Background
A member of the gens Fabia, he was the grandson of Gaius Fabius Pictor, surnamed 'the Painter' (pictor in Latin).
A member of the gens Fabia, he was the grandson of Gaius Fabius Pictor, surnamed 'the Painter' (pictor in Latin).
He was a senator who fought against the Gauls in 225 BC, and witnessed some if not all of the Second Punic War. He was appointed to travel to the oracle at Delphi in 216 BC, for advice after the Roman defeat at the Battle of Cannae. He wrote in Greek, but his work has not survived, and is known to us only through quotations and allusions in later authors.
Although he is sometimes referred to as an annalist, it is not in fact clear whether his history was annalistic in form (ie narrated events year by year). He used the records of his own and other important Roman families as sources, and began with the arrival of Aeneas in Latium. His work ended with his own recollections of the Second Punic War, which he blamed on Carthage, especially the Barca family of Hamilcar and Hannibal.
Fabius' work utilized the writings of the Greek historians Diocles of Peparethus, who allegedly wrote an early history of Rome, and Timaeus (historian), who had written about Rome in his History of the Western Greeks. Fabius was used as a source by Plutarch, Polybius, Livy, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and his work had been translated into Latin by the time of Cicero. Although Polybius uses his writings he does also accuse him of being biased towards the Romans and inconsistent.
He dated the founding of Rome to be in the "first year of the eighth Olympiad" or 747 BC, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Book I ch 74).