Chapter 4

treasures of Olympia. These rich deposits were a tempting booty to those who were in want of money and were strong enough to seize it. At the commencement of the Peloponnesian war (B.C. 431) it was proposed that the Peloponnesian allies should raise a fleet by borrowing money from the deposits at Olympia and Delphi (Thucydides, i. 121), a scheme which the Athenians, their enemies, appear to have looked upon as a mode of borrowing of which repayment would form no part. (i. 143. [Greek: eite kai kinêsantes] είτε καὶ κινήσαντες, &c.). Many of the rich churches in Italy were plundered by the French during their occupation of Italy in the Revolutionary wars; their search after valuables extended to very minute matters. The rich stores of the Holy House of the Virgin at Loreto were nearly exhausted by Pope Pius VI. in 1796 to satisfy the demands of the French. It is said that there is a new store got together for the next invader.]

[Footnote 213: The history of this ancient body cannot be given with any accuracy except in detail. (See the article "Amphictyons," _Penny Cyclopædia_.) The "royal presents" were the gifts of Crœsus, king of Lydia (in the sixth century B.C.) the most munificent of all the donors to the temple. Among his other presents Herodotus (i. 51) mentions four of these silver casks or jars, and he uses the same word that Plutarch does. The other three had probably been taken by some previous plunderer. In the Sacred war (B.C. 357) the Phokians under Philomelus took a large part of the valuable things at Delphi for the purpose of paying their troops. (Diodorus, xvi. 30.)]

[Footnote 214: Flamininus, whose life Plutarch has written under the name of Flaminius, defeated Philip V. king of Macedonia B.C. 197. Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was consul B.C. 191, defeated in that year Antiochus III. king of Syria, commonly called the Great, at Thermopylæ in Greece. Antiochus afterwards withdrew into Asia. Æmilius Paulus defeated Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, at Pydna B.C. 168, upon which Macedonia was reduced into the form of a Roman Province (Livius, 45, c. 18.). Plutarch has written the Life of Paulus Æmilius.]

[Footnote 215: See the Life of Marius, c. 42.]

[Footnote 216: See c. 20, 21. C. Flavius Fimbria was the legatus of the consul L. Valerius Flaccus. Cicero (_Brutus_, 66) calls him a madman.]

[Footnote 217: The Medimnus was a dry measure, reckoned at 11 gallons 7.1456 pints English. It was equivalent to six Roman modii. (Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_.)]

[Footnote 218: This plant may have had its name from the virgin (parthenos) goddess Athene, whom the Romans call Minerva. Plinius (_N.H. 22_, c. 20) has described it. It is identified with the modern feverfew by Smith in Rees' _Cyclopædia_,--a plant of the chamomile kind; rather unpleasant for food, as one might conjecture. The oil-flasks were of coarse leather. In Herodotus (ix. 118) we read of a besieged people eating their bedcords, which we may assume to have been strips of hides, or leather at least.]

[Footnote 219: For all matters relating to the topography of Rome and Athens, the reader must consult a plan: nothing else can explain the text. The gate called Dipylum or Double-Gate was the passage from the Keramicus within the walls to the Keramicus outside of the walls on the north-west side of Athens.]

[Footnote 220: Teius is not a Roman name. It is conjectured that it should be Ateius.]

[Footnote 221: The road from Athens to Eleusis was called the Sacred (Pausanius, i. 36): it led to the sacred city of Eleusis. The space between the Peiræic gate and the Sacred is that part of the wall which lay between the roads from Athens to the Piræus and Eleusis respectively.]

[Footnote 222: A Greek Agora corresponds to a Roman Forum.]

[Footnote 223: The description of the capture of Athens is given by Appian. (_Mithridatic War_, c. 30.) Plutarch here alludes to the deluge in the time of Deucalion, which is often mentioned by the Greek and Roman writers. In the time of Pausanias (i. 18), in the second century of our æra, they still showed at Athens the hole through which the waters of the deluge ran off. A map of the Topography of Athens has been published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Leake's _Topography of Athens_, K.O. Müller, in Ersch und Gruber, _Encyclop._ art. "Attika," p. 223, and P.W. Forchhammer, _Topographie von Athen_, 1841, should be consulted.]

[Footnote 224: See Strabo, p. 395.]

[Footnote 225: One of the ports of the maritime town of Athens. The events mentioned in this chapter should be compared with Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 41).]

