# (no subject) *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 19 Jun 2003* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Andrew Bollen *19 Jun 2003, 03:19* > From: "Josh Geller" > To: > Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 1:21 PM > Subject: Re: (urth) Was Rome Worth the Trouble? > 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. ---