Maria Brooks

Adele Bloch-Bauer I (pictured below) is one of the most impressive pieces of art I’ve ever been in the same room with. Love to see the merge with the met

In 458 BC, Rome stood on the edge of destruction. An enemy army had trapped a Roman consul and his legions in a mountain pass. Panic gripped the city. With no other hope, the Senate took a desperate step: they sent messengers to summon a 60-year-old farmer from his fields. His name was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. Once a respected senator, he had lost his fortune paying his son’s debts and now lived simply on a four-acre farm, working the land himself to support his family. The envoys found him plowing in the dirt. They asked him to don his toga so they could deliver the Senate’s message: Rome was appointing him dictator—absolute ruler with unchecked power and command of the entire army. Cincinnatus accepted. In just 16 days, he assembled an army, marched to the enemy, surrounded them, and forced their surrender. The Republic was saved. He had legal authority to rule for six months. He could have clung to power, expanded it, or crowned himself. History offered countless examples of men who did exactly that. Instead, on the 16th day, he resigned. He removed the toga of authority, returned to his farm, and finished plowing the very field he had left behind. Twenty years later, at age 80, Rome called him again during another crisis. He answered, crushed the threat in 21 days, and once more stepped down—returning to his modest life and dying poor on the same small farm. More than 2,200 years later, when George Washington led America to victory in the Revolutionary War, he too refused offers of kingship and returned to his farm at Mount Vernon. Europeans were stunned. King George III reportedly said that if Washington voluntarily gave up power, “he will be the greatest man in the world.” Washington became known as “the American Cincinnatus.” The true lesson of Cincinnatus is not mere humility. It is that, throughout most of history, the people best suited to lead were often those who least desired power. When societies begin to reward those who crave it instead, the republic begins to rot. Cincinnati, Ohio, is named after him and most of its residents have no idea why.