007 - The Roman Washington

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome. We ended last week in 451 B.C. with the Twelve Tables of Law written down and the Decemvirate expelled. This week I want to step back a few years to focus on the life of one man, Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, who was passed into the collective memory as a paradigm of republican virtue, even though the decisive moments of his life were almost certainly invented by later historians to embellish his famous career, and, in the end, nothing he did was particularly unprecedented. Still, his biography continues to resonate, and taken by itself, it is a pretty good story of a humble man who had absolute power thrust upon him and then, remarkably, relinquished that power and returned to his plow. A man who sacrificed everything for the Republic.

Cincinnatus was born around 519 B.C., when the king still reigned, and was just a boy when Brutus and Collatinus expelled the Tarquins. He was therefore one of the first citizens in Rome who lived his entire life under a republican government, without strong memories of the monarchy. He was in the vanguard of a critical generation. His elders remembered vividly the tyranny of Tarquin, and their steadfast republican principles reflect a personally developed hatred of monarchy. They were the victims and would do anything to avoid being victims again. Cincinnatus, however, and those of his generation, never personally experienced this victimization. Once they came of age, the Republic would have to sink or swim on its own merit. If a would-be tyrant began to acquire too much power, there would be no one to turn to and say, hey, remember Tarquin? This guy is trying to be another Tarquin, because there would be no one left who actually remembered Tarquin. It is in this passing from living memory that mistakes of history repeat themselves. Ambitious men of later generations might attempt to seize power, and, believing their times to be unique, a cowering population might allow it. In those times, only vigilance born of a love of Republic, not a hatred of monarchy, would save the people from slavery, and Cincinnatus was amongst the first to set down that love of the Republic for its own sake.

To dispel one myth straight away, Cincinnatus was at no point a defender of the little guy. He was a patrician by birth and upbringing, and when he emerged on the public stage, it was as a steadfast opponent of the tribunes and their reforms. His first appearance in the historical record is not a starring role, but rather a supporting part in the drama of his son, Caso. There was a great deal of civil unrest in the aftermath of Tarantulis' proposal to codify the law, and plebe demonstrations in the forum were often broken up by collections, or gangs if you prefer, of young patrician nobles. Caso, an abnormally large young man, took to this with great relish, personally beating and chasing any plebe who tried to take part in such demonstrations. Young and hot-tempered that he was, though, he was easy pickings for a savvy tribune named Virginius who intentionally goaded Caso by leading provocative public marches that would inevitably draw the wrath of the young man. Once he had enough witnesses and evidence, Virginius brought capital charges against Caso for, well, all the horrible things he had done. Caso was ordered to appear at a trial, and if he did not, then he would be fined a large sum of money.

It is at this point that Cincinnatus makes his first appearance in the public record, defending his son against Virginius' accusations and asking that the charges be dropped. Rather than face an obviously hostile and biased court, Caso fled north to Etruria and out of the history of Rome completely. His son having essentially jumped bail, Cincinnatus was forced to sell most of his properties to pay the debt, leaving him a pauper with only a small plot of land on the far side of the Tiber. It is from this impoverished state that Cincinnatus' own legend begins.

In 460 BC, not long after the Sabines had been expelled from the citadel, Cincinnatus was chosen to serve as one of the two consuls for that year. The tribunes were less than thrilled at this development, recognizing that they had just put the scrooge to this old man because they were angry with his son, and now he was in a position of authority over them. Cincinnatus did nothing to ease their minds, immediately attacking the character of the plebe leadership, who he accused of aiding and abetting the Sabine capture of the citadel with their selfish myopia. This set the tone for the year. Battles ensued between the consuls on the one hand, the tribunes on the other, with the senate and popular assemblies caught in between. Cincinnatus managed to kill Tarantullus' bill for the year, while the tribunes banned the consuls from taking any army more than one mile outside the city limits. By the end of the year, no compromise was reached, and the battle was set to continue on into the next year, but the senate passed a law stating that no magistrate, patrician or plebe, could serve in successive years. The tribunes dismissed this out of hat, and had themselves re-elected, so the patricians were set to reconfirm Cincinnatus when he announced that if they were to act no better than the plebes, then they were no better than the plebes, and refused to stand for office. Agreeing reluctantly to this logic, the patricians allowed Cincinnatus to retire to his small farm.

