I could, but the object of the exercise was to be able to fetch the mail to a local server and then access it from any device on my network (including potentially from a mobile device via VPN). I also wanted to do things like spam filtering and automatically filing incoming mail according to various rules, the same as I'd do with a standalone mail client, and sending all outgoing mail via a system that could keep copies. This is well beyond the scope of running something like fetchmail on its own.