[Footnote 226: His name was Lucius, and he was probably a brother of the great Hortensius. L. Hortensius had to pass through a difficult country to reach Bœotia. His route lay through the straits of Thermopylæ; but he probably took some other line, and he was conducted by Kaphis over the heights of the great mountain mass of Parnassus. Kaphis appears to be the person of the same name who has been mentioned before (c. 12), though he is there called a Phokian. In this chapter Plutarch calls him a Chæroneian. Tithora or Tithorea was in the time of Herodotus (viii. 32) the name of that summit of Parnassus to which the Phokians of the neighbouring town of Neon fled from the soldiers of Xerxes B.C. 480. Pausanias (x. 32) remarks that the city Neon must have taken the name of Tithorea after the time of Herodotus. But Plutarch means to say that the Tithora of which he speaks was the place to which the Phokians fled; and therefore Neon, the place from which they fled, cannot be Tithora, according to Plutarch; and the description of Tithorea by Herodotus, though very brief, agrees with the description of Plutarch. Pausanias places Tithorea eighty stadia from Delphi.]

[Footnote 227: Elateia was an important position in Phokis and near the river Kephisus. It was situated near the north-western extremity of the great Bœotian plain, and commanded the entrance into that plain from the mountainous country to the north-west. The Kephisus takes a south-east course past Elateia, Panopeus, Chæronea, and Orchomenus, and near Orchomenus it enters the Lake Kopais. Bœotia is a high table-land surrounded by mountains, and all the drainage of the plain of which those of Elateia and Orchomenus are part is received in the basin of the lake, which has no outlet.]

[Footnote 228: This city was burnt by Xerxes in his invasion of Greece B.C. 480. (Herodotus, viii. 33.) Pausanias (x. 33) says that it was not rebuilt by the Bœotians and Athenians: in another passage (x. 3) he says it was destroyed by Philip after the close of the Sacred or Phokian war B.C. 346; and therefore it had been rebuilt by somebody.]

[Footnote 229: The soldiers who had shields of brass.]

[Footnote 230: This was Aulus Gabinius, who was sent by Sulla B.C. 81 with orders to L. Licinius Murena to put an end to the war with Mithridates. Ericius is not a Roman name: perhaps it should be Hirtius.]

[Footnote 231: This is Juba II., king of Mauritania, who married Cleopatra, one of the children of Marcus Antonius by Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Juba was a scholar and an author: he is often quoted, by Strabo, Plinius (_Nat Hist._), and other writers.]

[Footnote 232: "Our city" will explain why Plutarch has described the campaign in the plains of Bœotia at such length. Plutarch's battles are none of the best; and he has done well in making them generally short.]

[Footnote 233: The cave of Trophonius was at Lebadeia in Bœotia. Pausanias (ix. 39) has given a full account of the singular ceremonies used on consulting the deity.]

[Footnote 234: The word is [Greek: omphês] ὀμφῆς, literally "voice," which has caused a difficulty to the translators; but the reading is probably right.]

[Footnote 235: This was Lucius Licinius Murena, who conducted the war against Mithridates in Asia B.C. 83 as Proprætor. He was the father of the Lucius Murena in whose defence we have an extant oration of Cicero.]

[Footnote 236: The old story is well told by Ovidius (_Metamorphoses,_ iii. 14, &c.)]

[Footnote 237: A temple of the Muses.]

[Footnote 238: Kaltwasser has followed the reading "Gallus" in his version, though, as he remarks in a note, this man is called Galba by Appian (_Mithridat. War_, 43), and he is coupled with Hortensius, just as in Plutarch.]

[Footnote 239: This clumsy military contrivance must generally have been a failure. These chariots were useless in the battle between Cyrus and his brother Artaxerxes B.C. 401. (Xenophon, _Anabasis_, i. 8.) Appian (_Mithridatic War_, c. 42) mentions sixty of these chariots as being driven against the Romans, who opened their ranks to make way for them: the chariots were surrounded by the Roman soldiers in the rear and destroyed.]

[Footnote 240: A Circus was a Roman racecourse. The chief circus was the Circus Maximus, which was used also for hunts of wild beasts. See the article "Circus" in Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_.]

[Footnote 241: I have kept the Greek word ([Greek: hoplitês] ὁπλίτης), which means a soldier who was equipped with defensive armour for close fighting.]

