From: Andrew Bollen <abollen at internode.on.net>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 03:19:13 +0000

> On Wed, 2003-06-18 at 19:45, Andrew Bollen wrote:
>
> > Latro's vision of his home, with his aged father plowing the fields,
doesn't
> > suggest a very patrician background, but on the other hand, he has a
> > patrician kind of name in Lucius (Lucius Brutus = foiunder of the
republic,
> > in 509), so perhaps we are to think of an exiled patrician family in
reduced
> > circumstances?
>
> A Republican patrician family wasn't necessarily wealthy. Cincinnatus,
> the famous dictator, owned an estate of three acres, where he worked in
> the field personally. Later Romans used to go on about it.

This did occurr to me, but I always thought the story was probably BS.
Anyway, C. was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, appointed dictator in 458, so
maybe our Latro? Probably not, given that Livy has him at 80+ years old when
appointed dictator again in 439. But one of his first acts in 458 was to
appoint as "Master of the Horse, Lucius Tarquitius, a member of a patrician
house, but owing to his poverty he had served in the infantry, where he was
considered by far the finest of the Roman soldiers." That could be our man,
maybe.

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