Lucullus

Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language

Lucullus's grandfather had been consul, and his mother's brother was Metellus, called Numidicus. Of his parents, his father was convicted of embezzlement, and his mother Caecilia had a bad reputation for not having lived a chaste life. Lucullus himself, while still a young man, before entering upon any office or engaging in public life, made it his first business to bring to trial the man who had prosecuted his father, the augur Servilius, catching him committing a public wrong,

and the deed struck the Romans as splendid, and they kept that trial on their lips as if it had been an act of valor. It also seemed to them that, quite apart from any particular grievance, the work of prosecution was not ignoble, but rather that they wished to see the young, like well-bred hounds, fastening upon wrongdoers as upon wild beasts. Even so, great partisan strife arose over that trial, so that some were wounded and some fell, and Servilius was acquitted.

Lucullus had trained himself to speak both languages competently, so that even Sulla, in composing his memoirs, chose to inscribe them to Lucullus, judging him more capable of arranging and shaping the narrative. For his speech was not merely adequate for practical use and ready to hand, like that of others, whose eloquence churns up the marketplace like a school of tunny driven onto the shore by a squall, but once outside the marketplace goes dry, dead for want of culture,

but he had cultivated this graceful and so-called liberal learning for its own beauty even while still a young man. And once he had grown older, he let his mind rest and take its ease in philosophy altogether, as if after many contests, rousing its contemplative side, and in due season dissolving and curbing his ambition after his quarrel with Pompey,

Concerning his love of learning, besides what has been said, this too is told: that when young, in a rivalry begun in jest with the orator Hortensius and the historian Sisenna that turned serious, he agreed, when they had proposed a poem and a speech, one Greek and one Roman, to compose on the Marsic War whichever of these fell to him by lot. And it seems the lot fell to him for the Greek speech, for a certain Greek history of the Marsic War is preserved.

Of the many proofs of his goodwill toward his brother Marcus, the Romans especially remember this first one: though older than he, Lucullus alone refused to take office ahead of him, but waited for his brother's proper time, and so won over the people that, even in his absence, he was elected aedile together with him.

While still a young man, during the war against the Marsi, he demonstrated repeatedly both courage and sound judgment, but Sulla was drawn to him still more by his steadiness and gentleness, and, employing him from the start in matters most worthy of serious attention, continued to do so; among these was the business of the coinage,

for through him most of the coin struck in the Peloponnese during the Mithridatic War was minted, and from him it was called "Lucullean," and it remained in use for a very long time, providing quick reimbursement for military needs during the war. After this, while Sulla was master of the land around Athens but was being cut off from provisions by sea by the enemy who controlled the waters, he sent Lucullus to Egypt and Libya to bring ships from there — it was then the very dead of winter,

and he sailed out with three small Greek galleys and an equal number of Rhodian biremes, venturing onto a great sea full of enemy ships that ranged everywhere in the confidence of mastery. Nevertheless, he touched at Crete and won it over, and, coming upon the people of Cyrene, distracted by continual tyrannies and wars, he restored order among them and settled their constitution, reminding the city of a certain saying of Plato which he had once uttered to them as prophecy.

For when they asked him, it seems, to write them laws and bring the people themselves into some fixed pattern of a sober constitution, he said it was hard to legislate for Cyrenaeans who were so fortunate. For nothing is harder to govern than a man who seems to be doing well, nor again anything more receptive of guidance than one humbled by fortune — which was indeed what then made the Cyrenaeans docile toward Lucullus as their lawgiver.

Putting out from there for Egypt, he lost most of his vessels when pirates appeared, but he himself came through safely and put in at Alexandria in splendid style. For the whole fleet came out to meet him, as was their custom when a king sailed in, magnificently arrayed; and the young Ptolemy showed him other marvelous marks of friendliness, and gave him lodging and quarters in the palace, though no foreign commander had ever before been housed there.

And he provided him with an allowance and provisions not such as he gave to others, but fourfold, though Lucullus would accept nothing beyond what was necessary, nor take any gift, even though gifts worth eighty talents were sent to him. It is reported that he never traveled up to Memphis, nor stopped to see any of Egypt's other wonders and celebrated attractions, saying that such things were for a leisured sightseer and one given to luxury, not for one who, like himself, had left the commander-in-chief camped in the open beside the enemy's ramparts.

But when Ptolemy, having lost his nerve, abandoned the alliance for the war, though he did furnish him with ships as an escort as far as Cyprus, and at his departure, embracing and courting him, gave him a gold-set emerald of great value, Lucullus at first declined it; but when the king showed him the engraving on it, which was his own likeness, he was afraid to refuse it, lest, being thought an enemy as he sailed away, he should be plotted against at sea.

And when, coasting along, he had gathered a number of ships from the seaboard cities — except for those implicated in acts of piracy — and crossed over to Cyprus, where he found out that enemy forces were lurking off the promontories, on watch for his arrival, he hauled all his vessels up on shore, and wrote to the cities about winter quarters and provisions, as if he meant to wait out the season there,

then, when a chance for sailing suddenly appeared, he ran his ships down and put out, and sailing by day with sails lowered and low-set, but by night with them raised, he reached Rhodes safely. When the Rhodians furnished him further ships, he persuaded the Coans and Cnidians, after they had freed themselves from the king's forces, to join in the campaign against Samos. From Chios he himself drove out the king's men, and he freed the Colophonians, seizing their tyrant Epigonus.

At that time it happened that Mithridates had already abandoned Pergamum and withdrawn into Pitane. There, being blockaded by Fimbria on the land side and besieged, he looked toward the sea and kept gathering and sending for the fleets from every quarter to come to him, having given up on engaging and fighting the bold and victorious Fimbria.

Fimbria, seeing this, and lacking a navy, sent to Lucullus, begging him to come with his fleet and help destroy the most hateful and hostile of kings, so that the great prize pursued through so many contests and toils might not escape the Romans — Mithridates now come within their grasp and caught within the net, since if he were taken, no one would win more glory than the man who had stood in the way of his flight

and, laying hold of him as he tried to escape, driven from the land by Fimbria himself and shut off from the sea by Lucullus, would render the achievement to them both jointly, while the exploits so celebrated of Sulla at Orchomenus and around Chaeronea the Romans would then reckon as nothing. And nothing in what he said was off the mark; indeed it was plain to everyone that if Lucullus, then not far off, had been persuaded by Fimbria and had brought his ships around there and sealed the harbor mouth with his ships, the conflict would have reached its close and every man freed from a host of miseries.

But whether it was because he held the claims of justice toward Sulla above every private and public advantage, or because he shunned Fimbria as a polluted man who had lately become the murderer, out of lust for command, of a friend and general, or because by some divine fortune he was sparing Mithridates himself and keeping him in reserve as an adversary, he did not comply, but let Mithridates sail out and mock the strength of Fimbria,

while he himself, first, beat the king's ships in a sea-fight as they showed themselves near Lectum in the Troad, and then, spotting Neoptolemus stationed with a stronger squadron off Tenedos to ambush him, pressed ahead of the rest to meet him, riding a Rhodian quinquereme under the command of Damagoras, a man friendly to Rome and highly skilled in naval combat,

and when Neoptolemus rushed forward at full speed and told his steersman to aim for the ram, Damagoras, wary of how massive the royal vessel was and how heavy its bronze sheathing, would not risk a head-on collision; instead he spun his ship around at once and had his crew row hard astern, so that when the impact came it struck harmlessly along the ship's lower hull near the water.

Meanwhile his friends came up in support, and Lucullus, giving the order to turn about and performing many deeds worthy of note, routs the enemy and pursues Neoptolemus,

From there, meeting Sulla near the Chersonese, who was now about to cross over, he made the passage safe and helped ferry the army across; and once the treaty was concluded and Mithridates departed by sea for the Euxine, and Sulla fined Asia twenty thousand talents, Lucullus, charged with both exacting this money and striking coin, seemed to bring the cities some relief from Sulla's harshness, by showing himself not merely honest and just but even gentle in so heavy and grim a task,

As for the Mytilenaeans, who had openly revolted, he wished them to come to their senses and pay a moderate penalty for their offenses against Marius, but when he saw they were bent on their own ruin, he moved against them, beat them on the field, and forced them back behind their walls; and having set a siege in place, he sailed away by day, openly, to Elaea, but returned secretly and, setting an ambush around the city, kept quiet.

And when the Mytilenaeans came out in disorder and with reckless confidence, as if to plunder an abandoned camp, he fell upon them and took a great many alive, and killed five hundred of those who resisted, and drove off six thousand slaves and countless other plunder besides.

Of the evils that afflicted Italy at that time, which Sulla and Marius inflicted upon men in abundance and of every kind, he had, by some divine fortune, little part, being delayed by his affairs in Asia. Yet he was in no way less in Sulla's favor than his other friends, but, as has been said, out of goodwill he dedicated to him the writing of his memoirs, and at his death he named him guardian of his son, passing over Pompey. This, it appears, marked the start of the rivalry and envy that grew between the two, both still young and eager for renown.

A little after Sulla's death he became consul with Marcus Cotta, in the hundred and seventy-sixth Olympiad. When many were again stirring up talk of the Mithridatic War, Marcus said it had not ceased, only paused. And so, when Lucullus drew by lot the province of Cisalpine Gaul, he was vexed, since it offered no scope for great achievements.

What most spurred him on was Pompey, who was gaining glory in Iberia, since it seemed that if the Iberian war should happen to end, no one else was so likely to be chosen at once as general against Mithridates. For this reason, when Pompey asked for money, warning in a letter that failure to send it would make him give up the Iberian campaign against Sertorius and march his troops home to Italy, Lucullus most eagerly saw to it that the money was sent, and that Pompey should have no pretext whatsoever

to come back while he himself was consul; for if Pompey were present with so great an army, everything concerning the city would fall under his control. And indeed the man then dominant in politics, who said and did everything for popular favor, Cethegus, bore a certain hostility toward Lucullus, loathing his way of life as full of shameful passions and insolence and wrongdoing. Him, then, Lucullus openly opposed;

but Lucius Quintius, another demagogue, who had risen up against Sulla's political arrangements and was trying to disturb the established order, he turned aside from his attempt, partly by much private persuasion and partly by public admonition, and so quelled his ambition, handling as statesmanlike and safe a course as possible the beginning of a great sickness.

Meanwhile it was announced that Octavius, who held Cilicia, had died. Many were eager for the province and courting Cethegus as the man most able to secure it for them; Lucullus himself cared little about Cilicia itself, but, thinking that if he obtained it, since Cappadocia lay near, no one else would be sent to make war on Mithridates, he turned every device to prevent the province from being given to another.

