Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
with congratulations on each other's successes. Lucullus was the
elder, but Pompey the more distinguished by his more numerous
commands and his two triumphs. Both had rods dressed with laurel
carried before them for their victories. And as Pompey's laurels
were withered with passing through hot and droughty countries,
Lucullus's lictors courteously gave Pompey's some of the fresh and
green ones which they had, which Pompey's friends counted a good
omen, as indeed of a truth, Lucullus's actions furnished the honors
of Pompey's command. The interview, however, did not bring them to
any amicable agreement; they parted even less friends than they
met. Pompey repealed all the acts of Lucullus, drew off his
soldiers, and left him no more than sixteen hundred for his
triumph, and even those unwilling to go with him. So wanting was
Lucullus, either through natural constitution or adverse
circumstances, in that one first and most important requisite of a
general, which had he but added to his other many and remarkable
virtues, his fortitude, vigilance, wisdom, justice, the Roman
empire had not had Euphrates for its boundary, but the utmost ends
of Asia and the Hyrcanian sea; as other nations were then disabled
by the late conquests of Tigranes, and the power of Parthia had not
in Lucullus's time shown itself so formidable as Crassus afterwards
found it, nor had as yet gained that consistency, being crippled by
wars at home, and on its frontiers, and unable even to make head
against the encroachments of the Armenians. And Lucullus, as it
was, seems to me through others' agency to have done Rome greater
harm, than he did her advantage by his own. For the trophies in
Armenia, near the Parthian frontier, and Tigranocerta, and Nisibis,
and the great wealth brought from thence to Rome, with the captive
crown of Tigranes carried in triumph, all helped to puff up
Crassus, as if the barbarians had been nothing else but spoil and
booty, and he, falling among the Parthian archers, soon
demonstrated that Lucullus's triumphs were not beholden to the
inadvertency and effeminacy of his enemies, but to his own courage
and conduct. But of this afterwards.
Lucullus, upon his return to Rome, found his brother Marcus accused
by Caius Memmius, for his acts as quaestor, done by Sylla's orders;
and on his acquittal, Memmius changed the scene, and animated the
people against Lucullus himself, urging them to deny him a triumph
for appropriating the spoils and prolonging the war. In this great
struggle, the nobility and chief men went down and mingling in
person among the tribes, with much entreaty and labor, scarce at
length prevailed upon them to consent to his triumph. The pomp of
which proved not so wonderful or so wearisome with the length of
the procession and the number of things carried in it, but
consisted chiefly in vast quantities of arms and machines of the
king's, with which he adorned the Flaminian circus, a spectacle by
no means despicable. In his progress there passed by a few
horsemen in heavy armor, ten chariots armed with scythes, sixty
friends and officers of the king's, and a hundred and ten
brazen-beaked ships of war, which were conveyed along with them, a
golden image of Mithridates six feet high, a shield set with
precious stones, twenty loads of silver vessels, and thirty-two of
golden cups, armor, and money, all carried by men. Besides which,
eight mules were laden with golden couches, fifty-six with bullion,
and a hundred and seven with coined silver, little less than two
millions seven hundred thousand pieces. There were tablets, also,
with inscriptions, stating what moneys he gave Pompey for
prosecuting the piratic war, what he delivered into the treasury,
and what he gave to every soldier, which was nine hundred and fifty
drachmas each. After all which he nobly feasted the city and
adjoining villages, or vici.
Being divorced from Clodia, a dissolute and wicked woman, he
married Servilia, sister to Cato. This also proved an unfortunate
match, for she only wanted one of all Clodia's vices, the
criminality she was accused of with her brothers. Out of reverence
to Cato, he for a while connived at her impurity and immodesty, but
at length dismissed her. When the senate expected great things
from him, hoping to find in him a check to the usurpations of
Pompey, and that with the greatness of his station and credit he
would come forward as the champion of the nobility, he retired from
business and abandoned public life; either because he saw the State
to be in a difficult and diseased condition, or, as others say,
because he was as great as he could well be, and inclined to a
quiet and easy life, after those many labors and toils which had
ended with him so far from fortunately. There are those who highly
commend his change of life, saying that he thus avoided that rock
on which Marius split. For he, after the great and glorious deeds
of his Cimbrian victories, was not contented to retire upon his
honors, but out of an insatiable desire of glory and power, even in
his old age, headed a political party against young men, and let
himself fall into miserable actions, and yet more miserable
sufferings. Better, in like manner, they say, had it been for
Cicero, after Catiline's conspiracy, to have retired and grown old,
and for Scipio, after his Numantine and Carthaginian conquests, to
have sat down contented. For the administration of public affairs
has, like other things, its proper term, and statesmen as well as
wrestlers will break down, when strength and youth fail. But
Crassus and Pompey, on the other hand, laughed to see Lucullus
abandoning himself to pleasure and expense, as if luxurious living
were not a thing that as little became his years, as government of
affairs at home, or of an army abroad.
