Dictator statesman military leader Patrician
According to the traditional accounts, Lucius would have been born about 519 BC, during the last decade of the Roman Kingdom. He would have been a member of the lesser patrician clan (minor gens) Quinctia, whom Tullus Hostilius supposedly moved to Rome from the Latian city of Alba Longa.
The core of the tradition holds that in 458 Cincinnatus was appointed dictator at Rome in order to rescue a consular army that was surrounded by the Aequi on Mount Algidus. At the time of his appointment he was working a small farm. He is said to have defeated the enemy in a single day and celebrated a triumph in Rome. Cincinnatus maintained his authority only long enough to bring Rome through the emergency. He then resigned and returned to his farm. Most scholars see no factual truth in the further tradition that Cincinnatus was given a second dictatorship in 439 to check the monarchical ambitions of Spurius Maelius. Once again he is supposed to have ceded his power after ending the crisis.