And in the end he submitted, though it was neither dignified nor praiseworthy, but otherwise effective toward his purpose, to a course against his own nature, driven by necessity. There was a woman named Praecia, notorious in the city for her beauty and wit, who in other respects was no better than any woman who freely sells her company, but who, by making use of those who met and conversed with her for the sake of their friends' interests and their political concerns, added to her other charms the appearance of being a devoted and effective partisan, and so gained the greatest influence.

And when he had further won over Cethegus, who at that period stood at the peak of his renown and was effectively running the city, and had become intimate with him as his lover, the whole power of the city came round entirely to Praecia's side; for nothing was done in public affairs unless Cethegus took it up, nor did Cethegus take up anything unless Praecia bade him. So Lucullus, working on her with gifts and flatteries -- and it was no small prize for a haughty, ostentatious woman to be seen sharing in his ambition too -- straightway had Cethegus as his advocate, pressing his claim to Cilicia.

Once he had obtained it, there was no further need to court Praecia or Cethegus; all men brought the matter round to him alike, and handed over to him the Mithridatic war, on the ground that no other man could conduct it better -- Pompey being still occupied fighting Sertorius, and Metellus already worn out by old age, these being the only two who could have been set up as rivals to Lucullus in a contest for the command.

Nonetheless Cotta, his colleague in office, after much entreaty of the senate, was sent out with ships to guard the Propontis and to fight on behalf of Bithynia.

Lucullus, having a legion already levied and organized under his own hand, crossed over into Asia; there he took over the rest of the force, all of it long since corrupted by luxury and rapacity, and in particular the troops called the Fimbrians, who through long habituation to lack of discipline had become hard to manage,

for these were the men who, together with Fimbria, had killed Flaccus the consul and praetor, and had betrayed Fimbria himself to Sulla -- headstrong, lawless men, but warlike and enduring, seasoned in war. Nevertheless in a short time Lucullus cut down even their insolence and brought the rest into line, since then, it seems, for the first time they were experiencing a true commander and leader; before, they had simply been courted for the sake of pleasure, and had grown accustomed to campaigning on those terms.

The affairs of the enemy stood thus. Mithridates, like most sophists, had at first been boastful and blustering when he rose up against the Romans with an empty show of force, splendid and showy to the eye; but then, having been driven out in disgraceful fashion and taught a lesson, when he was about to fight the second war he reduced his forces to a genuine and practical preparation.

For, doing away with the motley multitudes and the polyglot threats of the barbarians, and the arms adorned with gold and jewels -- which were spoils for the victors, not any strength for those who possessed them -- he had Roman swords forged and heavy shields fitted, and gathered horses trained rather than decorated, and assembled a hundred and twenty thousand infantry equipped in the Roman manner of phalanx, and cavalry to the number of sixteen thousand besides the scythe-bearing four-horse chariots, which numbered a hundred;

and further, having fitted out ships not adorned with gilded pavilions nor baths for concubines nor luxurious women's quarters, but laden full with arms and missiles and money, he launched into Bithynia, the cities once again gladly receiving him -- not these alone, but the whole of Asia too was gripped by a relapse of its former sicknesses, suffering unbearably at the hands of Roman moneylenders and tax-farmers,

whom later, like Harpies snatching away their sustenance, Lucullus drove out; but for the time being he sought instead to curb them through warnings and bring them to greater restraint, and he brought an end to the uprisings among the peoples, none of whom, so to speak, was quiet.

While Lucullus was occupied with these matters, Cotta, thinking this his own opportunity, prepared to give battle to Mithridates. And when many reported that Lucullus was already encamped in Phrygia and advancing, Cotta, thinking he all but held the triumph in his own hands, hastened to engage lest Lucullus should share in it with him,

and being struck both by land and by sea, he lost sixty ships with their crews and four thousand infantry, and he himself, shut up in Chalcedon and besieged, looked to the hands of Lucullus for rescue.

There were some who urged Lucullus to disregard Cotta and press forward, on the ground that he would take the kingdom of Mithridates undefended, and this was above all the talk of the soldiers, who were indignant that Cotta, having taken bad counsel, should not only be the ruin of himself and those with him, but should also stand in the way of their winning a victory that could be had without a fight.

But Lucullus answered them by declaring that rescuing a single Roman citizen from the enemy mattered more to him than seizing everything the enemy owned; and when Archelaus, who had once led Mithridates' forces in Boeotia but had since defected and was now serving with the Romans, assured him that his mere appearance in Pontus would deliver total mastery into his hands, Lucullus replied that he was too bold a hunter to leave the quarry itself untouched while chasing after its abandoned den.

Having said this, he advanced against Mithridates with thirty thousand infantry and twenty-five hundred cavalry; and coming within sight of the enemy and marveling at their numbers, he wished to hold off from battle and let time wear them down. But when Marius, whom Sertorius had sent from Iberia to Mithridates as commander with a force, came to meet him and offered challenge, he drew up in battle order as though about to fight it out; and just as the two sides were on the point of engaging,

with no visible cause of change, but suddenly, the sky being rent asunder, a great fiery body was seen falling into the space between the two camps, in shape most like a wine-jar, in color resembling molten silver, so that both sides, terrified at the apparition, drew apart.

This portent, they say, occurred in Phrygia near the place called Otryae. Lucullus, holding that no human provisioning nor wealth could feed for long so many tens of thousands of enemies encamped opposite as Mithridates had, ordered one of the prisoners to be brought to him; and he first asked him with how many tent-companions he messed, and then how much grain he had left in his tent.

Once the man had given his answer, Lucullus had him taken away and put the same questions to a second captive, then a third. Then, weighing how much cooked provision existed against how many mouths it had to feed, he concluded that the enemy's grain would give out in three or four days, and he held all the more firmly to this reckoning of time, and gathered into his own camp a vast quantity of grain, so that, living himself amid abundance, he might lie in wait for their want.

Meanwhile Mithridates was plotting against the people of Cyzicus, who had been struck hard in the battle near Chalcedon; for they had lost three thousand men and ten ships. Wishing then to elude Lucullus, straight from dinner, on a night dark and wet, he set his forces in motion, and got ahead of the city, at daybreak establishing his army opposite it around the mountain of Adrasteia.

Lucullus, perceiving this and giving pursuit, was content not to fall upon the enemy in disorder, but positioned his forces close to the village named Thracia, a spot admirably placed relative to the routes and territories through which Mithridates' army would be compelled to draw its provisions. And having worked out in advance what the outcome would be, he made no secret of it to his troops; rather, as soon as the camp was pitched and the entrenchments finished, he gathered them together and declared boldly that within a few days he would hand them victory without bloodshed.

Mithridates, meanwhile, ringed Cyzicus with ten separate encampments on land, while his fleet sealed off by sea the channel dividing the city from the mainland, so that it was besieged from both directions; in every other respect the Cyzicenes faced the danger courageously, determined to suffer whatever they must on Rome's behalf, yet they were troubled by not knowing where Lucullus was, having heard nothing of him.

And yet his camp was in plain and open view, but they were deceived by the Mithridatic forces. For, pointing out to them the Romans encamped on the heights above, they said, "Do you see these? That is an army of Armenians and Medes, sent down by Tigranes as reinforcement to Mithridates." And the Cyzicenes were dismayed, seeing so great a war poured about them, and had no hope that even if Lucullus should come there would still be room left for help.

Nevertheless, the first man sent in to them by Archelaus, Demonax, reported Lucullus' presence. When those present disbelieved him and thought he was inventing tales to comfort them, there came a captive boy who had escaped from the enemy. When they asked where he said Lucullus was, he laughed, thinking they were joking with him; but when he saw they were in earnest, he pointed with his hand toward the Roman camp, and they took heart.

The lake of Dascylitis being navigable with rather large boats, Lucullus hauled up the largest of these, had it carried by wagon to the sea, and put aboard it as many soldiers as it could hold. They crossed over by night unobserved and slipped into the city.

It seems that the divine power too encouraged the Cyzicenes, admiring their valor, by other clear signs as well as this: as the festival of the Pherephattia was at hand, they were at a loss for a black cow for the sacrifice, and having molded one of dough, set it beside the altar; but the sacred cow kept and reared for the goddess had its pasture, like the rest of the Cyzicenes' cattle, on the mainland opposite; on that very day, however, separating itself from the herd, it alone swam across to the city and presented itself for the sacrifice,

and the goddess appeared to Aristagoras, the people's secretary, in a dream and said, "Behold, I myself have come, bringing the Libyan flute-player against the Pontic trumpeter. Tell the citizens, then, to take heart." While the Cyzicenes were marveling at this report, at daybreak the sea grew rough as a fierce wind bore down, and the king's siege-engines, standing by the walls -- marvelous works of Niconides the Thessalian -- with a shrieking roar

and a crash first gave sign of what was to come; then a south wind burst forth, incredible in its violence, and in a brief space of an hour smashed the rest of the engines to pieces, and shook down the wooden tower, a hundred cubits in height. It is recorded that many of the people at Ilium saw in their sleep Athena, streaming with much sweat and showing part of her robe torn, saying that she had just now come from helping the Cyzicenes; and the people of Ilium showed a certain pillar bearing decrees and writings concerning these things.

As for Mithridates, so long as he was deceived by his own generals he did not know of the famine in his camp, and was vexed that the Cyzicenes were escaping the siege. But soon his ambition and love of contention drained away as he came to perceive the want that gripped his soldiers, and the cannibalism among them, since Lucullus was not making war in a theatrical or showy manner, but, as the saying goes, was striking at the belly, and contriving every means to cut off their food supply.

Wherefore, while besieging a certain fort, Mithridates, eager to make use of the occasion, sent off into Bithynia nearly all his cavalry together with the baggage animals, and the useless part of his infantry. Lucullus, learning of this, reached the camp before dawn broke, and in the early hours of that winter morning he took ten cohorts along with the cavalry and set off in pursuit through the snow, enduring great hardship, so that many of his soldiers gave out from the cold and were left behind; but with the rest, near the river Rhyndacus,

overtaking the enemy, he put them to so complete a rout that the women coming out from Apollonia snatched up the baggage and stripped the slain. Many, as one would expect, having perished, there were taken six thousand horses and a countless multitude of pack animals, and fifteen thousand men; and leading all these along, he marched past the enemy's very camp.

I am amazed that Sallust claims this was the first occasion on which camels were seen by Roman eyes, as though he imagined that neither the men who had defeated Antiochus alongside Scipio, nor those who had recently fought Archelaus near Orchomenus and Chaeronea, had known the camel.

But Mithridates had resolved to flee with all speed; and, contriving diversions and delays to hold Lucullus back, he dispatched his admiral Aristonicus toward the Aegean waters. But just as Aristonicus was setting sail, Lucullus, aided by an act of betrayal, captured him and, along with him, ten thousand gold coins he had been carrying, meant to bribe a portion of the Roman troops. As a result of this Mithridates fled by sea, while his generals led the army away by land.

