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the Reformation; and in 1540, at the diet of Spires and the conferences of Hagenau and Worms, he complained bitterly of the bishops and theologians of Germany, that they were like dumb dogs who could not bark, and that they would be the ruin of the whole church in the end. He died in 1541, and was buried in the church of St. Stephen in Vienna. His numerous polemical and homiletical writings are now forgotten.—P. L.

FABERT, Abraham, a marshal of France, was born in 1599. At an early age he manifested a preference for the military profession, and enlisted in one of the regiments commanded by the duke d'Epernon. The proofs which he gave of his courage and capacity gained him the esteem of the officers and the confidence of the soldiers, and the duke at length promoted him to a company in the guards. From this point his advancement was rapid. His remarkable coolness in the midst of the greatest peril, attracted universal attention. In the famous retreat of Mayence in 1635 he contributed greatly to save the remnant of the French army, and was no less conspicuous for the humanity he displayed towards the Austrian sick and wounded. He was present at the siege of Saverne, Landrecies, and Chivas, and was severely wounded at Turin in 1640. In the following year he distinguished himself at the battle of Marfee and the siege of Bapaume. In 1646 he captured Porto Longone and Piombino, and was promoted to the rank of major-general. He reduced Stenay in 1654, and was rewarded by Louis XIV. for his long and important services, by being nominated in 1658 marshal of France and governor of Sedan. He died there in 1662.—J. T.

FABIAN. See Fabyan Robert.

FABIANUS, Saint, is said to have been the nineteenth bishop of Rome from 236 to 250. Among the Greeks he is called Fabius; in the Alexandrine Chronicle, Flavianus. Eusebius tells a wonderful story respecting his election to the see of Rome. According to Baronius and Bolland, he was the means of converting the Emperor Philip and his son to christianity; but the fact is improbable. Fabian suffered martyrdom in the Decian persecution on the 20th February, 250.—S. D.

FABIANUS, Papirius, a Roman philosopher, lived in the early part of the first century. He began his career as a rhetorician, taking Arellius Fascus as his preceptor and model. But that profession was ere long abandoned for the graver pursuits of philosophy, and the zeal with which he prosecuted the search after wisdom was attested by the numerous treatises he composed, and won for him the friendship and esteem of both the elder and the younger Seneca.—W. B.

FABIUS, one of the most memorable names in Roman history; belonged to a patrician gens, or family, which counted its descent from Evander, who is said to have occupied the Palatine hill with a colony of Arcadians half a century before the Trojan war. According to a subsequent legend, when Romulus and Remus divided their followers into two bands, the latter gave the name of Fabii to those under his command, while the partisans of Romulus were called Quinctilii; and more authentic records state that the ancient sacrificial rites, denominated Lupercales, were for a long time under the charge of priests selected exclusively from the Quinctilian and Fabian families. The latter became prominent in the affairs of the commonwealth as early as the sixth century b.c., gave its name to one of the city tribes, and did not disappear from the catalogue of distinguished Roman gentes till the second century of the christian era. The following were the most illustrious members of it:—

Kæso Fabius Vibulanus, with his brothers Quintus and Marcus, lived in the commencement of the fifth century b.c., and for seven successive years one or other of them held the consulship. At that period, the arrogance of the patricians had awakened much discontent among the lower orders; and though Spurius Cassius, in his third consulship, 486 b.c., proposed and apparently carried a law for the distribution of a part of the public lands among the people, and the exaction of a tithe-tax from the remainder for the payment of the army, it was rendered inoperative by a keen opposition in which the Fabii made themselves prominent. In the following year, Kæso impeached Cassius, and procured his condemnation; while his brother Quintus, being then consul, consigned to the public treasury the whole proceeds of the lands conquered by him from the Æquians and Volscians. The next year placed Kæso in the consulship, and again the successes obtained over the Volscians yielded no share of the spoil to the legionaries. Consequently, in 483 b.c., when Marcus was consul, the dissatisfaction had become so violent, that the levies had to be made beyond the walls of the city; and in the two following years, Quintus and Kaeso successively experienced in their second consulships the humiliation of being defeated by the Veientines, through the refusal of their troops to fight under their command. Conciliatory measures being now indispensable, the Fabii changed their tactics, and by advocating the demands of the plebeians, not only recovered their own popularity, but brought back victory to the Roman standard. In 479 b.c., Kæso, having obtained his third consulship, earnestly urged the senate to take measures for an allotment of lands among the poorer citizens, and was rewarded with the victory which the levies under his command gained over the Æquians, and with the gratification of leading them to the timely rescue of his colleague, Titus Virginius, whose army was on the point of being overpowered by the Veientes. In the latter part of the same year, he renewed his attempts to win from the aristocracy a wiser and more generous policy towards the lower orders; but the result only quenched the hope of restoring the strength of union in the distracted commonwealth, and the Fabian family then undertook to carry on the struggle against the Veientines with their own resources. This proposal being joyfully accepted, they mustered on the Quirinal hill to the number of three hundred and six, offered their solemn sacrifices, and forming with their dependents a company more than four thousand strong, left Rome to fortify themselves in an advantageous position on the Cremera, a small stream which runs into the Tiber at no great distance to the west of the city. For two years they prosecuted vigorously and successfully the patriotic service to which they had devoted themselves. Their enemies, though forming one of the most powerful of the Etruscan nations, were kept at bay, and in several instances defeated by the single Roman family, till at length stratagem gave them the triumph which they had vainly attempted to achieve in a succession of pitched battles. The Fabii, seduced to over-confidence and unwariness, fell into an ambuscade in which they lost the flower of their army; their fortress was captured, and the whole family perished except a nephew of Kæso, who had been left behind in Rome. This took place 477 b.c.; and the disaster was the more bitterly deplored by the plebeian party, because the consul, Titus Menenius, who was encamped with an army at a short distance from the Cremera, made no effort to succour his imperilled countryman. He was subsequently brought to trial, and though the capital sentence incurred by him was commuted into a fine, he died of shame and vexation.

Marcus Fabius Vibulanus, the brother of Quintus and Kæso, held the first consulship in 483 b.c., and proved at that period equally hostile to the demands of the people for a distribution of the conquered lands. The unpopularity which he thus incurred, and the immunity extended by the sacred office of the tribunate to those who refused to enlist, compelled him to hold his levies beyond the walls of the city; and his campaign against the Volscians yielded no fruit. But in his second consulship, 480 b.c., he led the way in recovering, by a change of policy, the confidence which the common people afterwards reposed in the Fabii. Notwithstanding the opposition of the tribune pontificius, he raised an army with which he could venture a pitched battle against the insolent Veientes, and the great victory which he gained was only clouded by the loss of his brother Quintus, who fell in the encounter. Marcus himself died with his other relatives, in the destruction of their military establishment on the Cremera, 477 b.c.

Quintus Fabius Vibulanus, son of the preceding, is said to have been the only member of the gens who survived its final overthrow by the Veientines. He was consul in 467 b.c., and opposed the popular party in the protracted struggle between the patricians and the commonalty, advocating, however, a concession to the latter in the planting of a colony on the recently conquered lands of Antium. His campaign against the Æquians in that year, and in his second consulship, two years later, checked their incursions; but the ravages of the pestilence with which Rome was repeatedly visited at that period, prevented the vigorous prosecution of the warfare. After holding the consulship a third time, 459 b.c., and inflicting severe chastisement on the Volscians and Æquians, who had attacked the colony at Antium, and made themselves masters of the Tusculan citadel, Fabius was elected among the patrician members of