Fabius Maximus

The city of Tarentum, which had been lost to the Romans by treachery,[*](212 B.C.) Fabius recovered in the following manner.[*](209 B.C.) There was a young man of Tarentum in his army, and he had a sister who was very faithfully and affectionately disposed towards him. With this woman the commander of the forces set by Hannibal to guard the city, a Bruttian, was deeply enamoured, and the circumstance led her brother to hope that he could accomplish something by means of it. He therefore joined his sister in Tarentum, ostensibly as a deserter from the Romans, though he was really sent into the city by Fabius, who was privy to his scheme.

Some days passed, accordingly, during which the Bruttian remained at home, since the woman thought that her amour was unknown to her brother. Then her brother had the following words with her: I would have you know that a story was very current out there in the Roman camp that you have interviews with a man high in authority. Who is this man? For if he is, as they say, a man of repute, and illustrious for his valour, war, that confounder of all things, makes very little account of race. Nothing is disgraceful if it is done under compulsion, nay, we may count it rare good fortune, at a time when right is weak, to find might very gentle with us.

Thereupon the woman sent for her Bruttian and made her brother acquainted with him. The Barbarian’s confidence was soon gained, since the brother fostered his passion and plainly induced the sister to be more complacent and submissive to him than before, so that it was not difficult, the man being a lover and a mercenary as well, to change his allegiance, in anticipation of the large gifts which it was promised that he should receive from Fabius.

This is the way the story is usually told.[*](So, substantially, by Livy, xxvii. 15. ) But some writers say that the woman by whom the Bruttian was won over, was not a Tarentine, but a Bruttian, and a concubine of Fabius, and that when she learned that the commander of the Bruttian garrison was a fellow-countryman and an acquaintance of hers, she told Fabius, held a conference with the man beneath the walls of the city, and won him completely over.

While this plot was under way, Fabius schemed to draw Hannibal away from the neighbourhood, and therefore gave orders to the garrison at Rhegium to overrun Bruttium and take Caulonia by storm. This garrison numbered eight thousand, most of them deserters, and the refuse of the soldiers sent home from Sicily in disgrace by Marcellus, men whose loss would least afflict and injure Rome.

Fabius expected that by casting these forces, like a bait, in front of Hannibal, he would draw him away from Tarentum. And this was what actually happened. For Hannibal immediately swept thither in pursuit with his army. But five days after Fabius had laid siege to Tarentum, the youth who, with his sister, had come to an understanding with the Bruttian commander in the city, canine to him by night. He had seen and knew precisely the spot at which the Bruttian was watching with time purpose of handing the city over to its assailants.