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* FABIAN SOCIETY. 410 FABLE. In 1SS3 an American, Thomas Davidson, who chanced to be in London, held parlor conferences with a group of literary workers chiefly, on the social duties of the times. This group continued to hold informal conferences. Socialistic theo- ries gradually gained the upper hand in one sec- tion, and it linally became definitely socialistic. The Society took its name from the Roman Fabius. In 1888 the society began holding pub- lic meetings. The addresses have since been pub- lished as the Fabian Essays (American edition, Boston, 1894). The society carries on an active propaganda through the press, free lectures, etc. It seeks the nationalization of land and of such industries as can be 'conveniently managed so- cially. 5 Rent and interest must be added to the reward of labor. The idle class must disappear and practical equality of opportunity be gained. The present leader of the society is the politician and writer Sidney Webb. Sec Socialism. FABII, fa'bi-I, Arch of the. A travertine arch on the Via Sacra, at the entrance to the Ro- man Forum, erected by Quintus Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus, about B.C. 120, to commemorate his campaign against the Arverni and Allobroges. The only remains are a few blocks of travertine discovered in 18S2 near the site of the arch, which appears to have been of very simple archi- tecture. FA'BIUS. The name of one of the oldest and most illustrious patrician families of Rome. Three brothers of this name alternately held the office' of Consul for seven years (B.C. 485-479). In 479 the Fabii, under Kmao Fabius Vibu- lani 8, migrated to the banks of the Cremera, a small stream that flows into the Tiber a few miles above Rome. Here, two years after, they were decoyed into an ambuscade by the Veientes, with whom they had been at war, and, with the exception of one member, who had remained at Rome, and through whom the race was perpetu- ated, the entire gens, consisting of 306 men, was put to the sword. The most eminent of the Fabii were Quintus Fabius Ruixianus— supposed to have been the first who obtained for himself and his family the surname of Maximus — and his odant, Quintus Fabius Maximus Verru- < oni s, named C'UNCTATOR, 'the delayer.' The for- mer was the mosl eminent of the Roman generals in the second Samnite War (c. 326-304 B.C.), and was twice dictator and six times consul. The hit- ter, who, in the course of his career, was five times consul and twice censor, was appointed dictator immediately after the defeal of the Un- mans by Hannibal at Lake Trasimenus, in B.C. 217. The peculiar line of tactics which he observed iii the second Punic War obtained for him the surname by which he i-. best known in history. Banging on the heights like a thundercloud, to u hieh Hannibal himself compared him. and avoid- ing a direct engagement, he tantalized the enemy with his caution, harassed them by marches and countx i and cut off their stragglers and bile at the same t inie his delay al lowed Home to assemble her forces in greater th. This policy — which has become pro verbial as 'Fabian policy' — although the wises* in tances, was appreciated neithei in i i shortly after. Marcus Minuciufl Rufus, ma iter of the hoi - ctatoi hip .i p i cupied for bul a shorl time. During his fifth consulship (c. 210 B.C.) Fabius recovered Tarentum, whicn had long been one of Hannibal's important positions. He died in B.C. 203. C. Fabius, surnamed Pictob, executed upon the walls of the temple of Salus— dedicated by the dictator C. Junius Brutus Bubulus in b.c 302 — the earliest Roman paintings of which we have any record; and his grandson, Quintus Fabius Pictob, was the first writer of a Roman history in prose. The fragments of his Annals may be found in Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Frag- menta (Leipzig, 1883). FABIUS, The American. A name applied to Washington because, like Fabius Cunctator, he followed a policy of avoiding pitched battles, par- ticularly in the campaigns of 1776 and the win- ter of 1778. FABIUS, The French. Anne, Due de Mont- morency, Grand Constable of France (c.]4'.i2- 1567), so called from his policy of delay in Provence in 1536. FABLE (from Lat. fabula, narrative, from fari, to speak; connected with Gk. <pdvat, phanai, to say. Skt. bha, to shine). A word of twofold signification. First, it is employed by some writers in a general sense to denote any fictitious narrative, as, for example, the incidents in an epic or dramatic poem. At one time, also, when the myths of the Greeks and Romans were thought to be satisfactorily accounted for by re- garding them as conscious inventions of the an- cient poets and priests, it was customary to speak of them as fables, but this application of the term is now abandoned by scholars. (See Myth.) According to the second and more fre- quent signification of the word, it denotes a spe- cial kind of literary composition, either prose or verse, in which a story of some kind is made the vehicle for conveying a universal truth. It dif- fers from a parable in this respect, that while the latter never transcends in conception the bounds of the probable or the possible, the former always and of necessity does. The peculiarity of the structure of the fable consists in the trans- ference to inanimate objects, or. more frequently, to the lower animals, of the qualities of rational beings. By the very novelty and utter impossi- bility of the representation', the interest of the hearer or reader is excited, and thus its sym- bolic meaning and moral become transparent to him. at least if the fable is well contrived. The ancient fabulists were simple, clear, and earnest in their representations. They seem to have sprung up in the East, and India was in all prob- ability their home. From the rich collections of fables in the Sanskrit Pancatantra and llito- padeia (qq.v.) came, it would seem, the /Esopie bea i 9tories. Other celebrated Oriental collec tions of fables, based directly upon the Sanskrit. are those of Bidpai (q.v.), or Pilpai, and of the Arabian Lokman. Among the Greeks, the greates) name is thai of Esop (q.v.). whose fables, at a much later period, were versified by Babrius (q.v. ) . Among t h.- Romans. Phtedrus cleverly imi- tated Esop, but with considerable modifications, thus giving a certain an n1 of independent value to his work. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that the well known fable of the Tovm Mouse and Country Mouse, told by Horace, is of purely Roman origin, and is probably the only one in existence of which this can be affirmed.