Cincinnatus and the Citizen-Servant Ideal: The Roman Legend's Life, Times, and Legacy

By Michael J. Hillyard

A compilation of the recorded life, times, and influence of a Roman legend, Cincinnatus and the Citizen-Servant Ideal captures the essence of human virtue as it was embodied in the Roman Republics earliest days. Describing Cincinnatuss recorded life and times, Hillyard traces the legends major interpretations from its origin amidst early Roman culture through contemporary times. In its impact on some of the worlds leading thinkers and leaders, such as Livy, George Washington, Henry Knox, Harry Truman, and others, the Cincinnatus legend is described in the many interesting forms it has taken over two millennia. Carried throughout the narrative is the timeless nature of the Cincinnatus idealthe central issues of the role of citizen and leader in society.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 16, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462804658

Michael J. Hillyard

The Academic Dean of the American Military University, Michael Hillyard authored Public Crisis Management: How and Why Organizations Work Together to Solve Society’s Most Threatening Problems. He served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps and was educated at Miami University (Ohio), the American Military University, and the University of Southern California, where he received his doctorate in public administration. Hillyard and his wife Cara live outside of Washington, D.C.

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Copyright © 2001 by Michael J. Hillyard.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The photograph of this book’s cover is a monument of Cincinnatus as it appears today in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio. The photograph was taken by Mr. Robert L. Hillyard.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

ROME CIRCA 500 B.C.

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CITIZEN-PATRIOT

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

LEGACY

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENDNOTES

"Anyone concerned about present problems will

profit from reading about how the Romans went

about solving theirs—with the added advantage

of knowing how it all turned out."¹

Chronological Summary of the Life and Times of

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus

753 B.C. Traditional date of the founding of Rome by Romulus; beginning of the reign of seven kings.

600 B.C. Servius Tullius reorganizes the Army into the fighting organization that Cincinnatus would employ.

519 B.C. Cincinnatus is born.

509 B.C. Tarquins the Proud is exiled, signaling the end of Roman monarchy and the foundation of the Republic.

c.499 B.C. The Romans defeat the Latins in the epic battle of Lake Regillus.

494 B.C. Plebeians organize a representative body, the conciliumplebis, commonly known as the tribunes.

460 B.C. Cincinnatus resigns as consul.

458 B.C. As dictator, Cincinnatus saves Rome by defeating the Aequi.

450 B.C. Publication of the Law of the Twelve Tables, which places Rome under the rule of law.

445 B.C. A law banning intermarriage between plebeians and patricians is repealed.

438 B.C. Cincinnatus is called back as dictator to quell the internal threat of Spurius Maelius.

430 B.C. Cincinnatus dies

396 B.C. Rome conquers its neighboring enemy, the Veii.

44 B.C. Caesar is killed under the assumption of senator-assassins that he wanted to end the Republic and crown himself King of Rome.

27 B.C. Caesar’s heir and grandnephew, Octavius, becomes the first emperor of Rome and is given the name, Augustus. His reign signifies the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.

Definitions of the Early Roman Republic

Censor—guided public morals.

Comitia Centuriata—members met in army units; the better armed (i.e.: wealthy) voted first; elected the praetors among other things.

Comitia Curiata—a public assembly dating from the period of kings; its influence waned in the Republic.

Comitia Tributa—virtually the same as the plebeian assembly (i.e.: concilium plebis) but with the addition of a small number of patricians; elected the quaestors and curulian aediles.

Concilium Plebis—the assembly of the plebeians who elected tribunes as their representatives.

Consul—two chief magistrates who shared supreme power for one- year terms.

Curulian Aediles—supervised markets, festivals, and temples.

Dictator—called in times of emergency to assume absolute rule of the state in a form of martial law for no longer than six months.

Patricians—the aristocrats; a privileged class based solely on lineage.

Plebeians—the commoners; a class restricted from most positions of governance due to lack of birthright.

Praetor—legal expert who advised the consuls.

Questors—responsible for public finances.

Senate—a 300-member council drawn from leading families based on lineage; advised the consuls and authorized popular decisions.

PREFACE

I researched and wrote this book with the conviction that 2,500 year-old Cincinnatus is relevant in the twenty-first century. The most identifiable leader of the Roman Republic’s first 100 years, his life and times offer characteristics that serve as a model for contemporary behavior and insights into the forces of republican governance as they were unleashed for the first time in history. Those forces, now pervasive throughout democratic republics around the world, demand attention from many perspectives. The Cincinnatus perspective offers the thoughts, beliefs, principles, and passions of that first young republic as it struggled for survival.

