SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

by Mary Beard

The eventual victory of the Romans highlights a much more down-to-earth clash of strategy and military style, between on the one hand Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator – the last three names, ‘greatest, warty, delayer’, being a characteristic Roman combination of boastfulness and realism – and on the other Scipio Africanus. Fabius took command after Cannae, avoided pitched battle with Hannibal and played a waiting game, combining guerrilla tactics with a scorched-earth policy, to wear down the enemy (hence ‘delayer’). For some observers, this canny strategy largely won the day. Despite his close association with Africanus, Ennius credited Fabius with ensuring Rome’s survival: ‘One man alone restored the state to us by delaying [cunctando],’ he wrote. George Washington, the ‘American Fabius’, as he has sometimes been called, opted for similar tactics at the start of the American War of Independence, harassing rather than directly engaging the enemy, and even the British left-wing Fabian Society adopted his name and example – the message being, ‘if you want the revolution to be successful, you must, like Fabius, bide your time’. But there have always been those who have thought Fabius a slowcoach or a ditherer rather than a clever strategist, in contrast to the much more dashing Scipio Africanus, who eventually took over the command and persuaded the senate to allow him to move the war into Africa and finish Hannibal off there.