Ptolemy gives Arcturus the nature of Mars and Jupiter, and the resulting tradition is unusually consistent: riches, honour and lasting fame, but obtained through effort and self-determination rather than conferred, with a persistent note of self-inflicted trouble.
The two halves divide as they usually do. Jupiter supplies the prosperity and the honour. Mars supplies the danger, the friction and the tendency to create one's own obstacles, which Robson emphasises. What is distinctive is that the tradition consistently attaches work to Arcturus, in a way it does not to Regulus or Spica. Where Regulus confers and Spica blesses, Arcturus is earned. Whether that comes from the constellation figure, Bootes is a herdsman or ploughman, a labouring figure rather than a king or a maiden, is a reasonable guess and no more than a guess.
Arcturus is one of Agrippa's Behenian fifteen, paired with jasper and with plantain.
The star has one modern distinction worth recording, since it is a genuine curiosity rather than a claim. Light from Arcturus was used to open the 1933 Chicago World's Fair: the star's light was focused onto photoelectric cells at several observatories and the resulting current used to switch on the fair's lights. The choice was made on the then-current distance estimate of about forty light years, so that the light arriving in 1933 was taken to have left around the time of Chicago's previous exposition in 1893. The distance estimate has since been revised down to about thirty-seven light years, which spoils the arithmetic slightly.