l Nautius; and when there seemed to be but insufficient
protection in him, and it was determined that a dictator should be
appointed to retrieve their shattered fortunes, Lucius Quinctius
Cincinnatus was appointed by universal consent.

It is worth while for those persons who despise all things human in
comparison with riches, and who suppose that there is no room either
for exalted honour, or for virtue, except where riches abound in great
profusion, to listen to the following: Lucius Quinctius, the sole hope
of the empire of the Roman people, cultivated a farm of four acres on
the other side of the Tiber, which is called the Quinctian meadows,
exactly opposite the place where the dock-yard now is. There, whether
leaning on a stake while digging a trench, or while ploughing, at any
rate, as is certain, while engaged on some work in the fields, after
mutual exchange of salutations had taken place, being requested by
the ambassadors to put on his toga, and listen to the commands of the
senate (with wishes that it might turn out well both for him and the
commonwealth), he was astonished, and, asking whether all was well,
bade his wife Racilia immediately bring his toga from the hut. As soon
as he had put it on and come forward, after having first wiped off the
dust and sweat, the ambassadors congratulating him, united in saluting
him as dictator: they summoned him into the city, and told him what
terror prevailed in the army. A vessel was prepared for Quinctius by
order of the government, and his three sons, having come out to
meet him, received him on landing at the other side; then his other
relatives and his friends: then the greater part of the patricians.
Accompanied by this numerous attendance, the lictors going before him,
he was conducted to his residence.[37] There was a numerous concourse
of the commons also: but they by no means looked on Quinctius with the
same satisfaction, as they considered both that he was vested with
excessive authority, and was likely to prove still more arbitrary
by the exercise of that same authority. During that night, however,
nothing was done except that guards were posted in the city.

On the next day the dictator, having entered the forum before
daylight, appointed as his master of the horse Lucius Tarquitius, a
man of patrician family, but who, though he had served his campaigns
on foot by reason of his scanty means, was yet considered by far the
most capable in military matters