Lucullus

The winters that followed also vexed them. They spent them either in the enemy’s country, or among the allies, encamped under the open sky. Not once did Lucullus take his army into a city that was Greek and friendly. In their disaffection, they received the greatest support from the popular leaders at Rome. These envied Lucullus and denounced him for protracting the war through love of power and love of wealth. They said he all but had in his own sole power Cilicia, Asia, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus, Armenia, and the regions extending to the Phasis, and that now he had actually plundered the palaces of Tigranes, as if he had been sent, not to subdue the kings, but to strip them.

These were the words, they say, of Lucius Quintus, one of the praetors, to whom most of all the people listened when they passed a vote to send men who should succeed Lucullus in the command of his province. They voted also that many of the soldiers under him should be released from military service.

To these factors in the case, so unfavourable in themselves, there was added another, which most of all vitiated the undertakings of Lucullus. This was Publius Clodius, a man of wanton violence, and full of all arrogance and boldness. He was a brother of the wife of Lucullus, a woman of the most dissolute ways, whom he was actually accused of debauching.

At this time he was in service with Lucullus, and did not get all the honour which he thought his due. He thought a foremost place his due, and when many were preferred before him because of his evil character, he worked secretly upon the soldiers who had been commanded by Fimbria, and tried to incite them against Lucullus, disseminating among them speeches well adapted to men who were neither unwilling nor unaccustomed to have their favour courted. These were the men whom Fimbria had once persuaded to kill the consul Flaccus, and choose himself for their general.

They therefore gladly listened to Clodius also, and called him the soldier’s friend. For he pretended to be incensed in their behalf, if there was to be no end of their countless wars and toils, but they were rather to wear out their lives in fighting with every nation and wandering over every land, receiving no suitable reward for such service, but convoying the waggons and camels of Lucullus laden with golden beakers set with precious stones,