In the spirit of the Enlightenment, an age which adopted Cincinnatus like none other, I believe the ancient hero’s life and times offer models for future behavior. First, in reading of the early Republic, people of nations that practice republication governance reflect on a shared lineage, for the Cincinnatus generation provided their common origins. People living in democratic republics should know not only of its origins but also of the imperfect democratic struggle it spawned. Such appreciation might alleviate the taking of one’s way of life for granted. Second, the age in which we live is one of transitions, an age which in some ways is unparalleled in history, but in other ways is strikingly similar to the successful transition of fledgling Rome from a monarchy to the longest lasting republic in the history of the word. The writer Thomas Berry describes our times similarly to theirs, as:

… between stories. The old story sustained…for a long time—it

shaped… emotional attitudes, it provided. life’s purpose, it

energized…actions, it consecrated suffering, it guided education.

We awoke in the morning and knew who we were, we could

answer the questions of our children. Everything was taken care

of because the story was there. Now the old story is not

functioning. And we have not yet learned anew.²

In relation to the monumental achievements of Rome, it is logical to ponder the same big issues of contemporary times as Cincinnatus faced in his: what form will governance take of global issues that span nations, religions, and cultures; what will be the relationship of the citizen to issues that affect personally at a local level and collectively at a global level; what type and role of public servant is required to lead, administer, and serve humanity on these issues? It is logical to then ask specific questions of today’s transition: do we have the right structures and do we have the right people in those structures? This book aims to address the question: how do we grow our ‘cincinnati’ to face the demands of this age?

The book is organized to provide the context of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, the times in which he lived, and his influence beyond those times. It is divided into chapters under three major themes: Rome in 500 B.C., The Life of Cincinnatus, and The Legacy of Cincinnatus. In order to fully appreciate the man and his legacy, the reader is first introduced to the day and age of Cincinnatus—the first half-century of the Roman Republic. Described as Cincinnatus would have experienced it, Rome is a young city among several regional competitors with a pervasive influence from a far away neighbor—Greece. The new state is also trying to find itself under republicanism; in this form of government, Roman leaders had no road map. Cincinnatus’s role in the journey is at the beginning; he operates as a leader in the outside world to defend Rome’s interests among hostile neighbors and as a politician inside the city to settle disputes, maintain order, and rule a young state grappling with its identity. Finally, the

Cincinnatus legacy, and in part, the legacy of the Republic, is studied from the blueprint it provides the ages. The legacy’s influence is chronicled in the thinking and behavior of those who came behind Cincinnatus. The book’s final section is a call to action for a twenty-first century application of Cincinnatus in a globally connected world.

Michael J. Hillyard

INTRODUCTION

Not to know what happened before we were born is to remain perpetually a child. For what is the worth of a human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history.³

Cicero

CHAPTER ONE

The Stuff of Legends

"When you put someone on a platform, whether to

worship them or pillory them, you dehumanize them."⁴

Legends and Heroes…and Cincinnatus. Legends serve two purposes: they provide a shared cultural experience for a people, and they symbolize the aims and ideals of that people’s common history, religion, culture, or institutional authority.⁵ They avoid the supernatural tendencies of myths and focus on plausible historical people and scenarios around a central theme. In a way that histories, monuments, or artifacts do not, legends enable modern readers and listeners to enter fascinating windows of exploration into societies, eras, and experiences bygone. Ancient legends truly capture the soul of the civilization in which they rose. They describe or infer a peoples’ most treasured beliefs. In short, they tell what mattered. Their messages also reveal what was typical or expected of normal men or women. After all, when certain lives are the stuff of legends, they stand apart for a reason.

Not surprisingly, what separated the ancient legend from the rest of society still separates great men and women from the pack today. As storied traditions told by word of mouth or in written form, the ancient legends still inform, differentiate, and educate— they still have roles to play. The legend informs the modern observer of times bygone. It differentiates the qualities of the legendary figure from those of the rest of civilization. It educates on the bigger issues of how far the human race has come, how in so many ways it remains the same, and in some unfortunate cases, how far it has fallen. On this latter point, the legend speaks volumes of the society in which it is retold, for it is kept alive not as a tale but as a real message. It is renewed within the terms of current circumstances, and as a result, it continues to provoke. It withstands the test of time, transcends culture, and appeals to timeless human issues of which both ancient and modern observers could and can relate. It is timeless.