Lucullus fell upon them near the river Granicus, and took very many prisoners and killed twenty thousand. It is said that of the whole crowd of camp-followers and fighting men together, not much short of thirty myriads perished.

Lucullus, arriving first at Cyzicus, enjoyed a pleasure and welcome fitting the place; then he fitted out a fleet as he made his way along the Hellespont. Putting in at the Troad, he pitched his camp in the sanctuary of Aphrodite, and as he slept there in the night he seemed to see the goddess standing over him and saying: \u201cWhy do you slumber, great-hearted lion? The fawns are near you.\u201d

Rising up and calling his friends, he related the vision while it was still night. And there arrived from Ilium men reporting that thirteen of the king's quinqueremes had been sighted sailing toward Lemnos near the harbor of the Achaeans. He put to sea at once, took these ships, and killed their commander Isidorus, then sailed on, prows forward, against the rest.

These happened to be lying at anchor, and hauling all their vessels up toward the land they fought from the decks and dealt blows to Lucullus's men, since the ground allowed no circling round, nor could ships riding at open sea force those of the enemy which were braced against the land and standing firmly,

yet nevertheless, wherever the island offered some landing, he put ashore the best of his soldiers, who, falling upon the enemy from behind, destroyed some of them, and forced others, cutting the stern-cables of their ships and fleeing from the land, to collide with one another's vessels and to fall beneath the ramming-strokes of Lucullus's men.

Many were destroyed, and among those captured was brought up also Marius, the general sent by Sertorius; for he was one-eyed, and it had been given as an order to the soldiers, as soon as they set sail under Lucullus, to kill no one-eyed man, so that he might die after being disgraced and abused.

Having accomplished this, he pressed on toward the pursuit of Mithridates himself. For he hoped still to find him near Bithynia, guarded by Voconius, whom he himself had sent with ships to Nicomedia to intercept him in his flight.

But Voconius, being initiated into the mysteries at Samothrace and taking part in the festival, was delayed; and Mithridates, having put to sea with his fleet, hastening to sail into the Pontus before Lucullus could turn back, was overtaken by a great storm, by which some of his vessels were swept away and others sunk, and the whole coastline, as the wreckage was cast up by the surge, was full of debris for many days.

As for Mithridates himself, since the merchant vessel on which he was sailing could neither be brought easily to land, being too large in a heavy swell and blind surf that overwhelmed the helmsmen, nor withstand the sea, which had already grown heavy and was shipping water, he transferred to a small pirate-craft and, entrusting his person unexpectedly and recklessly to pirates, was brought safely to Heraclea in Pontus.

For Lucullus, his rivalry with the senate proved not without justification; for when it voted to fit out a fleet for the war at a cost of three thousand talents, he prevented this by sending letters and boasting that, without expense and so great a preparation, he would drive Mithridates from the sea with the ships of the allies alone. And this was granted him, with the god fighting on his side; for it is said that the storm fell upon the men of Pontus through the wrath of Artemis of Priapus, whose sanctuary they had plundered and whose wooden image they had torn out.

Though many advised Lucullus to put off the war, he paid no heed and invaded through Bithynia and Galatia into the king's territory, at first lacking necessities, so that thirty thousand Galatians trailed after him, a bushel of grain loaded on each man's back; but advancing and mastering everything, he came into such abundance that an ox in the camp sold for a drachma, and a slave for four, while the rest of the plunder they left behind in no regard, some abandoning it, others consuming it. For there was no distinction made by anyone toward anyone else, since all were in plenty.

But since they had done no more than ravage and damage the land, riding through and overrunning it as far as Themiscyra and the plains around the Thermodon, they blamed Lucullus, saying that he was winning over all the cities by persuasion but had not taken a single one by force, nor allowed them the benefit of plundering it.

\u201cAnd even now,\u201d they said, \u201cAmisus, a prosperous and wealthy city, which it would be no great task to take if one pressed the siege, he leads us away from and off to war against Mithridates in the desolate land of the Tibareni and Chaldaeans.\u201d But Lucullus, not having expected that he would lead the soldiers into so great a state of madness as they afterward revealed, overlooked this and gave it no thought, but defended himself rather to those others

who accused him of slowness for lingering there so long about villages and towns of no great worth, while allowing Mithridates to grow strong. \u201cThis,\u201d he said, \u201cis exactly what I wish and what I sit here contriving \u2014 that the man become great again and gather together a force worthy to fight, so that he may remain and not flee as we approach.

Or do you not see how much trackless desolation lies behind him? Near at hand is the Caucasus, and many deep mountains, sufficient to hide and shelter countless kings unwilling to fight; and Cabira lies merely a handful of days' march from Armenia, and beyond Armenia sits Tigranes, king of kings, possessing a power by which he cuts off the Parthians from Asia, transplants Greek cities into Media, holds sway over Syria and Palestine, and puts to death the kings descended from Seleucus, carrying off their daughters and wives into captivity,

this man is a kinsman of Mithridates and his son-in-law, and will not overlook him when he comes as a suppliant, but will make war upon us; and while hastening to drive out Mithridates we shall risk drawing upon ourselves Tigranes, who has long wanted a pretext against us, and could find none more fitting than being compelled to render aid on behalf of a kinsman and a king. Why then must we bring this about ourselves and teach Mithridates, who does not know it, with whom he must make war against us, and, though unwilling, drive him in dishonor into the hands of Tigranes \u2014 rather than give him time to prepare and take courage again from his own resources, and to fight the Colchians, Tibareni, and Cappadocians, whom we have often conquered, rather than the Medes and Armenians?\u201d

Having reasoned in this way, Lucullus lingered around Amisus, pressing the siege but gently, and after the winter, leaving Murena in charge of the siege, marched against Mithridates, who was encamped at Cabira and intending to make a stand against the Romans, having gathered a force of forty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry, in whom he placed his chief confidence,

and, crossing the river Lycus into the plain, challenged the Romans to battle. A cavalry engagement occurred, and the Romans fled; Pomponius, a man of no small repute, was captured wounded and brought up to Mithridates in a bad state from his injuries. When the king asked whether, if healed by him, he would become his friend, he said, \u201cYes indeed, if you are reconciled with the Romans; but if not, an enemy.\u201d Mithridates, admiring him, did him no harm.

Lucullus, fearing the plains since the enemy held mastery there in cavalry, and hesitant to advance into the mountainous country, which was long, wooded, and hard to traverse, some Greeks were by chance captured after taking refuge in a certain cave; the elder of them, Artemidorus, promised to lead Lucullus and establish him in a safe position for his camp, one which also possessed a fort overlooking Cabira.

Trusting him, Lucullus, with the coming of night, lit fires and moved out, and passing the narrow places safely, took possession of the place; and by day he was seen looming above the enemy, positioning his army in places which, if he wished to fight, gave him ready approach, and, if he preferred to remain quiet, kept him from being forced.

Neither side, then, had any intention for the present of risking a decisive battle; but it is said that a deer, being chased by some of the king's men who were cutting it off, met the Romans, and from this, coming into contact, they fell to fighting, ever more men joining in on each side. In the end the king's men prevailed; and the Romans, seeing the rout from their camp, were distressed and ran together to Lucullus, begging him to lead them out and asking for the watchword for battle.

But he, wishing them to learn how great a thing in the struggle and danger of war is the presence and sight of a prudent commander, ordered them to remain quiet, while he himself went down into the plain, and, meeting the foremost of those fleeing, commanded them to halt and turn back with him,

and when these were persuaded, the rest too changed course, and forming up together, with little effort routed the enemy and pursued them into their camp. Returning, Lucullus inflicted upon the fugitives a certain customary disgrace, ordering them, ungirded and in their tunics only, to dig a trench twelve feet long, with all the other troops watching nearby as spectators.

There was in Mithridates's camp a certain Olthacus, a chieftain of the Dandarii (the Dandarii being by race barbarians dwelling around Lake Maeotis), a man distinguished in all the deeds of hand and daring in war, and also of sufficient judgment in the greatest matters, and moreover skilled and pleasing in conversation and attentive in service. This man, being always in rivalry with one of his fellow tribal chieftains over primacy and consumed with jealousy, promised Mithridates a great deed: to kill Lucullus.

The king praised him, and, deliberately inflicting on him certain marks of dishonor to give the appearance of anger, he rode off to Lucullus, who received him gladly; for the camp buzzed with reports of the man's reputation, and quickly, on testing him, he came to admire his shrewdness and his zeal, so that he even made him at times a companion of his table and his council.

But when the Dandarian thought he had his opportunity, he told his attendants to take his horse beyond the camp's edge, while he himself, at midday, when the soldiers were resting indoors and taking their ease, walked toward the general's tent, as though no one would prevent a familiar man, one claiming to bring the general some matters worthy of his attention, from entering; and indeed he would have entered without fear,

had not sleep, which has destroyed many generals, saved Lucullus. For it happened that he was sleeping, and Menedemus, one of his chamber attendants, standing by the doors, said that Olthacus had not come at a good time, since Lucullus had only just given himself over to rest after long wakefulness and toils

of such magnitude; and since he did not go away when told, but said that he wished, even against opposition, to come in and discuss a matter necessary and important, Menedemus, now angry, said that nothing mattered more than Lucullus's safety, and shoved the man back with both his hands.

He, taking fright, slipped out of the camp, and, taking his horse, rode off unaccomplished to the camp of Mithridates \u2014 so true is it that in affairs, as in medicines, opportunity supplies the tipping-point that either saves or destroys.

After this, ten cohorts under Sornatius were dispatched to gather grain, and, pursued by Menander, one of Mithridates's generals, he stood his ground, and joining battle inflicted much slaughter and a rout upon the enemy; and again, when Hadrianus was sent with a force, so that the soldiers might have grain in abundance, Mithridates did not overlook it, but sent out Menemachus and Myron, leading many cavalry and many infantry.

All of these, it is said, except for two, were cut down by the Romans. And Mithridates concealed the disaster as though it were not so great but small, since his generals had come to grief through inexperience; but Hadrianus passed splendidly by the camp bringing down many wagons laden with grain and spoils, so that despondency seized him, along with turmoil and a paralyzing dread among his troops.

It had already been decided to remain no longer; but when the king's men were sending off their own possessions quietly ahead of time while preventing the others from doing so, then, already thrust and driven with anger toward the gates, the men seized the goods and slaughtered their owners. There even the general Dorylaus, having nothing else on him but his purple robe, perished on account of it, and Hermaeus the sacrificial priest was trampled underfoot at the gates.

