The King’s College and a former U.S. Army tactical intelligence officer. Brand’s Killing for the Republic: Citizen-Soldiers and the Roman Way of War is out now from Johns Hopkins University Press.