[telemachos]

Yup, that sentence made me wince. For what it's worth, Caesar and Cato were patricians. Spartacus was a slave (not even a Roman citizen), and Cicero was an eques.

All four of them did pretty well. Julius Caesar in particular would have had his name known from Britain to Parthia - one end of the known world to the other. He did it the old fashioned way: he went out into the world and killed people. (He was a hell of a writer too, but most of the people who knew his name couldn't read.)