as one which enforces poverty on its citizens. And
although it does not appear what particular law it was that had this
operation in Rome (especially since we know the agrarian law to have
been stubbornly resisted), we find, as a fact, that four hundred years
after the city was founded, great poverty still prevailed there; and
may assume that nothing helped so much to produce this result as the
knowledge that the path to honours and preferment was closed to none,
and that merit was sought after wheresoever it was to be found; for this
manner of conferring honours made riches the less courted. In proof
whereof I shall cite one instance only.

When the consul Minutius was beset in his camp by the Equians, the Roman
people were filled with such alarm lest their army should be destroyed,
that they appointed a dictator, always their last stay in seasons of
peril. Their choice fell on Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus, who at the time
was living on his small farm of little more than four acres, which he
tilled with his own hand. The story is nobly told by Titus Livius where
he says: "_This is worth listening to by those who contemn all things
human as compared with riches, and think that glory and excellence can
have no place unless accompanied by lavish wealth._" Cincinnatus, then,
was ploughing in his little field, when there arrived from Rome the
messengers sent by the senate to tell him he had been made dictator, and
inform him of the dangers which threatened the Republic. Putting on his
gown, he hastened to Rome, and getting together an army, marched to
deliver Minutius. But when he had defeated and spoiled the enemy, and
released Minutius, he would not suffer the army he had rescued to
participate in the spoils, saying, "_I will not have you share in the
plunder of those to whom you had so nearly fallen a prey._" Minutius he
deprived of his consulship, and reduced to be a subaltern, in which rank
he bade him remain till he had learned how to command. And before this
he had made Lucius Tarquininus, although forced by his poverty to serve
on foot, his master of the knights.

Here, then, we see what honour was paid in Rome to poverty, and how
four acres of land sufficed to support so good and great a man as
Cincinnatus. We find the same Poverty still prevailing in the time of
Marcus Regulus, who when serving with the army in Africa sought leave
of senate to return home that he might look after his farm which his
labourers had s