The epitaph was composed soon after his death. It is four lines long and must count as the earliest historical and biographical narrative to survive from ancient Rome. Short as it is, it is one of the major turning points in our understanding of Roman history. For it provides hard, more or less contemporary information on Barbatus’ career – quite different from the imaginative reconstructions, faint hints buried in the soil or modern deductions about ‘what must have been’ that surround the fall of the monarchy.
