Livy: How Cincinnatus Saved a Roman Army (c. early 1st century C.E.)
Cincinnatus was regarded by the Romans as one of the heroes of their world. He served as consul in 460 and as dictator in 458 and 439 B.C.E. Although he was thoroughly against equal laws for patricians and plebeians, he is most well known as the humble farmer who left his family and farm to defeat the Æquians, only to return to his farm and pick up where he had left off. His example served as a powerful stimulus to the ideas of good leadership and civic virtue.
[The Roman army was led out against the Æquians by the consul Minucius, and being unskillfully generalled was presently inclosed by the enemy, who soon held the camp closely besieged. Just before their lines were inclosed, five Roman horsemen escaped through to the city with tidings of the peril. The alarm in Rome was great, and it was resolved to call in Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus to act as dictator in the emergency.]
He [Cincinnatus], the sole hope of the Romans, cultivated a little farm of four jugera1 across the Tiber. There he was either pushing upon. a stake iun a ditch, or busy plowing [when the envoys of the Senate came]. After saluting him they bade him put on his toga and listen to the commands of the Senate. He was greatly astonished and —asking repeatedly “if everything was safe?”—called to his wife Racilia, ” to bring his toga from the hut.” When he had put it on, and wiped off some of his sweat and dust, he presented himself; and the envoys at once congratulated him and saluted him as dictator; next they summoned him into the city and explained the sore plight of the army.
[He entered the city with due state, and spent the night posting guards and making preparations. The next morning he was in the Forum ere daylight, and named Lucius Tarquitius his master of the horse. Then he ordered] a suspension of all civil business, ordered all the shops in the city closed, and forbade any one to attend to any private affairs. His next command was for every man of military age to be with his weapons at the Campus Martius ere sundown, with five days provisions and twelve stout stakes, [while the older men were to be preparing victuals for the soldiers. Throughout Borne there prevailed the greatest zeal and bustle.]
When the troops were formed, the dictator marched at the head of the infantry, and the master of the horse at the head of the cavalry. In both divisions the orders ran “to go on the double-quick. The consul and his Romans were besieged. They had now been shut in three whole days, and everything might be decided in a moment!” And the troops, to please their chiefs, were always shouting, “Hurry, standard-bearer! Follow on, comrade!” At midnight they were at Algidum, and halted near the enemy.
[The dictator then reconnoitered and presently] drew the whole host in a long column around the enemy’s camp, and ordered that on the signal they should all raise the war shout and thereupon every man throw up a trench before his position and fix the stakes he had in it. [This was successfully done, and the besieged Romans took heart at the shout, saying “Aid was at hand”; whereupon the consul promptly ordered a sortie. The night passed amid fighting and with terror and confusion for the Æquians.]
At dawn the Æquians were encompassed by the dictator’s barriers, and scarce able to maintain the fight against a single army, but their lines were now attacked by Cincinnatus’s men also. So they were attacked furiously and continuously from both sides. Then, in their distress, they appealed to the dictator and the consul not to turn the victory into a massacre, but to suffer them to depart without their arms. The consul, however, ordered them “to go to the dictator”; and the latter in his wrath against them, added ignominy to mere defeat. He ordered Gracchus Cloelius, their general, and their other leaders, to be haled before him in fetters, and enjoined that they should evacuate the town of Corbio [but asserted]:””He did not want their blood. They could depart, but at last they must be brought to confess that their nation had been vanquished and crushed ; and so they must’‘pass under the yoke’.'” The “yoke” is formed of three spears, two whereof are fixed in the ground, and one is tied across between the upper ends. Under this “yoke” the dictator sent the Æquians. Their camp was taken, full of every kind of booty, — for they were sent away naked; — and the dictator distributed the spoil to his own men only [telling the consul’s army it was reward enough that they were rescued. But this army, grateful to Cincinnatus for his services, voted him] a golden crown of a pound’s weight, and saluted him as their “patron,” when they marched forth [from their camp]. [He reentered Rome in triumph, the spoils and captive chiefs accompanying his procession, amid general rejoicing; and] he laid down his dictatorship on the sixteenth day, although he had received it for six months.