Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
prytaneum for those that visited Rome. He was fond of all sorts of
philosophy, and was well-read and expert in them all. But he
always from the first specially favored and valued the Academy; not
the New one which at that time under Philo flourished with the
precepts of Carneades, but the Old one, then sustained and
represented by Antiochus of Ascalon, a learned and eloquent man.
Lucullus with great labor made him his friend and companion, and
set him up against Philo's auditors, among whom Cicero was one, who
wrote an admirable treatise in defense of his sect, in which he
puts the argument in favor of comprehension in the mouth of
Lucullus, and the opposite argument in his own. The book is called
Lucullus. For as has been said, they were great friends, and took
the same side in politics. For Lucullus did not wholly retire from
the republic, but only from ambition, and from the dangerous and
often lawless struggle for political preeminence, which he left to
Crassus and Cato, whom the senators, jealous of Pompey's greatness,
put forward as their champions, when Lucullus refused to head them.
For his friends' sake he came into the forum and into the senate,
when occasion offered to humble the ambition and pride of Pompey,
whose settlement, after his conquests over the kings, he got
canceled, and by the assistance of Cato, hindered a division of
lands to his soldiers, which he proposed. So Pompey went over to
Crassus and Caesar's alliance, or rather conspiracy, and filling
the city with armed men, procured the ratification of his decrees
by force, and drove Cato and Lucullus out of the forum. Which
being resented by the nobility, Pompey's party produced one
Vettius, pretending they apprehended him in a design against
Pompey's life. Who in the senate-house accused others, but before
the people named Lucullus, as if he had been suborned by him to
kill Pompey. Nobody gave heed to what he said, and it soon
appeared that they had put him forward to make false charges and
accusations. And after a few days the whole intrigue became yet
more obvious, when the dead body of Vettius was thrown out of the
prison, he being reported, indeed, to have died a natural death,
but carrying marks of a halter and blows about him, and seeming
rather to have been taken off by those who suborned him. These
things kept Lucullus at a greater distance from the republic.
But when Cicero was banished the city, and Cato sent to Cyprus, he
quitted public affairs altogether. It is said, too, that before
his death, his intellects failed him by degrees. But Cornelius
Nepos denies that either age or sickness impaired his mind, which
was rather affected by a potion, given him by Callisthenes his
freedman. The potion was meant by Callisthenes to strengthen his
affection for him, and was supposed to have that tendency but it
acted quite otherwise, and so disabled and unsettled his mind, that
while he was yet alive, his brother took charge of his affairs. At
his death, as though it had been the death of one taken off in the
very height of military and civil glory, the people were much
concerned, and flocked together, and would have forcibly taken his
corpse, as it was carried into the market-place by young men of the
highest rank, and have buried it in the field of Mars, where they
buried Sylla. Which being altogether unexpected, and necessaries
not easily to be procured on a sudden, his brother, after much
entreaty and solicitation, prevailed upon them to suffer him to be
buried on his Tusculan estate as had been appointed. He himself
survived him but a short time, coming not far behind in death, as
he did in age and renown, in all respects, a most loving brother.
COMPARISON OF LUCULLUS WITH CIMON
One might bless the end of Lucullus, which was so timed as to let
him die before the great revolution, which fate by intestine wars,
was already effecting against the established government, and to
close his life in a free though troubled commonwealth. And in
this, above all other things, Cimon and he are alike. For he died
also when Greece was as yet undisordered, in its highest felicity;
though in the field at the head of his army, not recalled, nor out
of his mind, nor sullying the glory of his wars, engagements, and
conquests, by making feastings and debauches seem the apparent end
and aim of them all; as Plato says scornfully of Orpheus, that he
makes an eternal debauch hereafter, the reward of those who lived
well here. Indeed, ease and quiet, and the study of pleasant and
speculative learning, to an old man retiring from command and
office, is a most suitable and becoming solace; but to misguide
virtuous actions to pleasure as their utmost end, and, as the
conclusion of campaigns and commands, to keep the feast of Venus,
did not become the noble Academy, and the follower of Xenocrates,
but rather one that inclined to Epicurus. And this its one
surprising point of contrast between them; Cimon's youth was ill-
reputed and intemperate Lucullus's well disciplined and sober.
Undoubtedly we must give the preference to the change for good,
for it argues the better nature, where vice declines and virtue
grows. Both had great wealth, but employed it in different ways;
and there is no comparison between the south wall of the acropolis
built by Cimon, and the chambers and galleries, with their sea-
views, built at Naples by Lucullus, out of the spoils of the
barbarians. Neither can we compare Cimon's popular and liberal
table with the sumptuous oriental one of Lucullus, the former
receiving a great many guests every day at small cost, the latter
expensively spread for a few men of pleasure, unless you will say
that different times made the alteration. For who can tell but
that Cimon, if he had retired in his old age from business and war
to quiet and solitude, might have lived a more luxurious and self-
indulgent life, as he was fond of wine and company, and accused,
as has been said, of laxity with women? The better pleasures
gained in successful action and effort leave the baser appetites
no time or place, and make active and heroic men forget them. Had
but Lucullus ended his days in the field, and in command, envy and
detraction itself could never have accused him. So much for their
manner of life.
