In 458 B.C., faced by a military defeat at the hands of an Italian tribe, the Roman senate appointed a retired statesman, Cincinnatus, as dictator of Rome in hope of rescue. Legend has it that Cincinnatus left his plow in the fields of his farm to answer this summons. In less than three weeks, he defeated the enemy, gave up his powers as dictator, and returned to his estate, hailed as a model of Republican virtue.
In 1783, George Washington astounded his contemporaries, including Britain’s King George III, by resigning his commission and so giving up the immense power he held as general of the victorious army to return to his Virginia farm. For this act, he became known as the American Cincinnatus. In the rotunda of Virginia’s state capitol in Richmond, visitors see a plow of marble as a part of Washington’s statue, a nod to the ancient Roman.
