It was two years after these events that the deputies of the senate, who came to invest him with the ensigns of dictatorial power, found him working on his little farm. He was clad in his tunic only; and as the deputies advanced, they bade him put on his toga, that he might receive the commands of the senate in seemly guise. So he wiped off the dust and sweat, the signs of labour, and bade his wife fetch his toga, and asked anxiously whether all was right or not. Then the deputies told him how the army was beset by the Æquian foe, and how the senate looked to him as the saviour of the state. A boat was provided to carry him over the Tiber; and when he reached the other bank he was greeted by the senate, who followed him to the city, while he himself walked in state, with his four-and-twenty lictors. Cincinnatus then chose L. Tarquitius as his master of the horse. This man was a patrician, but, like the dictator himself, was poor--so poor that he could not afford to keep a horse, but was obliged to serve among the foot-soldiers. That same day the dictator and his master of the horse came down into the Forum, ordered all shops to be shut, and all business to be suspended. All men of the military age were to meet them in the Field of Mars before sunset, each man with five days’ provisions and twelve stakes; the older men were to get the provisions ready, while the soldiers were preparing the stakes. Thus all was got ready in time; the dictator led them forth, and they marched so rapidly that by midnight they had reached Mount Algidus, where the army of the consul was hemmed in. Then the dictator, when he had discovered the place of the enemy’s army, ordered his men to put all their baggage down in one place, and then to surround the enemy’s camp. They obeyed, and each one raising a shout, began digging the trench and fixing his stakes, so as to form a palisade round the enemy. The consul’s army, which was hemmed in, heard the shout of their brethren, and flew to arms; and so hotly did they fight all night, that the Æquians had no time to attend to the new foe, and next morning they found themselves hemmed in on all sides by the trench and palisade, so that they were now between two Roman armies. They were thus forced to surrender. The dictator required them to give up their chiefs, and made their whole army pass under the yoke, which was formed by two spears fixed upright in the ground, and a third bound across them at the top. Cincinnatus returned to Rome amid the shouts and exultation of his soldiers; they gave him a golden crown, in token that he had saved the lives of many citizens; and the senate decreed that he should enter the city in triumph.