Attilius Regulus, general of the Roman army in Africa, in the midst of his glory and his victories against the Carthaginians, wrote to the public that a farmhand whom he had left alone in the management of his property, which was in total seven acres of land, had fled, having stolen his farming tools, and asked for leave to return and provide for them, for fear that his wife and children would suffer as a result: the Senate provided to appoint another to manage his property and had him restore what had been stolen from him, and ordered that his wife and children be supported at public expense.
The elder Cato, returning from Spain as Consul, sold his service horse to save the money it would have cost to bring him back by sea to Italy; and, while governing Sardinia, made his visits on foot, having with him no retinue other than an officer of the public authority, who carried his robe and a vessel for making sacrifices; and he himself most often carried his mallet. He boasted that he had never owned a robe that had cost more than ten escudos, nor had he ever sent more than ten sous to the market for a day; and, of his houses in the country, he said that none had been plastered and whitewashed on the outside.
Scipio Aemilianus, after two triumphs and two consulships, went on a mission with only seven servants. It is believed that Homer only ever had one; Plato three; Zenon, the leader of the Stoic sect, none. He was only taxed five and a half sols per day, Tyberius Gracchus, going on commission for the public good, being at the time the first man of the Romans.