 Today, the vision that we have of the militia, in part propagated by popular narratives such as that of the NRA, is that of the heroic Minutemen who were expert shooters and committed citizen soldiers, the plebeians, the Roman plebeians. It is in the tradition of the Roman cincinnatas, we are told, that American citizen farmers dropped their till and picked up their musket when the country asked them to. The historical reality of the era is a bit different.