Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges

Who is Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges?

Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges was the son of Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus and a Consul in 292 and 276 BC. In 295 BC, as curule aedile, he fined certain matrons of noble birth for their disorderly life and with the proceeds built a temple to Venus near the Circus Maximus.

He was consul in 292 BC, with his father as a Legate. His Battle against the Pentrian Samnites ended with no victory to either side. In a second battle the consul retrieved his reputation, stormed several Samnite towns, and was rewarded with a triumph of which the most remarkable feature was old Fabius riding beside his son's chariot.

In 291 BC, he was proconsul in Samnium. There he was besieging Cominium when the consul, Lucius Postumius Megellus, arbitrarily and violently drove him from the army and the province. The Fasti ascribe a triumph to Fabius for his proconsulate.

He was consul for the second time in 276, when he obtained a second triumph. Shortly afterwards he went as legatus from Rome to Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt. The presents which Fabius and his colleagues received from the Egyptian monarch they deposited in the public treasury on their return to Rome, but a decree of the Senate directed that the ambassadors should retain them.