Lucullus

Lucullus now turned his attention to the cities in Asia,[*](71-70 B.C.) in order that, while he was at leisure from military enterprises, he might do something for the furtherance of justice and law. Through long lack of these, unspeakable and incredible misfortunes were rife in the province. Its people were plundered and reduced to slavery by the tax-gatherers and money-lenders. Families were forced to sell their comely sons and virgin daughters, and cities their votive offerings, pictures, and sacred statues.

At last men had to surrender to their creditors and serve them as slaves, but what preceded this was far worse,—tortures of rope, barrier, and horse; standing under the open sky in the blazing sun of summer, and in winter, being thrust into mud or ice. Slavery seemed, by comparison, to be disburdenment and peace.

Such were the evils which Lucullus found in the cities, and in a short time he freed the oppressed from all of them. In the first place, he ordered that the monthly rate of interest should be reckoned at one per cent., and no more; in the second place, he cut off all interest that exceeded the principal; third, and most important of all, he ordained that the lender should receive not more than the fourth part of his debtor’s income, and any lender who added interest to principal was deprived of the whole.

Thus, in less than four years’ time, the debts were all paid, and the properties restored to their owners unencumbered. This public debt had its origin in the twenty thousand talents which Sulla had laid upon Asia as a contribution, and twice this amount had been paid back to the money-lenders. Yet now, by reckoning usurious interest, they had brought the total debt up to a hundred and twenty thousand talents.

These men, accordingly, considered themselves outraged, and raised a clamour against Lucullus at Rome. They also bribed some of the tribunes to proceed against him, being men of great influence, who had got many of the active politicians into their debt. Lucullus, however, was not only beloved by the peoples whom he had benefited, nay, other provinces also longed to have him set over them, and felicitated those whose good fortune it was to have such a governor.

Appius Clodius, who had been sent to Tigranes (Clodius was a brother of her who was then the wife of Lucullus), was at first conducted by the royal guides through the upper country by a route needlessly circuitous and long. But when a freedman of his, who was a Syrian, told him of the direct route, he left the long one which was being trickily imposed upon him, bade his Barbarian guides a long farewell, and within a few days crossed the Euphrates and came to Antioch by Daphne.[*](The great Antioch on the river Orontes. Daphne was the name of a grove near the city consecrated to Apollo.)

Then, being ordered to await Tigranes there (the king was still engaged in subduing some cities of Phoenicia), he gained over many of the princes who paid but a hollow obedience to the Armenian. One of these was Zarbienus, king of Gordyene. He also promised many of the enslaved cities, when they sent to confer with him secretly, the assistance of Lucullus, although for the present he bade them keen quiet.