FABIUS PICTOR, QUINTUS

flourished c. 200 BC one of the first Roman prose historians. A member of the Senate, he fought against the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War (218201) and was sent on a mission to the Oracle of Delphi after the disastrous Roman defeat at Cannae (216). His history, now lost, was an account of the development of Rome from the earliest times. Fabius wrote it in Greek, partly because he sought to justify Roman policy to the Greeks. The later historians Polybius, Dionysius, and Livy all used Fabius' work as a source. Fragments of the history are published in Felix Jacoby's Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (1957).