Cincinnati

... was founded in 1788, and originally named Losantville. It was renamed two years later in honour of the Society of the Cincinnati. This was (and still is) a hereditary society, founded in 1783, by officers of the Continental Army who served in what's known in the United States as the Revolutionary War. It promotes the ideals of its founders by cultivating public interest in the revolution, through its library and museum collections, publications, and other activities.

The society was named after Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (519–430 BC), who was a legendary hero or the Roman Republic (legendary in that many historians doubt whether he ever actually existed). In 458 BC he was a patrician and former consul who had fallen on difficult times, finding himself farming a small plot of four acres along the right bank of the Tiber River. With the Republic under threat from its neighbours the Aequi, the elderly Cincinnatus was offered the role of Dictator. A dictator, or magister populi, was appointed in times of extreme emergency, serving for only six months; but during this period he held complete authority.

Cincinnatus accepted the call, leaving his farm to assume complete control over the state. But just fifteen days later, having achieved a swift victory, he relinquished his power and its perquisites and returned to his farm. His success, and his immediate resignation of his near–absolute authority at the end of the crisis (traditionally dated to 458 BC) has often been cited as an example of outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, lack of personal ambition, and modesty.

Something of a turn-around for a man described in Wikipedia as "a conservative opponent of the rights of the plebeians", whose son exhibited "violent opposition to their desire for a written code of equitably–enforced laws". This is presumably why he had "fallen into penury" and retired to the four-acre farm; and this presumably made his transformation into an exemplar of the virtues of "outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, lack of personal ambition, and modesty" all the more impressive.