Boris Johnson farewell speech: Who was the Roman statesman Cincinnatus?

As he made his farewell address to the nation outside 10 Downing Street on Tuesday morning, outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson could not resist slipping in one final signature reference to the classics.

“On the subject of bouncing around in future careers, let me say that I am now like one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function,” Mr Johnson said.

“I will now be gently re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly in some remote and obscure corner of the Pacific.

“Like Cincinnatus, I am returning to my plough and I will be offering this government nothing but the most fervent support.”

The ever-obliging historian Mary Beard was quick to explain the significance of the reference on Twitter, suggesting that Mr Johnson was invoking the legendary statesman to draw a favourable comparison with his own tenure.

“[Cincinnatus] was a fifth-century BC Roman politician who saved the state from an invasion, then – job done – returned to his farm (‘to his plough’),” she commented, before adding gleefully: “He was also an enemy of the people.”

The satirist Armando Iannucci read it as a cryptic promise that the toppled PM envisions a return to power: “Johnson expects to be called back. Cincinnatus was recalled from his plow to become leader of Rome a second time. Someone tell the people with microphones at Downing Street.”

It certainly seems unlikely that Mr Johnson will really go away quietly, previously relishing the opportunity provided by his roles as mayor of London and Daily Telegraph columnist to play the king across the water and provoke David Cameron’s Conservative government from afar.

He may well already be dreaming of Liz Truss’s downfall and will doubtless encourage the cultish following and nostalgia for his peculiar brand already in evidence within Tory circles with a view to conniving a comeback.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519–430BC) was genuinely content toiling in obscurity and is remembered as Rome’s leader in times of crisis and as an icon of civic virtue.

According to legend, he was first called upon in 458BC to rescue the consular army when it became surrounded on Mount Algidus in the Alban Hills by the forces of the Aequi, a native Italian people long hostile to what it regarded as the tyranny of the eternal city.

When the Aequi placed Rome’s soldiers under siege, only five horsemen are said to have escaped to tell the senate what had taken place, prompting the appointment of Cincinnatus as dictator, who laid down his hoe, swiftly raised a new army and set out to do battle.

He is said to have routed the hordes within 16 days and shown mercy to all but the ringleaders, who were executed, before stepping down and returning to the fields, only to be called upon for a second time in 439BC, despite his advanced years, to check the ambitions of Spurius Maelius.

An affluent citizen who capitalised on an outbreak of famine by buying up local grain supplies and presenting them to the people of Rome in order to curry favour ahead of a prospective political challenge, Maelius was killed by Gaius Servilius Ahala, Cincinnatus’s master of the horse, after which the elder again resigned his commission, this time after just 21 days.

Many Italian towns and streets are named in his honour to this day, as is the American city of Cincinnati, Ohio, while statues commemorating his example stand in public gardens in Paris and Vienna.

Unlike Cincinnatus, Mr Johnson leaves office with the country in a state of emergency, not having just resolved its problems.

As a crowd-pleasing populist, he might also care to take a closer look at the Roman’s treatment of the Aequi, as Ms Beard suggests.

Julius Caesar, fatally knifed by his own allies (“Et tu, Rishi?”), might be the more apt and obvious comparison, given the circumstances of Mr Johnson’s own removal this summer.

As for his apparent fantasy of being summoned back to Westminster, the bookmakers at Coral currently regard it as more likely that he will appear on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! before the next general election than darken the door of No 10 again, offering 10/1 on the former proposition and 16/1 on the latter.