Mithridates himself, with neither attendant nor groom remaining at his side, was swept out from the camp mingled among the crowd, and none of the royal mounts had been kept ready for him; only when Ptolemy the eunuch, who had a horse, caught sight of him being carried along in the current of that rout, he himself leapt down and gave it to him.

For by now the Romans had him surrounded and were pressing hard upon him; and in speed they came very near to catching him, missing it by very little, but the army's love of plunder and petty greed robbed the Romans of the quarry they had pursued through so many struggles and great dangers over so long a time, and deprived Lucullus, though victorious, of his prize.

For the horse that was carrying the king off was within reach of the pursuit, but a mule carrying his gold happened to fall in between the king and his pursuers, whether by chance or because the king had deliberately sent it in among his pursuers, and the soldiers, seizing and gathering up the gold and fighting one another over it, fell behind.

And this was not the only advantage Lucullus gained from their greed: he also ordered that Callistratus, the man in charge of the king's secret papers, be brought to him alive, but those bringing him, discovering that he had five hundred gold pieces girded beneath his clothes, killed him. Nevertheless, he allowed them to plunder the camp.

Once Cabira and most of the other strongholds had fallen to him, he came upon vast treasure hoards and prison-houses, in which many Greeks and many relatives of the king had been confined; to these, who had long seemed as good as dead, the kindness of Lucullus granted not merely safety but a kind of second life, a new birth.

There was also captured, in a capture that proved saving, Nyssa, the sister of Mithridates; but the sisters and wives who seemed to be farthest from danger and living in quiet retirement near Pharnaceia perished pitiably, Mithridates having sent the eunuch Bacchides against them from his flight. Among the many victims were a pair of the king's own sisters, Roxane and Statira, who had remained unmarried for about forty years, and two wives, both of Ionian stock, Berenice from Chios and Monime from Miletus.

Of this last there was the greatest talk among the Greeks, because when the king tried to win her and sent her fifteen thousand gold pieces, she held out until a marriage contract was made and he sent her a diadem and proclaimed her queen. Yet even after that she remained in distress the rest of the time, and lamented her own bodily beauty, saying that it had won her a jailer rather than a spouse, a foreign guard in place of marriage and a home, and that, settled far away from Greece, she lived with the good things she had hoped for only as in a dream, while deprived of the true goods that were really hers.

And when Bacchides arrived and ordered them to die, each in whatever way she thought easiest and least painful, she tore the diadem from her head, wound it about her neck, and hanged herself. But it quickly snapped, and she said, "O accursed rag, will you not even be of use to me in this?" and she flung it away with a spit of contempt, and offered her throat to Bacchides for the cutting.

Berenice, taking a cup of poison while her mother was present and begged to share it, gave her some. Both drank it together, but the strength of the poison sufficed to overpower the weaker body; Berenice, however, had not drunk enough to be released by it, but, dying with difficulty, was strangled at Bacchides's urging.

It is said that of those unmarried sisters, one drank the poison with many curses and reproaches, but Stateira uttered nothing ill-omened or base, but instead praised her brother, because, even while his own life was at risk, he had still remembered them and made sure they would die free and untouched by disgrace. These things, being naturally good and humane, grieved Lucullus.

Marching as far as Talaura, from where Mithridates had already fled to Tigranes in Armenia four days before, he turned back, and having subdued the Chaldaeans and Tibareni and taken over Lesser Armenia, and having made safe its towns and fortresses, he dispatched Appius to Tigranes with a demand for Mithridates's surrender, while he himself proceeded to Amisus, which was still being besieged.

The one responsible was the general Callimachus, a man skilled in the engineering of siege-works and clever in every kind of trickery a siege admits of, who had caused the Romans great harm; for which he later paid the penalty. But at that time, outgeneraled by Lucullus, who attacked suddenly at the very hour when it was Callimachus's custom to withdraw and rest his soldiers, and having seized no small part of the wall, Callimachus himself abandoned the city and set it on fire, whether grudging the Romans any benefit from it or contriving an easier escape for himself.

For no one gave a thought to those sailing away, but as the flame leapt up high and seized the walls, the soldiers made ready for plunder, while Lucullus, pitying the city as it perished, brought help from outside against the fire and called on the men to put it out, though no one paid him any heed, but instead demanded money and clashed their weapons with shouting, until, overborne, he gave way, meaning at least to save the city itself from the fire.

But they did the opposite: searching everywhere by torchlight and carrying fire everywhere, they themselves tore down most of the buildings, so that Lucullus, entering the city by day and weeping, told his friends that on many past occasions he had judged Sulla a fortunate man, yet it was on this very day that he most admired that man's good luck, in that, wishing to save Athens, he had been able to do so.

"But as for me," he said, "having set out to rival him, some divinity has thrust me instead into the reputation of Mummius." Nevertheless he tried, out of what was left, to restore the city. The fire, by some divine chance, was put out by rains that fell just at the time of its capture, and most of what had been destroyed he himself, while still present, rebuilt; he received those of the Amiseans who had fled, and settled there such other Greeks as wished it, marking out for them a territory of one hundred twenty stadia.

The city had been a colony of the Athenians, founded in those times when their power was at its height and they controlled the sea. For this reason many of those wishing to flee the tyranny of Aristion had sailed there and settled and taken part in its citizenship, and it fell to them, in fleeing their own troubles, to suffer those of a foreign land; but Lucullus, having clothed handsomely those of them who survived and given each two hundred drachmas, sent them off.

At that time also Tyrannion the grammarian was taken captive; Murena asked for him and, receiving him, freed him — using the gift in an ungenerous way. For Lucullus considered it wrong that someone esteemed for his scholarship be made a slave first and only afterward set free as a freedman; for the giving of what seemed to be freedom was in fact the taking away of freedom already his. But Murena was seen to fall far short of the general's honorable character not only in this.

Lucullus then turned to the cities of Asia, so that, while he had leisure from the business of war, he might also take part in the dispensation of justice and law; for the province, long deprived of these, had for a great while been afflicted by unspeakable and unbelievable miseries, plundered and enslaved by tax-farmers and moneylenders, who forced men to sell privately their comely sons and virgin daughters, and publicly their votive offerings, paintings, and sacred statues.

The end for these people, once made additional security, was to become slaves outright; but what came before that was harsher still — ropes, cages, standing horses, and being made to stand in the open air, exposed to the sun's heat or, in the cold, driven into mud or ice — so that slavery itself seemed by comparison a debt-relief and a peace.

Finding such evils in the cities, Lucullus in a short time freed all the wronged from every one of them. First, he ordered that interest be reckoned at no more than one percent a month; second, he cut off interest that had run longer than the principal itself; and third, and most important, he decreed that the lender should enjoy only a quarter of the debtor's income — and whoever had joined interest to the principal was thereby deprived of the whole.

As a result, in less than four years all the debts were paid off and the properties restored free to their owners. This debt had arisen from the common loan of twenty thousand talents with which Sulla had fined Asia, and it had been repaid twice over to the lenders, yet through their charging of interest it had already risen, in their reckoning, to one hundred twenty thousand talents.

The lenders, then, as though they had suffered terrible wrongs, cried out against Lucullus in Rome, and with money set some of the popular leaders against him, men of great influence who had made many of the politicians beholden to them; but Lucullus, far from merely winning the affection of those he had helped, became an object of longing for the other provinces as well, which counted happy those who had gotten so good a governor.

Appius Clodius — for Clodius, the man sent to Tigranes, was the brother of the woman then living with Lucullus as his wife — was at first led by the king's guides on a circuitous and needlessly roundabout route of many days through the upper country; but a freedman of Syrian birth revealed to him the direct road, and he turned aside from that long and sophistical route, bidding the barbarian guides a firm farewell, and within a few days, crossing the Euphrates, arrived at Antioch near Daphne.

Then, being bidden to await Tigranes there — for the king was still away, subduing some of the cities of Phoenicia that remained — he won over to himself many of the princes who secretly chafed under the rule of the Armenian, among them Zarbienus, king of Gordyene, and to many cities held in secret bondage that sent envoys to him privately he promised the help of Lucullus, bidding them for the present to remain quiet.

For the rule of the Armenians had become unbearable to the Greeks, and harsh, especially since the king's own temper had grown theatrical and swollen in the midst of his great successes, for he thought that all the things most men strive for and admire not only belonged to him but had come to be through him.

For starting from a small and despised hope, he had subdued many nations, and had humbled the power of the Parthians as no one else had done; he had filled Mesopotamia with Greeks, transplanting many from Cilicia and many from Cappadocia and settling them there. He had also stirred the tent-dwelling Arabs from their homes, moving and settling them nearby, so that he might use them for his trade caravans.

Many kings paid him court, but four he always kept about him like attendants or bodyguards: when he rode on horseback, they ran alongside on foot in short tunics; when he sat giving audience, they stood about him with hands crossed one over the other — a posture that seemed above all the very confession of slavery, as of men who had sold away their freedom and offered their bodies to their master, ready to suffer whatever he willed rather than to act on their own.

Yet Appius, not shrinking before this theatrical display nor struck with awe, as soon as he got the chance to speak said plainly that he had come either to take away Mithridates, owed to the triumphs of Lucullus, or to declare war on Tigranes; so that Tigranes, although he tried to listen with a spreading of his face and a forced smile, could not conceal from those present how disturbed he was by the young man's plain speech, hearing, after twenty-five years — for so long he had reigned, or rather played the tyrant — something close to the voice of a free man.

He answered Appius that he would not give up Mithridates, and that if the Romans began the war, the Armenians would defend themselves; but he was angry at Lucullus because, in his letter, he had addressed him only as king, not king of kings, and in his own reply he did not address Lucullus as commander. Lavish presents were sent to Appius, and when he declined them, even more were sent; from all this Appius, not wishing to seem to reject them out of any hostility, accepted one cup and sent back the rest, and quickly rode off to the commander.

Tigranes had before this not thought it worth even seeing or speaking to Mithridates, a kinsman fallen from so great a kingdom, but had looked on him from a distance with dishonor and disdain, keeping him in a manner under guard in marshy and unhealthy places; but now he sent for him with honor and friendliness to come to the palace,

and after private conversation between them, they eased their mutual suspicions of each other to the harm of their friends, turning the blame onto them. Among these was Metrodorus of Scepsis, a man not unpleasant in speech and widely learned, who had enjoyed such closeness of friendship with Mithridates that he was called the king's father.

This man, it seems, having been sent by Mithridates as an envoy to Tigranes to beg his help against the Romans, was asked by Tigranes: "And you yourself, Metrodorus, what do you advise me about this?" And he, whether looking to Tigranes's own advantage or not wishing Mithridates to be saved, said that as envoy he urged it, but as counselor he advised against it. Tigranes reported these words to Mithridates and told him that Metrodorus would do him no fatal harm; but Mithridates had him put to death at once.

