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It is doubtless not the mere fault of tradition that no one of these Cornelii, Fabii, Papirii, or whatever they were called, confronts us in a distinct individual figure. The senator was supposed to be no worse and no better than other senators, nor at all to differ from them.
If there were two families of the same strength in the city, let them demand, the one the Volsci for itself, the other the Æqui; that all the neighbouring states might be subdued, the Roman people all the time enjoying profound peace." The day following, the Fabii take up arms; they assemble where they had been ordered.
Far, far had the nation of the older Claudii, Fabii, and Cornelii fallen from that proud eminence when, a hundred years before, Polybius, contrasting the Romans with the degenerate Greeks, had exclaimed, "A statesman of Hellas, with ten checking clerks and ten seals, ... cannot keep faith with a single talent; Romans, in their magistracies and embassies, handle great sums of money, and yet from pure respect of oath keep their faith intact."
This attribute of never being conquered, which they so jealously guard among their citizens, can be attained by all men through virtue and goodwill, because even when all else is vanquished, the mind remains unconquered. For this cause no one speaks of the three hundred Fabii as conquered, but slaughtered.
Straightway the fame of the thing spread throughout the city, and all men extolled the Fabii. "See now," they said, "how this one family has undertaken the burden of the State.
By this time the Fabii had conceived such contempt for the enemy that they believed that their arms, as yet invincible, could not be resisted either in any place or on any occasion: this presumption carried them so far that at the sight of some cattle at a distance from Cremera, with an extensive plain lying between, they ran down to them, in spite of the fact that some scattered bodies of the enemy were visible: and when, anticipating nothing, and in disorderly haste, they had passed the ambuscade placed on either side of the road itself, and, dispersed in different directions, had begun to carry off the cattle that were straying about, as is usual when frightened, the enemy started suddenly in a body from their ambuscade, and surrounded them both in front and on every side.
While poetry was almost wholly in the hands of men of humble rank and not a single Roman of quality appears among the celebrated poets of this age, there is, on the contrary, among the prose writers of this period hardly a name that is not senatorial; and it is from the circles of the highest aristocracy, from men who had been consuls and censors the Fabii, the Gracchi, the Scipios that this literature throughout proceeds.
This battle was fought about the summer solstice, the moon being at full, the very same day in which the sad disaster of the Fabii had happened, when three hundred of that name were at one time cut off by the Tuscans.
Having here a notable opportunity to show how Heaven influences men's actions, Titus Livius turns it to account, and treats the subject at large and in pregnant words, where he says, that since it was Heaven's will, for ends of its own, that the Romans should feel its power, it first of all caused these Fabii, who were sent as envoys to the Gauls, to act amiss, and then by their misconduct stirred up the Gauls to make war on Rome; and, lastly, so ordered matters that nothing worthy of their name was done by the Romans to withstand their attack.
"And perhaps," said Lentulus, sinking into an attitude of irritating coldness, "you will further press your claim on the ground that your mother was a Fabian, and the Fabii claim the sole right to sacrifice to Hercules on the Great Altar in the Cattle-market by the Flaminian Circus, because they are descended from Hercules and Evander.
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