The foregoing narrative is mostly fact, partly fiction. All the characters except my avatar are real. The Roman Senate did indeed send Quintus Fabius Maximus, consul, to Gallia Transalpina in 121 B.C. when Gaius Gracchus was barely cold in his grave. After defeating the Allobroges in battle the same year, he was honoured the following year with a triumphal arch, the first ever erected in or near the Forum. A descendant did restore the arch in 58-57 B.C. and have it adorned with portrait busts of other family members as listed in the story.

This sequence of events seemed nevertheless to invite a few questions.

• The Gracchi had risked their lives in a fight to redistribute lands unlawfully held by wealthy patrician families ; how did those families dare to make matters worse by dispatching QFM off to Gallia to conquer even more lands, while the memory of the Gracchi’s cause was still fresh in everyone’s mind ?
• According to ancient sources, Cnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus was refused a triumph on grounds of perjury - he had violated a truce in order to capture the leader of the Arverni. But the war was all about stealing more land in the first place. To make a fuss about perjury under those circumstances seems petty. Could the official reason for Ahenobarbus’ disgrace be a fiction, and could there have been another unavowed reason ?
• The reputation for debauchery and corruption comes from an ancient source who mistook Allobrogicus for another Fabius who was in fact convicted for various crimes in Rome decades later. Couldn’t the general public in Allobrogicus’ own day just as easily have been misinformed ?
• The restoration of 58-57 B.C. had the effect of relegating Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus to the background of his own arch. Could this be a case of an uninformed family member glorifying the gens Fabia at the expense of one ancestor whom he considered an embarrassment ?

These questions in mind, I supplemented the known sequence of events with an eye to repairing the reputation of a man who surely does not deserve to be remembered as an embarrassment. If this narrative contains any gross or not so gross errors in judgment, they are entirely my own.

Questions or comments would be appreciated and may be added below.

Credits :
The Roman battle scene comes from a Roman history website ; the bust used to portray Q. Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus comes from L’Atelier Prométhée ; Pierre Julien's statue of a wounded gladiator is at the Louvre, Paris.