xxviii
Q. FABIUS PIClOR.
gator ; and as far as Dionysius of Halicarnassus went, he merely
abridged him, as Zonaras abridged Dion Cassius, so that we
may look upon him as representing Dionysius.23 But for the
end of the war against Pyrrhus and the beginning of the first
Punic war, when he was no longer guided by Dionysius, he
found and used the Greek work of Fabius down to the time
when Polybius began. Now as his account of this period
perfectly agrees with Zonaras who followed Dion Cassius, I
have no doubt that Dion Cassius also based his narrative here
upon that of Fabius. I don’t mean to say that he used no other
writers, but his acute eye must have recognised Fabius as his
best authority.26 All those precious and invaluable accounts
of the early Roman constitution, which we find in Dion Cas-
sius, may be referred to Fabius, and to him our gratitude is
due. The expressiens of Dion in describing the civil history
of Rome are so careful and accurate, that we cannot hesitate for
a moment in assigning them to Fabius. Thus the populus is
always called by him δ⅜zoς, and the plebs πXηθos or oμiλo<s.~7
Whoever reads the history of Dion Cassius and possesses an ac-
curate knowledge of constitutional terms, will find that every
thing is correct, whereas Dionysius makes dreadful mistakes.28
Fabius then is not only the father of Roman history, but he
also possessed the most perfect knowledge of the ancient con-
stitution ; and though his work is lost, ʌve must acknowledge
that we are greatly indebted to him for the information we
derive from him respecting the constitution and its changes.2^
There have been some censorious critics who have considered
it ridiculous, that we in the nineteenth century pretended to
know the Roman constitution better than Livy and Dionysius
in the reign of Augustus; but we only need refer them to the
consular Dion Cassius and Q. Fabius; for we do not pretend to
know it better than they did.
There is a literary difficulty about this remarkable man,
which in my opinion can never be solved. It arises from an
expression of Cicero’s in his work “ De Divinatione".30 He
there mentions a “ Somnium Aeneae” from the Greek annals
25 Vol iii. notes 353 and 844. 26 Vol. ii. p. 12.
27 Vol.ii. p. 169, note 367. 28 Vol. ii. p. 13. 29 Vol. ii. p. 12.
30 i. 21, It is true we have no good MS. of the work De Divinatione, but only
a number of bad ones of the fifteenth century, which are all derived from one
which is now lost, so that the praenomen Numerius might be a mistake, but I
do not see how any one could have inserted such a praenomen.—N.
Numerius fabius pictor.
xxxi
of a Numerius Fabius Pictor, of whom no mention is found
any where else. The difficulty might indeed be solved very
easily, since we know that at the time of Q. Fabius Pictor,
whose praenomen Quintus is firmly established by the testi-
monies of Dionysius, Appian and Polybius, several other
Eomans wrote in the Greek tongue; why then should not a
Nnmerius Fabius have likewise written in Greek? Is it not
possible that his writings may have had merely an ephemeral
existence like those of so many authors of our own day? To
this class of writers must have belonged the senator Cn.
Aufidius whose Greek work is mentioned by Cicero only31
But in his work “ De Oratore”32 and in the introduction to
the first book, “ De Legibus,” Cicero speaks of a Fabius Pictor
as a writer of Latin Annals, and in the former of these pas-
sages he places him between Cato and Piso. None of the
ancient authors, neither Livy, nor Polybius, nor any gram-
marian mentions Latin annals of Fabius Pictor. Gellius33
indeed speaks of Annales Fabii, but without the addition Pic-
toris, and nothing is said as to whether this Fabius wrote in
Latin or in Greek. I make this remark, because the passage of
Gcllius has been erroneously adduced to prove that Gellius
knew a Fabius Pictor who was the author of Latin annals.
There is indeed another Fabius Pictor31 who wrote de jure
pontificio33, but his work had nothing to do with Roman his-
tory. Now are we to suppose that all other ancient authors
overlooked Fabius, the Latin annalist, and that Cicero alone
has preserved his name? My opinion is this. There was a
Latin annalist of the name of Fabius Maximus Servilianus,
whom Servius36 and Dionysius37 mention as an old annalist
of great importance and who lived between Cato and Piso,
which is exactly what Cicero says of Fabius Pictor. Cicero
therefore, I believe, committed a mistake. “ Every man,” says
Moser, “may err, and even the wisest sometimes in the most
incredible manner.” Cicero had perhaps merely cast a hasty
glance at the annals — he had a dislike for these ancient books,
and besides Cato, he had scarcely read any, certainly not in
31 Tuscul. Disput. v. 38: “ Cn. Aufidius praetorius et in senatu Sententiam
dicebat, et Graecam scribebat historiam et videbat in literis.” 32 ii. 12. 33 v.4.
31 The surname Pictor alone occurs rarely, tho’ we still find it in Appian.—N.
35 Nonius, s. v. Picumnus. 36 ad Aen. i. 3.
37 i. 7. Compare Macrob. Saturn, i. 16.