In war, it is plain they were both soldiers of excellent conduct,
both at land and sea. But as in the games they honor those
champions who on the same day gain the garland, both in wrestling
and in the pancratium, with the name of "Victors and more," so
Cimon, honoring Greece with a sea and land victory on the same
day, may claim a certain preeminence among commanders. Lucullus
received command from his country, whereas Cimon brought it to
his. He annexed the territories of enemies to her, who ruled over
confederates before, but Cimon made his country, which when he
began was a mere follower of others, both rule over confederates,
and conquer enemies too, forcing the Persians to relinquish the
sea, and inducing the Lacedaemonians to surrender their command.
If it be the chiefest thing in a general to obtain the obedience of
his soldiers by good-will, Lucullus was despised by his own army,
but Cimon highly prized even by others. His soldiers deserted the
one, the confederates came over to the other. Lucullus came home
without the forces which he led out; Cimon, sent out at first to
serve as one confederate among others, returned home with
authority even over these also, having successfully effected for
his city three most difficult services, establishing peace with
the enemy, dominion over confederates, and concord with
Lacedaemon. Both aiming to destroy great kingdoms, and subdue all
Asia, failed in their enterprise, Cimon by a simple piece of ill-
fortune, for he died when general, in the height of success; but
Lucullus no man can wholly acquit of being in fault with his
soldiers, whether it were he did not know, or would not comply
with the distastes and complaints of his army, which brought him
at last into such extreme unpopularity among them. But did not
Cimon also suffer like him in this? For the citizens arraigned
him, and did not leave off till they had banished him, that, as
Plato says, they might not hear him for the space of ten years.
For high and noble minds seldom please the vulgar, or are
acceptable to them; for the force they use to straighten their
distorted actions gives the same pain as surgeons' bandages do in
bringing dislocated bones to their natural position. Both of
them, perhaps, come off pretty much with an equal acquittal on
this count.
Lucullus very much outwent him in war being the first Roman who
carried an army over Taurus, passed the Tigris, took and burnt the
royal palaces of Asia in the sight of the kings, Tigranocerta,
Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis, seizing and overwhelming the northern
parts as far as the Phasis, the east as far as Media, and making
the South and Red Sea his own through the kings of the Arabians.
He shattered the power of the kings, and narrowly missed their
persons, while like wild beasts they fled away into deserts and
thick and impassable woods. In demonstration of this superiority,
we see that the Persians, as if no great harm had befallen them
under Cimon, soon after appeared in arms against the Greeks, and
overcame and destroyed their numerous forces in Egypt. But after
Lucullus, Tigranes and Mithridates were able to do nothing; the
latter, being disabled and broken in the former wars, never dared
to show his army to Pompey outside the camp, but fled away to
Bosporus, and there died. Tigranes threw himself, naked and
unarmed, down before Pompey, and taking his crown from his head,
laid it at his feet, complimenting Pompey with what was not his
own, but, in real truth, the conquest already effected by
Lucullus. And when he received the ensigns of majesty again, he
was well pleased, evidently because he had forfeited them before.
And the commander, as the wrestler, is to be accounted to have
done most who leaves an adversary almost conquered for his
successor. Cimon, moreover, when he took the command, found the
power of the king broken, and the spirits of the Persians humbled
by their great defeats and incessant routs under Themistocles,
Pausanias, and Leotychides, and thus easily overcame the bodies of
men whose souls were quelled and defeated beforehand. But
Tigranes had never yet in many combats been beaten, and was flushed
with success when he engaged with Lucullus. There is no comparison
between the numbers, which came against Lucullus, and those
subdued by Cimon. All which things being rightly considered, it
is a hard matter to give judgment. For supernatural favor also
appears to have attended both of them, directing the one what to
do, the other what to avoid, and thus they have, both of them, so
to say, the vote of the gods, to declare them noble and divine
characters.
NICIAS
Crassus, in my opinion, may most properly be set against Nicias,
and the Parthian disaster compared with that in Sicily. But here
it will be well for me to entreat the reader, in all courtesy, not
to think that I contend with Thucydides in matters so pathetically,
vividly, and eloquently, beyond all imitation, and even beyond
himself, expressed by him; nor to believe me guilty of the like
folly with Timaeus, who, hoping in his history to surpass
Thucydides in art, and to make Philistus appear a trifler and a
novice, pushes on in his descriptions, through all the battles,
sea-fights, and public speeches, in recording which they have been
most successful, without meriting so much as to be compared in
Pindar's phrase, to
One that on his feet
Would with the Lydian cars compete.