Lucullus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. II. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

Ptolemy abandoned his alliance with Rome, out of fear for the outcome of the war, but furnished Lucullus with ships to convoy him as far as Cyprus, embraced him graciously at parting, and offered him a costly emerald set in gold. At first Lucullus declined to accept it, but when the king showed him that the engraving on it was a likeness of himself, he was afraid to reject it, lest he be thought to have sailed away at utter enmity with the king, and so have some plot laid against him on the voyage.

As he sailed along, he collected a multitude of ships from the maritime cities, omitting all those engaged in piracy, and came at last to Cyprus. Learning there that the enemy lay at anchor off the headlands and were watching for his coming, he hauled all his vessels up on land, and wrote letters to the cities requesting winter quarters and provisions, as though he would await the fine season there.