And repentance took hold of Tigranes, who was not entirely responsible for Metrodorus's misfortune, but had added some weight to Mithridates's hatred of him. For Mithridates had long harbored an underhand grudge against the man, and this was discovered when his secret papers were seized, in which it was ordered that Metrodorus be put to death. Tigranes then buried the body splendidly, sparing no expense on the corpse of a man he had betrayed while alive.

Amphicrates the rhetorician also died at Tigranes' court, if it is worth recalling him too, on account of Athens. He is said to have fled to Seleuceia on the Tigris, and when the people there asked him to teach rhetoric, to have scorned them, boasting that not even a basin could hold a dolphin. He then moved to live with Cleopatra, Mithridates' daughter, who was married to Tigranes, but he quickly fell under suspicion, and being barred from association with Greeks, he starved himself to death. He too was buried honorably by Cleopatra, and his grave lies near a place there called Saphae.

Lucullus, having filled Asia with much good order and much peace, did not neglect what conduces to pleasure and favor either, but sitting at Ephesus amid processions, victory festivals, and contests of athletes and gladiators, he won over the cities, and they in turn held "Lucullea" in his honor, and gave him something sweeter than the honor itself—their genuine goodwill.

But when Appius arrived and it appeared that war against Tigranes was necessary, Lucullus passed again into Pontus, took up his soldiers, and laid siege to Sinope—or rather to the royal Cilicians holding it, who, after killing many of the Sinopeans and setting the city on fire, fled by night.

Lucullus, perceiving this, entered the city and put to death the eight thousand of them who had been left behind, restored to the rest of the citizens their property, and took especially great care of the city because of a certain vision. He seemed in his sleep to hear someone standing by him say, "Go forward a little, Lucullus, for Autolycus has come, wishing to meet you."

Once awake he had no idea what the dream signified, yet that same day the city fell to him; and while chasing after the fleeing Cilician ships, he spotted on the shore a statue the Cilicians, in their hurry to carry it off, had failed to get loaded in time; it was a work of Sthenis, among his finest. He was informed that this was the image of Autolycus, Sinope's founder.

Tradition holds that Autolycus numbered among the men who marched from Thessaly with Heracles against the Amazons, being a son of Deimachus; on the voyage home in company with Demoleon and Phlogius, his ship was wrecked off the Chersonese near the spot called Pedalium, though he came through unharmed together with his arms and comrades, and made his way to Sinope, taking it

from the Syrians, who held the city—Syrians descended from Syrus, son of Apollo, as it is said, and of Sinope, daughter of Asopus. Hearing this, Lucullus recalled Sulla's advice; for Sulla used to advise in his Memoirs that nothing should be considered so trustworthy and sure as whatever is signified through dreams.

Learning that Mithridates and Tigranes were about to march an army into Lycaonia and Cilicia, meaning to strike into Asia before Lucullus could, he marveled at the Armenian, that having formed the intention of attacking the Romans, he had not made use of Mithridates when he was at his prime for the war, nor joined his own forces to Mithridates' while they were still vigorous, but having allowed him to be destroyed and crushed, was now beginning a war on cold hopes, throwing in his own lot with a man no longer able to rise again.

When Machares, Mithridates' son and ruler of the Bosporus, sent a crown worth a thousand gold pieces to Lucullus, asking to be registered as a friend and ally of the Romans—Lucullus now believing the earlier war to have reached its end—he left Sornatius behind as guardian of the Pontic region with six thousand soldiers,

and himself, leading twelve thousand infantry and fewer than three thousand cavalry, advanced to the second war, seeming by a certain reckless impulse, with no calculation of safety, to be throwing himself among warlike nations and many tens of thousands of horsemen and a vast country, hemmed in by deep rivers and mountains always covered with snow,

so that his soldiers, who were not even otherwise well-disciplined, followed unwillingly and in constant discord, while at Rome the popular leaders cried out and protested that Lucullus was pursuing war upon war though the city had no need of it, but in order that he as general might never lay down arms nor cease profiting from the public dangers,

these men, then, in time accomplished their purpose; but Lucullus, marching swiftly to the Euphrates and finding it coming down full and turbid from a storm, was vexed, expecting that he would have delay and trouble in gathering ferry-boats and constructing rafts—but the current, beginning to recede from evening and diminishing through the night, by daybreak allowed the river to be seen as shallow.

The local inhabitants, seeing small islets appearing in the channel and the current shoaling around them, did obeisance to Lucullus, since this had rarely happened before, the river of its own accord yielding itself tame and gentle to him and offering an easy and swift crossing.

Making use of the occasion, then, he brought the army across; and a favorable sign occurred for him at the very time of the crossing: sacred cattle of the Persian Artemis, whom above all gods the barbarians beyond the Euphrates honor, graze there—they use the cattle only for sacrifice, and otherwise they wander loose about the country, bearing brands of the goddess's torch, and it is not at all easy or a small task to catch one of them when needed.

Once the army had made its way over the Euphrates, one of these animals approached a rock consecrated to the goddess, took its stand upon it, and bowed its head as creatures do when held by a tether, offering itself for Lucullus to sacrifice; in addition, he offered a bull to the river Euphrates in thanks for the crossing.

That day he camped there, and on the next and the following days he advanced through Sophene, doing no wrong to the people who came over to him and gladly received his army; and when his soldiers wished to take a certain fort thought to hold much wealth, he said, "That fort over there is rather the one we must cut down for ourselves"—pointing to the Taurus range in the distance—"these things are reserved for the victors." Pressing on his march, he crossed the Tigris and invaded Armenia.

As for Tigranes, the first man to bring word that Lucullus had come did not rejoice—rather, he had his head cut off—and no one else told him; so, ignorant, he sat there, already engulfed in the fire of war, listening to flattering talk, that Lucullus was indeed a great general if he would stand his ground against Tigranes near Ephesus and not flee at once out of Asia upon seeing such vast myriads of men.

So it is that no body can bear much unmixed wine, nor can any ordinary mind, amid great good fortune, remain unshaken in its reasoning. Mithrobarzanes was the first among his friends bold enough to speak plainly to him, and his candor earned him nothing good in return. Straightaway he was dispatched to face Lucullus, leading three thousand horsemen and a large body of foot soldiers, under orders to capture the Roman commander alive and crush everyone else.

Part of Lucullus's army had already pitched camp while part was still on the march. Once his scouts reported that the enemy was advancing toward them, he grew concerned that, being spread out and not yet in formation, an attack might throw them into confusion. He himself set about establishing the camp, and sent Sextilius the legate with sixteen hundred cavalry and not many more hoplites and light-armed troops,

ordering him to approach near the enemy and hold his position until he learned that those with Lucullus had encamped. Sextilius indeed wished to do this, but was forced by Mithrobarzanes' bold advance to come to blows. In the battle that followed Mithrobarzanes fell fighting, and all the rest, except a few, perished in flight.

After this Tigranes abandoned Tigranocerta, the great city he had founded, and withdrew toward the Taurus, gathering his forces there from every side; but Lucullus, allowing him no leisure for these preparations, dispatched Murena to harry and intercept the troops assembling to reinforce Tigranes, while Sextilius was sent once more to stop a sizable Arab contingent marching toward the king;

and at the same time Sextilius, falling upon the Arabs as they were making camp, destroyed most of them, while Murena, following Tigranes, attacked him when the opportunity arose as he was leading his long column through a rough and narrow ravine, and Tigranes himself fled, abandoning all his baggage, while many of the Armenians died and still more were captured.

With affairs thus proceeding, Lucullus set out and marched against Tigranocerta, and surrounding it with his camp, laid siege to the city. Within it lived a great number of Greeks uprooted from Cilicia, along with many non-Greek peoples who had shared the Greeks' misfortune—Adiabenians, Assyrians, Gordyenians, and Cappadocians—men whose home cities Tigranes had destroyed, compelling them to be transplanted there and settled.

The city likewise overflowed with riches and offerings, for every private citizen and every ruler had competed with the king himself in helping it grow and adorning it; therefore Lucullus pressed the siege vigorously, believing—rightly, as it turned out—that Tigranes would not endure it, but would come down even against his better judgment, driven by anger, to fight it out.

Mithridates repeatedly forbade it, sending messengers and letters urging him not to join battle, but to use his cavalry to cut off the enemy's supplies; and Taxiles, who had come from him and was campaigning alongside, repeatedly begged the king to be on guard and to flee, since Roman arms were an irresistible thing.

And at first he listened to these words calmly; but when the Armenians and Gordyenians came to join him in full force, and the kings arrived leading the Medes and Adiabenians in full force, and many Arabs came from the sea near Babylon, and many Albanians came from the Caspian, and Iberians who neighbor the Albanians, and not a few of the kingless peoples grazing about the Araxes, won over by favor and gifts, came to meet him—then the king's banquets were full of hopes and boldness and barbarian threats, and so were his councils. Taxiles ran the risk of dying for opposing the idea of battle, and Mithridates too, it seemed, out of envy was trying to turn him away from a great success.

It was for this reason that Tigranes refused to wait for Mithridates, unwilling to let him share the credit, and instead marched forward with his entire army, being, as it is said, greatly vexed with his friends that the contest would be against him alone with Lucullus, not against all the Roman generals united together. And his boldness was not altogether mad or unreasonable, considering the peoples and kings following him and the phalanxes of hoplites and the tens of thousands of cavalry before his eyes,

for he was leading twenty thousand archers and slingers, and fifty-five thousand cavalry, of whom seventeen thousand were mailed cataphracts, as Lucullus wrote to the Senate, and one hundred fifty thousand hoplites, arrayed some in cohorts, some in phalanxes, and thirty-five thousand road-builders, bridge-builders, river-clearers, woodcutters, and servants for other needs, who, stationed behind the combatants, gave an impression of both numbers and strength.

When, having crossed the Taurus, he appeared in a body and saw the Roman army encamped before Tigranocerta, the barbarian crowd within the city received the sight with shouting and clapping, and from the walls they pointed out the Armenians to the Romans, making threats:

As Lucullus deliberated about the battle, some advised him to lead his forces against Tigranes, abandoning the siege, others not to leave so many enemies behind him nor to relax the siege. He said that neither party alone advised rightly, but both together advised well, and divided his army. He left Murena with six thousand infantry to continue the siege, and himself, taking twenty-four cohorts, in which there were not more than ten thousand hoplites, along with all the cavalry and about a thousand slingers and archers, advanced.

Camping in a great plain by the river, he appeared altogether small to Tigranes, and gave occasion for those flattering him to pass the time in mockery. Some jeered, others in jest cast lots over the spoils; and each of the generals and kings, approaching, asked that the task be his alone, and that Tigranes sit as spectator.

