[1] Cincinnatus's success and his immediate resignation of near-absolute authority at the end of the crisis (traditionally dated to 458 BC) has often been cited as a model of selfless leadership, civic virtue, and service to the greater good.

His son, Caeso Quinctius, caused the plebeians to fall into poverty when he violently opposed their desire to have a written code of equally enforced laws.

Beginning in 462 BC, the tribune G. Terentilius Harsa began pressing for codification of the Roman laws to establish a kind of constitution that would check the near-regal power of the patrician consuls.

In the years that followed, he and the other plebeians were ignored, fended off, rejected on procedural grounds, and finally beaten and driven from the streets by gangs of patricians and their clients, supposedly including Cincinnatus's son Caeso.

[citation needed] The violent resistance of the patricians prompted so much unrest that Appius Herdonius was able to seize the Capitoline Hill and hold it against the city with a gang of outlaws and rebel slaves (in Livy) or with an army of Sabines (in Dionysius).

[8] Cincinnatus served as dictator, a king-like figure appointed by the Republic in times of extreme emergency, in 458 or 457 BC in order to lead reinforcements to the defense of the Roman army under the consul L. Minucius Esquilinus Augurinus at Mount Algidus.

[15] In one account, Cincinnatus took advantage of his position as dictator to hold a hearing, despite the objections of the tribunes, in which his son's accuser Marcus Volscius was charged with perjury, driving him into exile.

[17] Cincinnatus may have returned to serve as dictator in 439 BC to defend Rome against the conspiracy the prefect L. Minucius Augurinus alleged Spurius Maelius was plotting against the Republic.

A plebeian named Marcus Volscius testified that his brother, while feeble from sickness, had been knocked down and injured by Caeso with such force that he later died.

He was then condemned to death in absentia and his father subjected to a huge punitive fine, forcing him to sell most of his estates and to retire from public life to personally work a small farm[19] (some accounts say Caeso was killed with Poplicola in the recovery of the Capitoline from Herdonius).

[8] He then went to the assembly of the people and ordered every man of military age to appear on the Field of Mars (Campus Martius) by the end of the day[23] with twelve times the normal amount of encamping spikes.

Rather than slaughter them between the two Roman camps, Cincinnatus accepted their pleas for mercy and offered an amnesty provided that three principal offenders were executed, and Gracchus Cloelius and their other leaders be delivered to him in chains.

[24] On the nomination of his brother or nephew Titus Quinctius Capitolinus Barbatus, Cincinnatus came out of retirement for a second term as dictator in 439 BC to deal with the feared plot of the wealthy plebeian Spurius Maelius to buy the loyalty of the poor and establish himself as king over Rome.

One legend from the end of his life claims a Capitolinus defended one of his sons from a charge of military incompetence by asking the jury who would go to tell the aged Cincinnatus the news in the event of a conviction.

Washington's relinquishing of control of the Continental Army, refusal to consider establishing a monarchy or assuming monarchical powers, and voluntary retirement after two terms as president to return to his farm at Mount Vernon have made allusions to Cincinnatus common in historical[27] and literary[d] treatments of the era.

The Society of the Cincinnati was established by Henry Knox in 1783 to assist the officers of the Continental Army and Navy and their families, to preserve the ideals of the American Revolution, and to maintain the union of the former colonies.

[32] When, in July 2024, United States President Joe Biden announced that he would not run for re-election, multiple political commentators compared him to Cincinnatus.