Lucullus

Pompey was amazed at the speed with which the banquet was prepared, notwithstanding it had cost so much. In these ways, then, Lucullus used his wealth wantonly, as though it were in very truth a Barbarian prisoner-of-war.

But what he did in the establishment of a library deserves warm praise. He got together many books, and they were well written, and his use of them was more honourable to him than his acquisition of them. His libraries were thrown open to all, and the cloisters surrounding them, and the study-rooms, were accessible without restriction to the Greeks, who constantly repaired thither as to an hostelry of the Muses, and spent the day with one another, in glad escape from their other occupations.

Lucullus himself also often spent his leisure hours there with them, walking about in the cloisters with their scholars, and he would assist their statesmen in whatever they desired. And in general his house was a home and prytaneium for the Greeks who came to Rome. He was fond of all philosophy, and well-disposed and friendly towards every school, but from the first he cherished a particular and zealous love for the Academy, not the New Academy, so-called,

although that school at the time had a vigorous representative of the doctrines of Carneades in Philo, but the Old Academy, which at that time was headed by a persuasive and powerful speaker in the person of Antiochus of Ascalon. This man Lucullus hastened to make his friend and companion, and arrayed him against the disciples of Philo, of whom Cicero also was one.

Indeed, Cicero wrote a noble treatise on the doctrines of this sect, in which he has put the argument in support of apprehension into the mouth of Lucullus, and carried the opposing argument himself. The book is entitled Lucullus.[*](Academicorum Priorum, Liber Secundus, qui inscribitur Lucullus.) Lucullus and Cicero were, as I have said, ardent friends, and members of the same political party, for Lucullus had not withdrawn himself entirely from political life,

although he lost no time in leaving to Crassus and Cato the ambitious struggle for the chief place and the greatest power, since he saw that it involved both peril and ignominy. For those who looked with suspicion upon the power of Pompey, made Crassus and Cato the champions of the senatorial party when Lucullus declined the leadership. But Lucullus would still go to the forum in support of his friends, and also to the Senate, whenever there was need of combating some ambitious scheme of Pompey’s.

Thus, the dispositions which Pompey made after his conquest of the kings, Lucullus made null and void, and his proposal for a generous distribution of lands to his soldiers, Lucullus, with the co-operation of Cato, prevented from being granted. Pompey therefore took refuge in an alliance, or rather a conspiracy, with Crassus and Caesar, and by filling the city with his armed soldiery and expelling from the forum the partisans of Cato and Lucullus, got his measures ratified.