Tigranes himself, wishing to seem witty and mocking, spoke the now-famous words: "If they come as ambassadors, they are many; if as soldiers, few." So they whiled away that time in banter and irony, yet when day broke Lucullus marched his troops out under arms. The barbarian army was to the east of the river; but where the current bent toward the west, being most fordable there, he led his force across in that direction, hastening, and seemed to Tigranes to be retreating.

And calling Taxiles to him with a laugh, he said, “Do you not see the invincible heavy-armed troops of the Romans in flight?” And Taxiles said, “I could wish, O king, that something of your daimon's good fortune might come true in this beyond all expectation, but men on the march do not put on bright clothing, nor do they use polished shields and bare helmets, as these men have just done, stripping off the leather coverings of their arms—no, this brightness belongs to men about to fight and already advancing against the enemy.”

While Taxiles was still saying this, the first eagle standard was seen turning as Lucullus wheeled it about, and the cohorts were taking up formation by companies for the crossing; and Tigranes, scarcely recovering as if from some drunkenness, cried out two or three times, “Are these men coming against us?” so that the multitude fell into formation with great confusion, the king himself holding the center, and as for the wings, command of the left went to the Adiabenian contingent while the Mede held the right, on which side was also the greater part of the mailed cavalry drawn up in front.

Just as Lucullus was preparing to bring his men across the river, several officers cautioned him against that particular date, since it counted among the unlucky ones they call “black”—it was on such a day that Caepio's army had been wiped out fighting the Cimbri. But his memorable answer was that he himself would turn this into a fortunate day for Rome. The date was one day short of the Nones of October.

Having said this and bidden his men take courage, he was himself the first to ford the river and press the advance on the enemy, wearing a gleaming iron cuirass of scale armor and a fringed cloak, his sword already showing bare, as if he must come at once to close quarters with men who fought from a distance and cover with speed of advance the ground over which their arrows could reach.

When he saw the mailed cavalry, of which there was so much talk, drawn up beneath a certain hill that had level and broad ground on top, with an ascent of four stadia not altogether difficult or steep, he ordered the Thracian and Galatian horsemen he had to attack them from the flank and knock aside their lances with their swords,

for the lance is the one strength of the mailed cavalry; nothing else can they use, either against themselves or against the enemy, because of the weight and stiffness of their equipment—they look like men built into a wall. He himself, taking two cohorts, raced for the hill, his soldiers following him vigorously because they saw him too, among the arms, first enduring hardship on foot and pressing the advance. Having reached the top and standing in full view of the place, he shouted loudly, “We have won,” he said, “we have won, fellow soldiers.”

And having said this he led the attack against the mailed cavalry, ordering his men no longer to use their javelins at all, but each man to grip his sword and strike at the enemy's shins and thighs—the only parts of the mailed cavalry left bare. Yet there was no need at all of this fighting, for they did not receive the Romans, but howling and fleeing most shamefully of all, they threw themselves and their horses, heavy as they were, into the ranks of their own infantry before those men had even begun any fighting at all, so that without a wound being dealt or blood being seen, so many tens of thousands were defeated.

The great slaughter now came upon them as they fled, or rather as they wished to flee, for they could not, being hemmed in by the density and depth of their own ranks. Tigranes, riding out at the very beginning with a few men, fled; and seeing his son sharing the same fortune, he tore the diadem from his own head and, weeping, handed it over to him, telling him to seek safety however he might by different routes.

The young man did not dare to bind it on his own head, but gave it to the most trustworthy of his attendants to keep. This man, being captured by chance, was brought up to Lucullus, so that along with the other captives the diadem of Tigranes itself became a prize of war. More than a hundred thousand foot soldiers are said to have been killed, and that of the cavalry very few indeed escaped. On the Roman side, only a hundred men were injured and five lost their lives.

Antiochus the philosopher, mentioning this battle in his treatise On the Gods, says he has never seen the sun look down upon another like it. Strabo, another philosopher, says in his historical memoirs that the Romans themselves were ashamed and mocked themselves for having needed arms against such slaves. Livy has said that never did the Romans take the field against an enemy so much greater in number, for the victors were scarcely even a twentieth part, but less, of the number of the vanquished.

Of the Romans, the ablest generals and those most experienced in wars praised above all in Lucullus this: that he had outgeneraled two of the most illustrious and greatest kings by two most opposite means, speed and slowness. For he wore down Mithridates, who was at the height of his power, by time and delay, but crushed Tigranes by haste, being among the few commanders ever who used deliberation as a weapon and daring for the sake of safety.

For this reason Mithridates did not press on to the battle, thinking that Lucullus would make war with his customary caution and delay, but advanced quietly toward Tigranes. At first, meeting a few Armenians on the road who were terrified and fleeing in panic, he guessed at the disaster; then, when still more, stripped and wounded, met him, he learned of the defeat and sought out Tigranes.

Finding him deserted by all and humbled, he did not exult over him insolently, but coming down from his horse and weeping together with him over their common misfortunes, he gave him the royal retinue that followed himself and encouraged him for what was to come; and so the two of them began again to gather other forces. In the city of Tigranocerta, since the Greeks had risen up in faction against the barbarians and were handing the city over to Lucullus, he attacked and took it.

And he took possession of the treasures in the city, but handed the city itself over to his soldiers to plunder, it having, besides the other wealth, eight thousand talents of coined money. Apart from these he distributed eight hundred drachmas per man from the spoils.

Learning that many of the artists devoted to Dionysus had been caught in the city—whom Tigranes had gathered from everywhere, intending to inaugurate the theater he had built—he employed them in staging the games and shows for his victory festival. The Greeks he sent back to their own homelands, adding travel money, and likewise the barbarians who had been forced to settle there, so that it came about that when one city was dissolved, many were founded anew, as their former inhabitants were brought back to them—people by whom Lucullus was loved as a benefactor and founder.

And in other respects too things went forward as befitted a man who sought praise from justice and humane conduct more than from success in war. For of the latter the army had no small share, and fortune had the greatest, but the former was a display of a gentle and cultivated soul, by which Lucullus was then subduing the barbarians without arms—for indeed kings of the Arabs came to him putting their affairs into his hands, and the nation of the Sophenians came over to him.

The Gordyenians he treated in such a way that they wished, abandoning their cities, to follow him with their children and wives as willing companions, for the following reason. Zarbienus, ruler of the Gordyenians—as already recounted—had privately entered into talks with Lucullus through Appius about an alliance, being weighed down by the tyranny of Tigranes; but being informed against, he was slaughtered, and his children and wife perished along with him before the Romans invaded Armenia.

Of these things Lucullus was not unmindful, but on entering the country of the Gordyenians he held funeral rites for Zarbienus, and decking the pyre with kingly garments, gold, and plunder captured from Tigranes, he himself was present and lit it, and poured libations along with the friends and household of the man, calling on him as his own comrade and ally of the Romans.

He also ordered that a monument be made for him from a considerable sum of money, for very great quantities of both gold and silver were found in the palace of Zarbienus, and three million medimni of grain were stored there, so that the soldiers profited and Lucullus was admired, because, without drawing even one drachma out of the public funds, he conducted the war entirely at his own expense.

At this point an embassy also came to him from the king of the Parthians, inviting him into friendship and alliance. This was welcome to Lucullus, and he sent back in turn an embassy of his own to the Parthian, and his men detected him wavering in his intentions and secretly demanding payment for allying with Tigranes to gain Mesopotamia.

When Lucullus perceived this, he decided to pass over both Tigranes and Mithridates as antagonists already worn out, and instead to test the strength of the Parthians and march against them, thinking it a fine thing, in one single onrush of war, to throw down three kings in succession like an athlete, and to pass through the three greatest empires under the sun undefeated and victorious.

He therefore sent to Pontus, writing to the officers under Sornatius to bring the army there to him, since he intended to advance from Gordyene. But they, who had already before been dealing with soldiers difficult and disobedient, at that time fully exposed their insubordination, finding no way, neither by persuasion nor by compulsion, to bring them to obey, as the men protested and shouted that they would not even remain there, but would go off and leave Pontus deserted.

When this was reported to Lucullus, it also corrupted the soldiers with him there, men who had already grown heavy with wealth and luxury for campaigning and desired leisure; and when they learned of the outspokenness of those others, they called them real men and said they ought to be imitated, for they had accomplished much that deserved safety and rest.

Perceiving talk of this kind, and worse still, Lucullus gave up the campaign against the Parthians, and turned back again against Tigranes at the height of summer, and crossing the Taurus he lost heart when he saw the plains still green—so much do the seasons there lag behind because of the coldness of the air.

Nevertheless, going down and routing the Armenians, who twice or thrice ventured against him, he ravaged the villages without fear, and by seizing the grain that had been prepared for Tigranes he brought upon the enemy the very want he had feared for himself. And when, by challenging them to battle, digging a trench around his camp, and ravaging the country in full view, he could not move them though they had been struck many times, he set out and marched against Artaxata, the royal seat of Tigranes, where his infant children and his wedded wives also were, not believing that Tigranes would give these up without a fight.

It is said that Hannibal the Carthaginian, when Antiochus had been defeated by the Romans, went over to Artaxas the Armenian and became for him, among many other useful things, an adviser and teacher, and that, having observed a place in the country most naturally suited and most pleasant, lying idle and overlooked, he first sketched out there the plan of a city, and then, bringing Artaxas to it, showed it to him and urged him on to the founding.

The king was delighted and asked that Hannibal himself oversee the work, and a great and altogether beautiful thing of a city arose, and being named after the king it was appointed the metropolis of Armenia. Tigranes could not bear it when Lucullus advanced upon this city, but taking up his forces he encamped opposite the Romans on the fourth day, placing between them the river Arsanias, which the Romans of necessity had to cross on their march toward

Artaxata. Lucullus, having sacrificed to the gods, as though victory were already in his hands, brought his army across in twelve cohorts drawn up in front, with the rest posted behind to guard against the enemy's encircling movements. For there were many cavalry and picked troops drawn up against them, and in front of these mounted archers, Mardians, and Iberian lancers, in whom, of all his foreign troops, Tigranes placed the greatest trust as the most warlike.

Yet nothing brilliant was accomplished by them; after a small skirmish with the Roman cavalry they did not stand their ground when the infantry came on, but splitting off in flight to either side they drew the cavalry along with them in pursuit. And just as these were being scattered, Lucullus, seeing the brilliance and the numbers of the horsemen riding out around Tigranes, took fright.