As a legend, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus is great. Having stirred the passions of Republican Rome, later citizens of the Roman Empire and eighteenth century America, and men and women of contemporary times, he has been revered throughout history. His life is one of legendary accomplishment and character, it being shaped and lived throughout one of the most turbulent and important periods of history in which lofty ideas clashed violently with tradition and custom.

Both the factual accounting of his experiences and the exaggerations attributed them provide the stuff of legends. It is out of such legends that great men are revered and future great men—who themselves embody the deeper meanings of the legend—are ultimately made. Americans understand the embodiment of heroic virtue in everyday life, for legends runs deep in American history. As George Washington‘s first biographer, Parson Weems captured his legend with the certitude that the „right" depiction of the Founding Father would in turn reproduce Washington‘s virtues and thus latter day Washingtons among his readers.⁶ Thinking similarly, Thomas Jefferson systematically created a pantheon of history’s leading figures at Monticello, hoping only that others would aspire to their legendary heights.⁷

Not merely legendary, Cincinnatus is also heroic. He evokes the hero worship reserved for only the truly great and good men and women of history. While fellow ancient warrior Alexander the Great or fellow Roman leader Julius Caesar are legendary, they do not impart the timeless moral lessons of a hero. Joseph Campbell makes a similar distinction of yet another legend, when he observes: Napoleon was a leader, but he wasn’t a hero in the sense that what he accomplished was grand for humanity’s sake.⁸

Maintaining Campbell’s distinction, the hero sacrifices himself for something—that’s the morality of it. He gives his life to something larger than himself. In further contrast, the hero symbolizes our ability to control the irrational savage within us, whereas the leader may exploit the savage to gain his ends. One of the many distinctions between the celebrity and the hero…is that one lives only for self while the other acts to redeem society.⁹ The hero’s humility, loyalty, temperance, and restraint are timelessly virtuous. Such virtue is expressed so vividly that its importance, as evident in the Cincinnatus example, resonates beyond even the next millenium, and survives in the human race potentially forever.¹⁰ Of their heroes, the Romans famously mingled contemporary figures, mythical traditions, and figments of the supernatural imagination to serve their everyday needs. A practical people, they used the hero to uplift the citizenry, inspire patriotism, and encourage Roman virtue. In the hero’s role, the Cincinnatus story survived the ages, it so closely reflecting the fundamental purposes of Republican Rome—citizen service, selflessness, warrior ethos, self-denial, courage, family, sacrifice, and above all, patriotism.

The Cincinnatus story itself is part history and part myth. Most accounts of it do not distinguish fact from fiction. Message, not substance, rules the tale. The essence of the folk tale, as it has passed down from fathers to sons through generations of latter day Romans, Europeans, and Americans is provided below.

Almost 2,500 years ago, when Rome was but a small town sitting on the banks of the Tiber River, a famous Roman citizen named Cincinnatus owned and worked a meager plot of land by himself with the assistance of only his wife and a small cadre of slaves. As a city aristocrat and former leader, Cincinnatus was deeply esteemed by his fellow citizens. Although once among Rome’s richest and most powerful people, he was now destitute. Fellow Romans knew him to be a virtuous man, for he carried himself throughout life with the dignity of personal conviction and an intense love of Rome, whether he was rich or poor, ruler or farmer.

Because of their immense respect for the wisdom of this man, Rome’s leaders would periodically call upon Cincinnatus when troubles arose. The leaders, like anyone else, occasionally needed a helping hand from a wise man to make the city strong and keep the citizens content. With the city so small—-just 50 square miles around—and so young—-just a few years old under a new form of government—Rome’s leaders sought him out from time-to-time as they learned how to govern the growing city.

A variety of plundering peoples that populated neighboring towns and villages created the most pressing crises for the city’s leaders. As strong, disciplined citizens who worked farms and fields for a living, the Romans were certainly not afraid to fight in self-defense. In fact, it seemed as if they took up arms on an annual basis to fend off the advance o fone group or another. As citizen-soldiers, all of Rome’s men stood proudly ready to drop their plowshares for swords when such duty called.

On one occasion, even the ever-ready Romans faced a crisis of such proportion that it threatened their very survival as a people. While marching through a valley that lay between two mountains, an opposing force of savages caught the Roman army by surprise and attacked it.¹¹ Sandwiching the Romans in the valley between the mountains, the enemy encircled the army with superior numbers of men and prepared to unmercilously slaughter it.

Fortunately, a few captured Roman horsemen rallied together with a