Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
✓ Source-basedfallingTwo time Roman dictator
A Roman patrician who left his plow to rescue the Republic from military disaster, won in sixteen days, then walked away from absolute power and went back to farming.
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Photos 8
Cincinnatus Cincinnatorum
Alexandre Cabanel - Cincinnatus Receiving Deputies of the Senate
Barrias Cincinnatus recevant les députés du Sénat
Cabanel Cincinnatus
Cincinato abandona el arado para dictar leyes a Roma, c.1806 de Juan Antonio Ribera
Cincinnatus at the Plough MET DP167099
Cincinnatus called up from the Field - Sebastiano Ricci
Cincinnatus in retirementIn their orbit 6
Politicians born in the 520s BC 5
About this person
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus served as suffect consul in 460 BC before retiring to work his own land. When Roman forces faltered against the Aequi in 458 BC, he was summoned from the fields and named dictator with near-absolute authority. He delivered a swift victory, resigned after sixteen days, and returned to his farm. The story, recounted in Livy's History and absorbed into Roman civic mythology, cast him as the embodiment of agrarian virtue - humility, modesty, hard work - and the radical idea that power should be temporary. Modern historians question some details but accept Cincinnatus as a real figure who may have served a second dictatorship in 439 BC. His son Caeso violently opposed the plebeians' push for written law, driving many into poverty; Cincinnatus himself stood against expanding common citizens' rights. The legend outlasted the complications.
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