And he called back the cavalry from the pursuit, and himself first stood against the Atropatenians, who were directly opposite him with their best men, and before coming to close quarters he put them to flight by striking fear into them. Of the three kings drawn up together in that battle, it was Mithridates of Pontus who apparently ran in the most disgraceful manner of the three, not even enduring the shout of the Romans.

The pursuit went on long and through the whole night, and the Romans grew weary not only of killing them but also of taking them captive and of carrying and driving off money and plunder. Livy says that in the earlier battle more of the enemy fell, but in this one those who fell and were captured were of greater note.

After this Lucullus, elated and confident, intended to press on further and subdue the barbarian country; but at the time of the autumn equinox, when he did not expect it, heavy storms fell upon them, for the most part burying everything in snow, and in the clear spells bringing frost and ice, because of which the rivers became difficult for the horses to drink from, owing to the extreme cold, and difficult to cross as well, since the ice broke apart and cut the sinews of the horses with its roughness.

Most of the country, being thickly wooded, narrow-passaged, and marshy, kept them constantly wet, since they got soaked with snow on their marches and had to camp badly in damp places. So, only a few days after they had followed Lucullus after the battle, they turned against him -- first by making requests and sending their captains to him, then by gathering more tumultuously and shouting through the night around their tents, which seems to be a sign of an army on the verge of mutiny.

And yet Lucullus urged them repeatedly and at length, asking them to put patience into their hearts until they should take the Carthage of the Armenians -- so he called it, meaning the work of that most hateful man Hannibal -- and overthrow it. Failing to win them over, he turned the army around, and, taking a different route across the Taurus range, descended into the region known as Mygdonia, a land rich in every produce and warm, containing within it a great and populous city, which the barbarians called Nisibis, but the Greeks called Antioch of Mygdonia.

This city was held, in rank, by Gouras, brother of Tigranes, but in experience and skill in siegecraft by Callimachus, the same man who had given Lucullus the greatest trouble at Amisus. Lucullus, setting his camp against it and bringing every form of siege-works to bear, took the city by storm in a short time.

Toward Gouras, who surrendered himself, he behaved with humanity; but toward Callimachus, who offered to disclose hidden caches of vast riches, he showed no such regard, but ordered him brought in chains, to pay the penalty for the fire with which he had ravaged the city of the Amisenes and had thereby robbed Lucullus of his display of generosity and kindness toward the Greeks.

Down to this juncture, it could be said that Fortune had served as a co-commander alongside Lucullus. But from this point on, as though the wind had failed him, though he forced everything and met resistance in every direction, and though he displayed the valor and patience of a good commander, his actions won neither glory nor gratitude, but he came close to losing even the reputation he already had, through misfortune and pointless quarrels.

Of the causes of this, he himself furnished no small part, not being one to court the favor of the soldiery, and considering every concession made to please the ruled to be a dishonor and dissolution of authority; and, what is most important, he was by nature unable to get along even with the powerful and his equals in rank, but looked down on everyone and considered no one worthy in comparison with himself.

These, they say, were faults that belonged to Lucullus along with all his other good qualities: for indeed he was great and handsome and a powerful speaker, and seemed equally wise both in the marketplace and in the camp. Sallust, then, says that the soldiers were harshly disposed toward him from the very beginning of the war, both at Cyzicus and again at Amisus, having been forced to spend two winters in succession in camp.

The remaining winters vexed them as well, for they wintered either in enemy territory or camped in the open among the allies, and Lucullus never once entered a friendly Greek city with his army. Being so disposed, the demagogues at Rome gave them the greatest pretexts, out of envy of Lucullus, accusing him of prolonging the war out of love of power and love of wealth, and of holding in his own hand at once Cilicia, Asia, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus, Armenia, as far as the Phasis, and now even the palaces of Tigranes, which he had plundered -- as if he had been sent to strip kings bare, not to conquer them.

For this, they say, was what one of the generals, Lucius Quintius, said, and it was chiefly through his persuasion that they voted to send successors to Lucullus in his province, and voted also that many of those serving under him should be discharged from service.

To these grave matters was added the man who did the most to undermine Lucullus's achievements, Publius Clodius, a man full of insolence and utter contempt and recklessness. He was the brother of Lucullus's wife, whom he was also accused, most shamelessly, of corrupting.

At that time, serving under Lucullus, he was not receiving the honor he thought himself worthy of, for he wished to be first, and being passed over by many because of his character, he secretly worked upon the Fimbrian army and stirred them up against Lucullus, spreading among them agreeable words to men not unwilling nor unaccustomed to being courted by demagogues. For these were the very men Fimbria had once talked into murdering the consul Flaccus and naming him commander in his place.

For this reason they received Clodius gladly and called him a friend of the soldiers, since he pretended to be indignant on their behalf that there would be no end of so many wars and hardships, but that, fighting every nation and wandering over every land, they would wear out their lives gaining nothing worthy from so great a campaign, but merely escorting Lucullus's wagons and camels loaded with golden and jeweled drinking-cups,

while Pompey's soldiers, being already citizens, sat now with their wives and children, holding a prosperous land and cities, not because they had driven Mithridates and Tigranes into uninhabited wastes, nor because they had razed the royal palaces of Asia, but because they had fought against exiles in Iberia and runaway slaves in Italy. "What then," he said, "if we must never cease from campaigning, should we not preserve what remains of our bodies and souls for such a general as this, to whom the wealth of his soldiers seems the finest ornament?"

Through such charges Lucullus's troops grew mutinous, refusing to march with him either against Tigranes or against Mithridates when the latter, invading Pontus once more out of Armenia, reclaimed his throne; but, making the winter their pretext, they lingered around Gordyene, expecting that Pompey or some other commander would soon arrive as Lucullus's successor.

But once news arrived that Mithridates had beaten Fabius and was advancing on Sornatius and Triarius, shame drove them to follow Lucullus after all. Triarius, eager to seize the win for himself before Lucullus, who was already nearby, could arrive, let his ambition lead him into a crushing defeat; for it is said that more than seven thousand Romans died, among them one hundred fifty centurions and twenty-four military tribunes; and Mithridates took the camp.

Lucullus arrived a few days later and rescued Triarius, who was being sought out in anger by the soldiers; and since Mithridates did not wish to give battle but was waiting for Tigranes, who was already coming down with a great force, he decided to go and meet Tigranes and fight it out with him before the two could join forces.

But as he was marching along the road, the Fimbrians mutinied and abandoned the ranks, claiming that they had been discharged from service by decree and that it was no longer proper for Lucullus to command them, since other provinces had been assigned to others. There was nothing, then, unworthy of him that Lucullus did not endure, entreating them one by one and going around among the tents, humble and in tears, and in some cases even taking hold of their hands.

But they pushed away his hand and threw back at him empty purses, telling him he alone should face the enemy, since he alone had a knack for profiting from it. Nevertheless, at the urging of the other soldiers, the Fimbrians were pressured into agreeing to remain through the summer, on condition that if no one came down to them in that time to give battle, they should be released. Lucullus had no choice but to accept these terms, or else abandon the country to the barbarians and be left behind.

So he kept them together, no longer forcing them or leading them toward battle, but content if they would only stay, and looking on while Cappadocia was plundered by Tigranes and Mithridates again grew insolent -- the very man he himself had written to the senate to say had been utterly defeated in war. And ambassadors were present with him to settle the affairs of Pontus, as though they were now securely held.

And indeed, being present, they saw that he was not even master of himself, but was being insulted and abused by his own soldiers, whose insolence toward their commander had grown so great that, as the summer was ending, they put on their arms, drew their swords, and challenged an enemy who was nowhere present but had long since withdrawn; then, having shouted their war-cry and fought a mock battle in the air, they departed from the camp, declaring that the time they had agreed to remain with Lucullus was now fulfilled.

Pompey wrote and called the rest to himself, since he had by now been named commander of the campaign against Mithridates and Tigranes, by favor of the people and the flattery of the demagogues, since to the senate and the best men it seemed that Lucullus was being treated unjustly -- being deprived not of the war, but of the triumph, and not being relieved of his generalship, but stripped of the rewards of his generalship and forced to yield them to others.

What was happening seemed all the more outrageous to those who were present there. For Lucullus no longer had authority to honor or punish anyone in the war, nor would Pompey allow anyone to go to him or to pay attention to what he wrote and distributed through the ten commissioners, but he forbade it, posting edicts and appearing formidable with his greater force.

Nevertheless it seemed good to their friends to bring the two men together, and the two convened in a small Galatian village, exchanging warm greetings, and congratulated each other on their successes -- Lucullus being the elder, but Pompey's rank being greater from his more numerous commands and two triumphs. The rods of both went before them wreathed with laurel for their victories.

And since Pompey had marched a long road through waterless and parched regions, his lictors' laurels, which crowned their rods, were seen to be withered; but Lucullus's lictors, as a friendly gesture, gave them a share of theirs, still green and blossoming, having more than enough to spare, and Pompey's friends took the thing as a favorable omen -- for indeed Lucullus's achievements did in fact adorn Pompey's own command.

But from their conversation they came to no fair agreement; rather, they parted even more estranged from one another than before, and Pompey annulled the arrangements Lucullus had made, and taking away his other soldiers, left him only sixteen hundred to share in his triumph -- and even these did not follow him very willingly.

So ill-suited or unlucky was Lucullus in that one thing which is first and greatest in a command, that if this had been his along with his other qualities -- being as great and as many as they were, together with courage, diligence, judgment, and justice -- Rome's dominion would never have stopped at the Euphrates as its eastern limit,

but rather the farthest reaches and the Hyrcanian Sea, since the other nations had already been subdued beforehand by Tigranes, and the power of the Parthians, in Lucullus's time, was not as great as it later appeared under Crassus, nor as united, but weakened by civil and neighboring wars, not even strong enough to defend itself against the insolence of the Armenians. As it is now, it seems to me that Lucullus, through others, damaged his country more than he benefited it through his own efforts:

for the monuments raised in Armenia close to Parthian territory, and Tigranocerta and Nisibis, along with the vast riches carried from them back to Rome, and the captured diadem of Tigranes carried in triumph, lifted up Crassus's ambitions toward Asia, as though the barbarians were nothing but spoil and plunder, nothing else. Yet he quickly met the arrows of the Parthians, and thereby showed that Lucullus's success came not from the folly and softness of the enemy, but from his own boldness and skill. But this belongs to a later time.

Lucullus, on going up to Rome, found first that his brother Marcus had been accused by Gaius Memmius for acts committed while serving as quaestor under Sulla's orders. When Marcus was acquitted, Memmius turned against Lucullus himself and stirred up the people, and, persuading them that he had embezzled much and had prolonged the war, convinced them not to grant him a triumph.