It would not be long, however, before he was called back to service in his most famous role, dictator of Rome. In 458, the Aequians had been causing Rome trouble, and one of the consuls for the year was sent with an army to deal with them. However, the fight was much rougher than it had been in the past, and the legions found themselves pinned down, unable to retreat, and facing annihilation. The citizens of Rome panicked, and, without dissent, a dictator was called for, and Cincinnatus was named. A delegation was sent to inform the old man, and famously found him at work on the small farm he had retired to, a living paradigm of Roman virtue. The delegation saluted Cincinnatus as dictator, imploring him to return to the city at once. The tribunes were appalled to see their old political enemy return to such a powerful position, but Cincinnatus was greeted in the city with such acclaim that there was little they could do but hope that the old patrician would not turn his absolute power against them. Cincinnatus, however, was not out to settle political grudges, well, not yet, anyway, and promptly raised an army and marched to the rescue of the besieged legion. Wasting no time, Cincinnatus' army swept in and decisively beat the Aequians, saving the legion and ending the threat. He marched back to Rome and celebrated his well-earned triumph a mere fifteen days after being named dictator. Before stepping down, though, Cincinnatus did clear up one bit of family business, forcing Virginius to plead guilty to perjury and go into exile. Home safe and his family's honor restored, Cincinnatus resigned the dictatorship and returned to his farm, a hero in his own time and a legend thereafter.

He would make one final appearance in the public record twenty years later, again appointed as dictator, though this time it was to deal with internal strife and not an external threat. Ironically, it was an attempt by a single man to capture total power in Rome that led to the reappointment of Cincinnatus as dictator. We will talk more next week about the plot of Malleus to make himself king, so for now I will just leave it that a conspiracy was in motion and Cincinnatus was brought in to deal with it, which he did as quickly as he dispatched the Aequians and again resigned the dictatorship and returned to his farm, this time for the last time.

Cincinnatus is a bona fide legend, but the particulars of his life are almost certainly an invention. I look forward to the day when I begin covering events from the later, more accurate records so I don't have to keep saying that the story I've just told you is largely fictitious, but we still have another fifty years before we get to the sack of Rome, so we'll just have to grind through this together. Anyway, the story of Cincinnatus is largely fictitious, but the man was a giant of his age and earned a little mythical embellishment. And regardless of its accuracy, the life of Cincinnatus was handed down from generation to generation and is still told today. His story had a great impact on the Enlightenment age soldiers of the American Continental Army who often referred to their great leader General Washington as the American Cincinnatus, because at the end of the war he retired rather than allow the people to make him king. When the army was demobilized, the retired officers formed a fraternity of sorts called the Society of the Cincinnati, membership in which was limited to men who had served in the army for three years. One of their members was later the Territorial Governor of Ohio, and he renamed a growing urban hub on the Ohio River Cincinnati, both in honor of the Society itself, and in honor of Washington, to whom the name originally referred. Ironically, the Society still exists today, membership being limited to sons of the original members, making it a hereditary institution, completely anathema to everything the officers had originally been commissioned to fight. But I digress.

Cincinnatus' mark had been set upon the world, but what do we make of him? Clearly he was a towering figure in the first century of the Republic, a hero, a consul, a twice-named dictator, but why the iconic veneration? Allegedly it is for the act of relinquishing absolute power, but we have already seen that Cincinnatus was not the first man to do this, nor would he be the last. The office of dictator was not created especially for him, it was, in fact, a constitutional role that was used regularly in times of crisis. His story, of course, had a nice ring to later Romans, who reveled in his simple homespun virtue, called from his field to save the city. In the good old days, they said, the greatest man of his age was found hard at work on a small farm, not eating figs on a sofa in some palatial estate. He was the epitome of the virtuous farmer-soldier, the ideal Roman.

I think two things really contribute to the fame of Cincinnatus. The first is the incidental fact that most people, myself included before I began digging, believed Cincinnatus must have either been the first dictator of Rome, or the only dictator of Rome to ever step down voluntarily, or something equally unprecedented. But of course there was nothing particularly unprecedented about Cincinnatus, and our veneration of him in that case would seem to be based upon nothing more than our own misconceptions about Roman history. But even though Cincinnatus wasn't the first or last of anything, he was unique in a profound way. The first two dictators, who, like Cincinnatus, served and then resigned, were men of a generation that remembered the Tarquins, remembered the tyranny, and would not think for a moment about seizing power for themselves so soon after they had thrown out the kings. Cincinnatus, on the other hand, comes from the next generation, a generation that lived their entire lives under the Republic, and was thus the first man who had no memory of monarchy to be given absolute power. The temptation to keep it would not this time be tempered by memories of subjugation and struggle. But the virtue of Cincinnatus returned to the people the power that was rightfully theirs. It was his resignation from dictatorship that really cemented the precedent for later Romans to relinquish dictatorial power and maintain the Republic, that thing of the people. In that case, Cincinnatus really does deserve all the praise he is given for selflessly handing the reins of power back to the people, where it would remain for hundreds of years. In any case, any man who voluntarily gives up absolute power is a hero whose story rightfully is told.

Next week we will learn more about the machinations of Malleus, a scoundrel of the highest order, as well as the events that led up to the final confrontation with Vea, a struggle that broke the back of Etruscan dominance, which, though a victory for Rome, opened the door for the Gauls to sweep in from the north and hand the Romans their most devastating defeat, almost ending the empire before it had a chance to really begin.