L. Cincinnatus was one of the heroes of old Roman story. When the deputies of the Senate came to him to announce his elevation to the dictatorship they found him driving a plow, and clad only in his tunic or shirt. They bade him clothe himself, that he might hear the commands of the Senate. He put on his toga, which his wife Racilia brought him. The deputies then told him of the peril of the Roman army, and that he had been made Dictator. The next morning, before daybreak, he appeared in the forum, and ordered all the men of military age to meet him in the evening in the Field of Mars, with food for five days, and each with twelve stakes. His orders were obeyed; and with such speed did he march, that by midnight he reached Mount Algidus. Placing his men around the AEquian camp, he told them to raise the war-cry, and at the same time to begin digging a trench and raising a mound, on the top of which the stakes were to be driven in. The other Roman army, which was shut in, hearing the war-cry, burst forth from their camp, and fought with the AEquians all night. The Dictator's troops thus worked without interruption, and completed the intrenchment by the morning. The AEquians found themselves hemmed in between the two armies, and were forced to surrender. The Dictator made them pass under the yoke, which was formed by two spears fixed upright in the ground, while a third was fastened across them. Cincinnatus entered Rome in triumph only twenty-four hours after he had quitted it, having thus saved a whole Roman army from destruction. In reading the wars of the early Republic, it is important to recollect the League formed by Spurius Cassius, the author of the Agrarian Law between the Romans, Latins, and Hernicans. This League, to which allusion has been already made, was of the most intimate kind, and the armies of the three states fought by each other's sides. It was by means of this League that the AEquians and Volscians were kept in check, for they were two of the most warlike nations in Italy, and would have been more than a match for the unsupported arms of Rome. [Footnote 14: Debtors thus given over to their creditors were called _Addicti_.] [Footnote 15: This was called the right of _intercession_, from _intercedo_, "to come between."] [Footnote 16: The Tribunes were originally elected at the Comitia of the Centuries, where the influence of the Patricians was predominant; but by the Publilian Law, proposed by the tribune Publilius Volero, and passed B.C. 471, the election was transferred to the Comitia of the Tribes, by which means the Plebeians obtained the uncontrolled election of their own officers.] [Illustration: Tarpeian Rock.] CHAPTER V. THE DECEMVIRATE. B.C. 451-449.