When Lucullus entered into a great struggle over this, the foremost and most powerful men, mingling themselves among the tribes with much entreaty and effort, managed only with difficulty to win the people's consent for him to hold his triumph -- not, as some manage, one swollen and crammed with a long parade and countless items borne along, but instead he decked out the Flaminian racecourse with the enemy's arms, of which there were a great many, and with the king's own siege engines; and this in itself was a sight not to be despised.

In the procession there passed a few armored cavalrymen and ten of the scythe-bearing chariots, and sixty friends and generals of the king's court, and a hundred and ten long bronze-beaked ships were carried along together, along with a six-foot golden image of Mithridates himself, and a jeweled shield, and litters bearing twenty vessels of silver and thirty-two of golden cups, weapons, and coin.

These, then, men carried; but mules carried eight golden couches, and fifty-six of coined silver, and others a hundred and seven of coined silver, lacking a little of two hundred seventy myriads; and in tablets were recorded the amounts he had already handed over to Pompey toward the campaign against the pirates, as well as to the officers of the public treasury, and besides this, that each soldier received nine hundred fifty drachmas. After this he feasted the city splendidly, and the surrounding villages as well, which they call vici.

Having separated from Clodia, who was licentious and wicked, he married Servilia, the sister of Cato — nor did this marriage turn out fortunate either. It had one advantage over the evils of Clodia only — namely, that there was no scandal about her brothers — but in every other respect she was found equally repulsive and unrestrained, and he was compelled to bear with her out of reverence for Cato, until at last he divorced her.

Though he had furnished the Senate with wonderful hopes, since in this man it held someone able to stand against Pompey's dominance and to champion the aristocratic cause, setting out from great reputation and power, he abandoned and let slip his political career — whether because he saw the state already sick and difficult to steady, or, as some claim, because he had had his fill of glory and was settling back into the easiest, most comfortable stretch of life, after many contests and toils that had not ended as happily as he wished.

Some indeed praise him for so great a change, saying that he did not suffer the fate of Marius, who, though he had won those splendid, great triumphs over the Cimbri, would not retire while his honor was still the envy of all, but, unable to get enough of glory and power, kept on in his old age battling young rivals in politics, and was wrecked upon terrible deeds and sufferings worse still than the deeds themselves. It would have been better, they say, for Cicero too to have grown old withdrawing from politics after Catiline, and for Scipio to have added Numantia to Carthage,

and then to have stopped; for there is, they say, a certain closing-down proper to a political career, since political contests, no less than athletic ones, are exposed as failing once vigor and prime have run out. But Crassus and Pompey mocked Lucullus for having given himself over to pleasure and extravagance, as though it were not more unbefitting his years to indulge in luxury than to continue engaging in politics and generalship.

It is possible, at any rate, to read the life of Lucullus, like an old comedy, in two parts: the first showing politics and generalship, the latter drinking-parties and dinners, and — one might almost say — revels and torch-processions and every kind of amusement,

for I myself count as amusement his lavish buildings, his construction of walks and bathhouses, and even more so his statues and paintings, along with the zeal he showed for these arts, which he gathered together at great expense, spending his wealth on these things without restraint — wealth which he had amassed abundant and splendid from his campaigns; wealth which, even now, luxury having advanced to such a pitch, the Lucullan gardens are numbered among the most costly of the royal ones,

and as for his works along the coast and around Naples, where he suspended hills over huge excavations, and wound wheels of sea-water and fish-breeding channels around his dwellings, and built retreats out over the sea — when the Stoic Tubero saw these he called him 'Xerxes in a toga.'

He also had country retreats around Tusculum, with lookout points for viewing the surroundings and open banqueting-halls and walks constructed, in which Pompey once, when he visited, found fault with Lucullus, because, having arranged the estate excellently for summer, he had made it uninhabitable in winter. Lucullus laughed and said, 'Do you suppose, then, that cranes and storks are wiser than I am, that I alone should not shift my dwelling as the seasons change?'

Once, when a praetor was eager to make a show at the games and asked him to lend purple cloaks to adorn a chorus, he replied that he would look and see if he had any to give; then the next day he asked him how many he needed. When the man said a hundred would suffice, he told him to take twice that many — on which the poet Flaccus remarked that he did not consider a man wealthy unless what lay hidden and unnoticed of his goods was more than what was visible.

Lucullus's daily dinners had the air of new wealth — not only in purple couch-coverings and jeweled cups and interludes of choruses and musical performances, but he made himself an object of envy even to the illiberal by the preparation of all kinds of dishes and elaborately wrought pastries. Pompey, at least, won a good reputation while ill;

for when his physician ordered him to eat a thrush, and his servants said that no thrush could be found anywhere else in summertime except one being fattened at Lucullus's house, he would not allow one to be taken from there, but said to the physician, 'So then, if Lucullus did not live luxuriously, Pompey would not have lived?' and ordered something else, more easily obtainable, to be prepared.

Cato was his friend and relation by marriage, yet he so disliked his manner of life and daily habits that, when a certain young man in the Senate delivered a tedious and inopportunely long speech in praise of frugality and self-control, Cato rose up and said, 'Will you not stop being rich as Crassus, living as Lucullus, and talking as Cato?' Though some say this was indeed said, but not by Cato.

Lucullus, however, was evidently not merely delighted with but even took pride in this way of life, as is clear from the things remembered of him. For it is said that a party of Greek visitors, having arrived in Rome, were his guests for many days running, and that these men, having some genuine feeling of Greek modesty, were ashamed and tried to decline the invitation, seeing that so much was being spent on their account each day;

whereupon Lucullus, smiling, said to them: 'Some of this, gentlemen of Greece, is indeed on your account — but most of it is on account of Lucullus.' Once, when he was dining alone, only a single table and a modest dinner had been prepared, and he grew angry and called the servant appointed over this matter. When the man said he had not supposed that, with no guest invited, he would need anything costly, Lucullus said, 'What do you mean? Did you not know that today Lucullus dines with Lucullus?'

Since there was, as one might expect, much talk in the city about this, Cicero and Pompey approached him one day in the forum, as he was strolling at leisure — the one being among his closest and most intimate friends, while with Pompey there was some estrangement dating from his generalship, though they were accustomed to associate and converse with one another quite civilly.

So Cicero greeted him and asked how he stood as regards receiving visitors; and when he said, most favorably, and urged them to call on him, Cicero said, 'We should like to dine at your house today, just as things are prepared for you.' When Lucullus demurred and tried to put it off to another day, they would not hear of it, and would not even permit him a word with his servants, for fear he might arrange for something beyond his ordinary fare;

except that, on his asking for this much only, they allowed him to say to one of the servants in their presence that today he would dine 'in the Apollo' — for this was the name one of his costly dining-rooms bore. And in this he had, unbeknownst to them, played a clever trick; for each dining-room, it seems, had a fixed cost of dinner assigned to it, and each had its own equipment and preparation, so that the slaves, on hearing in which room he wished to dine, knew what expense and what kind of arrangement and adornment the dinner should have. And he was accustomed to dine in the Apollo room at a cost of fifty thousand drachmas;

and on that occasion, with so great a sum expended, what astonished Pompey's party, beyond the magnitude of the expense, was the speed of the preparation. In these matters, then, he used his wealth insolently, as though it were truly a captive and barbarian thing.

Worthy of note and mention is his provision concerning books; for he gathered together many, and well written, and the use he made of them showed more ambition than the mere possession, since he threw the libraries open to everyone without exception, and the walks and reading-rooms around them welcomed Greek visitors freely, as though into some lodging-place of the Muses, who resorted there and spent their days together with one another, gladly hurrying away from their other occupations.

Often, too, he himself shared in their leisure, joining the scholars in the walks, and he cooperated with the statesmen in whatever they needed; and altogether his house was a hearth and a Greek prytaneum for those arriving in Rome. He embraced philosophy of every kind and was well-disposed and friendly toward all of it, but from the beginning he had a particular

passion and zeal for the Academy — not the so-called New Academy, though it was then flourishing through the arguments of Carneades as presented by Philo, but the Old Academy, which then had as its champion Antiochus of Ascalon, a persuasive man and a powerful speaker; Lucullus, having made him with all zeal his friend and companion, set him up against the hearers of Philo, among whom was Cicero also.

And Antiochus even composed a very beautiful treatise on the doctrine, in which he attributed the argument for the possibility of comprehension to Lucullus, and the opposing argument to himself. The book is entitled 'Lucullus.' They were, as has been said, very close friends and partners in their political choices — for Lucullus had not, after all, entirely withdrawn himself from politics,

but the rivalry and contest to be foremost and to hold the greatest power, as being neither free from danger nor from insult, he at once gave up to Crassus and Cato; for these were the men whom those who eyed Pompey's power with suspicion put forward from the Senate, since Lucullus declined the first place. He would go down to the forum for the sake of his friends, and to the Senate if there was need to thwart some ambition or zeal of Pompey's.

And he struck down the arrangements which Pompey had made after subduing the kings, and, with Cato's cooperation, prevented a certain distribution being given to Pompey's soldiers when he proposed it — so that Pompey took refuge in friendship, or rather conspiracy, with Crassus and Caesar, and, filling the city with arms and soldiers, ratified his decrees by force, driving Cato and Lucullus's party out of the forum.

While the best citizens were indignant at what was happening, Pompey's partisans brought forward a certain Vettius, saying they had arrested him plotting against Pompey. And he, when examined, accused certain others before the Senate, but before the people he named Lucullus, claiming he had been prepared by him to kill Pompey.

No one paid attention to this charge, and it was immediately clear that the man had been put forward by them for the purposes of false accusation and slander; and the matter was exposed all the more a few days later, when his corpse was thrown out of the prison, said to have died of itself, yet bearing marks of strangling and blows — for it seemed that he had been done away with by the very men who had prepared him.

These events drew Lucullus even further away from political life. And when Cicero was driven from the city and Cato sent off to Cyprus, he gave up entirely. And it is said that his mind, too, had already begun to fail and waste away well before he died. But Cornelius Nepos says that Lucullus was affected not by old age nor by disease, but was destroyed by drugs given by one of his freedmen, Callisthenes;

the drugs having been given so that Callisthenes might be more loved by him, as they were supposed to have such a power, but instead they deranged and overwhelmed his reasoning, so that even while he still lived his brother managed his estate. Nevertheless, when he died, as though he had died at the height of his generalship and political career, the people were grieved and ran together, and his body, carried into the forum by the noblest young men, was insisted upon being buried in the Campus Martius, where they had also buried Sulla.

Since no one had expected this, and the preparation was not easy, his brother, by pleading and begging, persuaded them to allow the funeral already prepared at his estate near Tusculum for the corpse to take place there instead; and he himself did not long survive him, but was left behind only a little in age and reputation, and in the time of his death as well, having been the most devoted of brothers.

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