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Updated: June 3, 2025
Pliny tells us of a picture in the Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium, which was considered as only second to that of Fabius Pictor. With the enthusiasm of the poet he united that genial breadth of temper which among artists seems peculiarly the painter's gift. His long career was not productive of a large number of works.
From these it is evident that the art of painting, at any rate in little, had made considerable progress in the Netherlands at that date, and the express designation of pictor applied to John of Bruges, while the ordinary miniaturist was called illuminator, shows the probability of his having painted pictures on a larger scale.
He wrote in Greek, and made the usual effort to preserve and transmit a sufficiently good impression of the greatness of his own people. That Pictor was a senator proves his social importance, which is still further exemplified by the fact that after the carnage of Cannæ, he was sent to Delphi to learn for his distressed countrymen how they might appease the angry gods.
The legend of Æneas, when he first appears noticed as a progenitor of the Romans, differs materially from that which afterwards prevailed. Romulus, in the earlier version of the story, is invariably described as the son or grandson of Æneas. He is the grandson in the poems of Nævius and Ennius, who were both nearly contemporary with Fabius Pictor.
At the time of this embassy, when Greek arts were nearly unknown to the Romans, the ambassadors must have seen much that was new to them, and much that was worth copying; and three years afterwards, when one of them, Quintus Ogulnius, together with Caius Fabius Pictor, were chosen consuls, they coined silver for the first time in Rome.
On this account I am more inclined to believe Fabius Pictor, besides his being the more ancient historian, that there were only forty talents, than Piso, who says that forty thousand pounds weight of silver were set apart for that purpose; a sum of money neither to be expected from the spoils of any one city in those times, and one that would more than suffice for the foundation of any structure, even though exhibiting the magnificence of modern structures.
Titus Livius attributes the foundation of Rome to Romulus; Sallust gives the credit of it to the Trojans under Æneas. Coriolanus died in exile, according to Fabius Pictor; through the stratagems of Attius Tullius, if we may believe Dionysius. Seneca states that Horatius Cocles came back victorious; and Dionysius that he was wounded in the leg.
Alexius Comnenus, however for it was the Emperor himself knew Agelastes, though rather from his stature and gestures, than his countenance; and could not forbear whispering in his ear, as he passed, the well-known lines, to which the pretended sage's various acquisitions gave some degree of point: "Grammaticus, rhetor, geometres, pictor, aliptes, Augur, schoenobates, medicus, magus; omnia novit.
There he reviewed the whole army drawn up in centuries, and purified it by the rite called Suovetaurilia, and that was called the closing of the lustrum, because it was the conclusion of the census. Eighty thousand citizens are said to have been rated in that survey. Fabius Pictor, the most ancient of our historians, adds that that was the number of those who were capable of bearing arms.
About the women too much given to the beverage of Dionysos, there were terrifying stories told. It was told, on the word of Fabius Pictor, who mentioned it in his annals, that a Roman lady was condemned by the family tribunal to die of hunger, because she had stolen from her husband the keys of the wine-cellar.
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