Cincinnatus
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Cincinnatus. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the hero of a patriotic legend of Rome. Born about 519 B. C. He was an upholder of the patricians in their struggles with the plebians. He cultivated a field of four acres across the Tiber from Rome. In 458 a Roman army was hemmed in a defile of Mt. Algidus. The senate named Cincinnatus dictator and sent deputies to inform "the sole hope of the Roman people." Livy tells the story: This man cultivated a farm of four acres. "There, either leaning on a stake in a ditch which he was digging, or ... ploughing, ... being requested by the ambassadors to listen to the commands of the Senate," he was saluted Dictator of Rome. Going immediately thither, he led the citizens against their foes, and soon returned victorious. "The leaders of the enemy were led before his car; ... his army followed, laden with spoil." Having finished his task, he resigned his dictatorship on the sixteenth day of holding it, and returned to his farm.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
LUCIUS QUINC- TIUS, a wealthy patrician in the early days of the Roman Republic, born about 519 B. C. He succeeded Publicola in the consulship, and then retired to cultivate his small estate beyond the Tiber. The messengers of the senate found him at work on his farm when they came to summon him to the dictatorship. He rescued the army from its peril, and then returned quietly to his farm. At the age of 80 he was again appointed dictator to oppose the ambitious designs of Spurius Mælius.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Nothing new about Cincinnatus has been discovered since Aiton's wrote in 1910, for the excellent reason that everything we know comes from Livy and Dionysius, writing four centuries after the events they describe. What has shifted is confidence: Aiton's already hedged by calling him "the hero of a patriotic legend," and most historians now go further, treating the whole fifth-century BC narrative — the four-acre farm, the sixteen-day dictatorship of 458, the second dictatorship against Spurius Maelius that Collier's reports for 439 — as a moralising construction of the later Republic rather than reliable record. A real Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus may well lie behind it, but the plough and the ditch are literature. His afterlife has been the durable part: the Society of the Cincinnati, founded by Continental Army officers in 1783, and the Ohio city named for it in 1790, still carry the idea of the citizen who lays down power and goes home.
Written for this edition, 2026.