Fabius Maximus

At this point, however, Fabius seems to have been overcome by his ambition, for he ordered his men to put the Bruttians first of all to the sword, that his possession of the city might not be known to be due to treachery. He not only failed to prevent this knowledge, but incurred also the reproach of perfidy and cruelty. Many of the Tarentines also were slain, thirty thousand of them were sold into slavery, their city was plundered by the Roman army, and three thousand talents were thereby brought into the public treasury.

While everything else was carried off as plunder, it is said that the accountant asked Fabius what his orders were concerning the gods, for so he called their pictures and statues; and that Fabius answered: Let us leave their angered gods for the Tarentines.

However, he removed the colossal statue of Heracles from Tarentum, and set it up on the Capitol, and near it an equestrian statue of himself, in bronze. He thus appeared far more eccentric in these matters than Marcellus, nay rather, the mild and humane conduct of Marcellus was thus made to seem altogether admirable by contrast, as has been written in his Life.[*](Chapter xxi. Marcellus had enriched Rome with works of Greek art taken from Syracuse in 212 B.C. Livy’s opinion is rather different from Plutarch’s: sed maiore animo generis eius praeda abstinuit Fabius quam Marcellus, xxvii. 16. Fabius killed the people but spared their gods; Marcellus spared the people but took their gods.)