And, indeed, Lucullus's life, like the Old Comedy, presents us at
the commencement with acts of policy and of war, at the end
offering nothing but good eating and drinking, feastings and
revellings, and mere play. For I give no higher name to his
sumptuous buildings, porticoes and baths, still less to his
paintings and sculptures, and all his industry about these
curiosities, which he collected with vast expense, lavishly
bestowing all the wealth and treasure which he got in the war upon
them, insomuch that even now, with all the advance of luxury, the
Lucullean gardens are counted the noblest the emperor has. Tubero
the stoic, when he saw his buildings at Naples, where he suspended
the hills upon vast tunnels, brought in the sea for moats and
fish-ponds round his house, and built pleasure-houses in the
waters, called him Xerxes in a gown. He had also fine seats in
Tusculum, belvederes, and large open balconies for men's
apartments, and porticoes to walk in, where Pompey coming to see
him, blamed him for making a house which would be pleasant in
summer but uninhabitable in winter; whom he answered with a smile,
"You think me, then, less provident than cranes and storks, not to
change my home with the season." When a praetor, with great
expense and pains, was preparing a spectacle for the people, and
asked him to lend him some purple robes for the performers in a
chorus, he told him he would go home and see, and if he had got
any, would let him have them; and the next day asking how many he
wanted, and being told that a hundred would suffice, bade him to
take twice as many: on which the poet Horace observes, that a
house is but a poor one, where the valuables unseen and unthought
of do not exceed all those that meet the eye.
Lucullus's daily entertainments were ostentatiously extravagant,
not only with purple coverlets, and plate adorned with precious
stones, and dancings, and interludes, but with the greatest
diversity of dishes and the most elaborate cookery, for the vulgar
to admire and envy. It was a happy thought of Pompey in his
sickness, when his physician prescribed a thrush for his dinner,
and his servants told him that in summer time thrushes were not to
be found anywhere but in Lucullus's fattening coops, that he would
not suffer them to fetch one thence, but observing to his
physician, "So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not
lived," ordered something else that could easily be got to be
prepared for him. Cato was his friend and connection, but,
nevertheless, so hated his life and habits, that when a young man
in the senate made a long and tedious speech in praise of frugality
and temperance, Cato got up and said, "How long do you mean to go
on making money like Crassus, living like Lucullus, and talking
like Cato?" There are some, however, who say the words were said,
but not by Cato.
It is plain from the anecdotes on record of him, that Lucullus was
not only pleased with, but even gloried in his way of living. For
he is said to have feasted several Greeks upon their coming to Rome
day after day, who, out of a true Grecian principle, being ashamed,
and declining the invitation, where so great an expense was every
day incurred for them, he with a smile told them, "Some of this,
indeed, my Grecian friends, is for your sakes, but more for that of
Lucullus." Once when he supped alone, there being only one course,
and that but moderately furnished, he called his steward and
reproved him, who, professing to have supposed that there would be
no need of any great entertainment, when nobody was invited, was
answered, "What, did not you know, then, that to-day Lucullus dines
with Lucullus?" Which being much spoken of about the city, Cicero
and Pompey one day met him loitering in the forum, the former his
intimate friend and familiar, and, though there had been some
ill-will between Pompey and him about the command in the war, still
they used to see each other and converse on easy terms together.
Cicero accordingly saluted him, and asked him whether to-day were a
good time for asking a favor of him, and on his answering, "Very
much so," and begging to hear what it was, "Then," said Cicero, "we
should like to dine with you today, just on the dinner that is
prepared for yourself." Lucullus being surprised, and requesting a
day's time, they refused to grant it, neither suffered him to talk
with his servants, for fear he should give order for more than was
appointed before. But thus much they consented to, that before
their faces he might tell his servant, that to-day he would sup in
the Apollo, (for so one of his best dining-rooms was called,) and
by this evasion he outwitted his guests. For every room, as it
seems, had its own assessment of expenditure, dinner at such a
price, and all else in accordance; so that the servants, on knowing
where he would dine, knew also how much was to be expended, and in
what style and form dinner was to be served. The expense for the
Apollo was fifty thousand drachmas, and thus much being that day
laid out, the greatness of the cost did not so much amaze Pompey
and Cicero, as the rapidity of the outlay. One might believe
Lucullus thought his money really captive and barbarian, so
wantonly and contumeliously did he treat it.
His furnishing a library, however, deserves praise and record, for
he collected very many and choice manuscripts; and the use they
were put to was even more magnificent than the purchase, the
library being always open, and the walks and reading-rooms about it
free to all Greeks, whose delight it was to leave their other
occupations and hasten thither as to the habitation of the Muses,
there walking about, and diverting one another. He himself often
passed his hours there, disputing with the learned in the walks,
and giving his advice to statesmen who required it, insomuch
that his house was altogether a home, and in a manner a Greek