Wealthy on some level perhaps, but you needed to take out loans to even have a chance.
The thing is... assuming
@Telamon didn't outright pull his numbers for the wealth of men like Caesar (and Atellus) out of a hat, there's a good underlying reason for this. Namely, that while most of these men are staggeringly rich in the sense of "own things that are in theory exchangeable for enormous piles of tons and tons of gold," they are
not rich in the sense of "have a large income stream."
Quintus Atellus' net worth is something like 81 talents (presumably cash) of 'wealth' plus 946 talents of real estate (land and the
very valuable domus which may be a typo?). Plus thirty-one slaves; I don't know how much the average costs of Quintus' slaves is but I doubt this adds more than a few talents' worth to the total,
tops.
The thing is, he's got (assuming no typos) roughly a thousand talents of "net worth" in modern terms... but only about eighty talents of that is in 'liquid assets,' and his income is
less than one talent per year. Think about the implications of that. If you picture Quintus as a 'trust fund kid,' well, his trust fund is making about 0.1% annual interest. If his estates continued to accrue value at their current rate and he spent only the slightest pittance on personal upkeep, the Cingulata would have about doubled their money by the time freaking
Charlemagne came through on his way to be crowned Holy 'Roman' Emperor. For all intents and purposes, his income/outflow stream is going to be governed almost entirely by his ability to take in big lump sums of money from military campaigns or other sources, and to spend money in a steady trickle that his income has hardly a prayer of even putting a dent in.
Take a notional Roman patrician whose ratio of income (~1 talent/yr) to liquid assets (~80 talents) to non-liquid assets (~950 talents) is
anywhere near similar, and you immediately see both why patricians find themselves constantly having to take out loans, and why they struggle to pay off their loans. Because if Sextus Superfluous or whatever his name is manages to run through that big pile of liquid assets he's sitting on, he can't regenerate it in any meaningful amount of time unless he can go rob some foreigners or something. And the odds are his lifestyle will take a huge hit, resulting in him rapidly losing the prestige and status he'd need in order to
even get the chance to go rob some foreigners. From his point of view, taking out loans is the only rational option, and to be fair he has a
massive pile of land that could theoretically serve as collateral... but he can't actually sell the land because if he does, his income stream goes even further in the toilet, plus he loses status and prestige, see previous problem.
...
Now, as Roman patricians go Quintus has fallen on 'hard times,' and is of no great financial status, but the core issue is still there even for monstrously successful patricians. Caesar c. 44 BC is listed as having 4000 talents of presumably liquid-ish 'wealth,' 1860 talents' worth of real estate, and a few hundred slaves. His income stream is
six talents per year.
Caesar forty years from now only has about twice as much real estate (in cash value terms) as Quintus Atellus. He only has, oh, five to seven times more slaves, I forget exactly. But he has
FIFTY TIMES as much money in that giant pile of probably-mostly-liquid wealth he's sitting on. And that is what enables him to keep up appearances, support his clients, and finally,
finally make authentic obscene Greco-Roman hand gestures at his creditors.
So the really significant financial difference between late teenage Atellus and Caesar at the height of his power is just that gigantic pile of gold bricks Caesar's sitting on top of, from successful campaigns throughout the Mediterranean.
...
Again, this explains three things:
1) Our path to financial comfort probably has more to do with securing lump sum payments from other sources, and less to do with maximizing the income stream of our estates. Not that we shouldn't try to do that, but it's not going to get us a lot of traction by itself. Unless we push the Stewardship/Administration angle much harder than we have to date, it's always going to be that way unless we can find some very, very trustworthy and talented plebeian businessmen who we can act as a 'silent partner' with or something.
2) Crassus was insanely rich because he was one of the handful of Roman patricians who had
any damn clue how to "spend money to make money." As such, he could use the power of his political standing to gain wealth efficiently, whereas all his rivals were spectacularly bad at this unless they just happened to be military geniuses.
3) This is why so many Roman patricians found themselves running out of money and having to take out loans: because their wealth consisted of a big chunk of real estate they (almost) couldn't sell, a much smaller pile of liquid assets they could replenish only very slowly if at all, and a tiny pathetic income stream that was negligible compared to the first two.
If we are looking for a big constant stream of gold there is one way but most people are going to be against it. Crassus is already rich but made himself even richer by helping Sulla. With his family money and his loot he than bought land at a major discount when Sulla starting killing his political opponents and seizing their properties. He will seize everything they have and sale it while also killing the male members of the family and ensure that the women do not marry. Sulla killed a lot of people when he took Rome.
Now these would make our plucky future emperor of mankind incredible rich but it will also but him as low and scummy as Crassus. Why yes I dislike Crassus very much.
I don't think Quintus Atellus could do that even if he wanted to.
FIrstly, I think we're probably better off if Sulla
loses the war in the east against Marius. If Sulla wins, Pompey is almost certainly going to raise legions and join him. Remember how Pompey
hates us? Also, how he can regale Sulla with the story of how we ratted out his anti-Marian conspiracy (admittedly to the
optimates, not to the Marians). We might end up on Sulla's hit list ourselves if we're not careful. By contrast, if Marius wins, it's entirely possible that he drops dead of a heart attack shortly thereafter, at which point his successors (e.g. his son Marius the Younger, Cinna, and Sertorius) will be in a fairly secure political position and may be able to make a
rapprochement rather than have any more rounds of slaughters and proscriptions.
Even if there are Marian proscriptions in the wake of a Marian victory... well, while
Scaevola is at risk of being purged by Marians, we are probably safe, because Sertorius will remember us as the right-hand man who helped him conquer the Samnites. Pompey, conversely, is... I won't say Pompey is fucked, but he's in a much more disadvantageous position and may find himself having to ironically reverse roles with Sertorius and flee to some remote part of the Republic's territory.
Secondly, Crassus managed to succeed financially in this way because, in mechanical terms, he was an extremely gifted Stewardship/Administration build. Quintus Atellus... is not. If he engages in real estate speculation he is very likely to end up losing his shirt, even under favorable conditions, unless he grinds the hell out of Stewardship over the next couple of years.
Or we could conquer Dacia or some other area with a large amount of gold mines. Stick with our strengths that way
So honestly, I think that securing wealth through successful military campaigns may be our best bet. Unless we decide to hella grind stewardship.
