Under Fabius, the Romans attacked Hannibal's tenuous supply lines and isolated outposts, captured patrols and forage parties, avoided pitched battles, and ultimately forced a desperate Hannibal to attack fortified cities in a failed attempt to conquer a port.

A Fabian strategy traditionally favors the weaker belligerent. Qualitatively and quantitatively disadvantaged, the weak avoid decisive engagements to harass overextended lines of communication with hit-and-run, guerilla-like tactics.

The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection.

He was able to defeat a larger, better-equipped and better-trained British-led force by adopting a Fabian strategy, a strategic approach named after Quintus Fabius Maximus, a Roman general, who, in 221 BC, thwarted the invasion of Rome by Carthaginian general Hannibal by using a guerrilla-style war of attrition to ...