[Footnote 242: The Saturnalia were a kind of Carnival at Rome in the month of December, when people indulged themselves in feasting and revelry, and the slaves had the license of doing for a time what they pleased, and acting as if they were freemen. The original "freedom of speech" may mean a little more than these words convey. The point of the centurion's remark, like many other jokes of antiquity, seems rather blunt. He simply meant to express surprise at seeing slaves in an army serving as soldiers--they whose only freedom, so far as he knew, was to have a little license once a year at the Saturnalia.]

[Footnote 243: A town in Eubœa on the strait of the Euripus which separates the island of Eubœa from the mainland. The smallness of the Roman loss is incredible. Appian considerately add one to the number, and makes it fifteen (_Mithridatic War_, c. 42, &c.) Sulla was a braggart, though he was brave.]

[Footnote 244: This stream is called Morius (c. 17). Pausanias, who made his tour through Greece in the first half of the second century of our æra, saw the trophies (ix. 40).]

[Footnote 245: L. Valerius Flaccus was elected consul B.C. 86 in the place of C. Marius, who died at the beginning of the year.]

[Footnote 246: The name given by the Greeks and Romans to that part of the Mediterranean which lay between Dyrrachium (Durazzo) and the opposite coast of Italy. Thucydides (i. 24) makes the Ionian Sea commence about Epidamnus (which was the old name of Dyrrachium), and probably he extended the name to all the Adriatic or modern Gulf of Venice.]

[Footnote 247: A town in Phthiotis, a district which is included in Thessalia in the larger sense of that term. It was on the river Enipeus, a branch of the Peneus. (Strabo, p. 452.) Thucydides (iv. 78) means the same place, when he speaks of Meliteia in Achæa.]

[Footnote 248: A mountain in Bœotia and a spring (Tilphussa) about fifty stadia from Haliartus. (Pausanias, ix. 33.) Haliartus is on the south side of the Lake Kopais.]

[Footnote 249: Orchomenus, one of the oldest towns in Bœotia and in Greece, is situated near the point where the Kephisus enters the great Lake. Plutarch speaks again of the Melas in the Life of Pelopidas (c. 16). Pausanias (ix. 88) says that the Melas rises seven stadia from Orchomenus, and enters the lake Kephisus, otherwise called Kepais.]

[Footnote 250: If we assume that it was exactly two hundred years, Plutarch wrote this passage about A.D. 114, in the reign of Trajanus. This battle was fought B.C. 86. Hadrianus became emperor A.D. 117. (See Preface, p. xiv.)]

[Footnote 251: Cn. Papirius Carbo was the colleague of Cinna in the consulship B.C. 85 and 84.]

[Footnote 252: A Deliac merchant This might be a merchant of Delium, the small town in Bœotia, on the Euripus, where Sulla and Archelaus met. But Delos, a small rocky island, one of the Cyclades, is probably meant Delos was at this time a great slave-market. (Strabo, p. 668.)]

[Footnote 253: Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 50) says that Archelaus hid himself in a marsh, and afterwards made his escape to Chalkis. Sulla's arrogance is well characterized by his speech. The Cappadocians were considered a mean and servile people, and their character became proverbial.]

[Footnote 254: The Roman Province of Asia. Compare Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 54, 55) as to the terms of the peace.]

[Footnote 255: The death of Aristion is mentioned by Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 39); but he does not speak of the poisoning.]

[Footnote 256: Mædike appears to be the right name. Thucydides (ii. 98) calls the people Mædi: they were a Thracian people. Compare Strabo (p. 316). Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 55) speaks of this expedition as directed aguinst the Sinti, who wore neighbours of the Mædi, and other nations which bordered on Macedonia, and annoyed it by their predatory incursions. Sulla thus kept his soldiers employed, which was the practice of all prudent Roman commanders, and enriched them with booty at the same time.]

[Footnote 257: This is the old town called Krenides, or the Little Springs, which King Philippus, the father of Alexander the Great, restored and gave his name to. It was near Amphipolis on the river Strymon. (See Life of Brutus, c. 38.)]

[Footnote 258: The Troad is the north-west angle of Asia Minor, which borders on the Hellespont and the Ægean Sea (the Archipelago). The name of the district, Troas in Greek, is from the old town of Troja. Strabo (lib. xiii.) gives a particular description of this tract.

The narrative of this affair in Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 56, &c.) differs in some respects from that of Plutarch, and this may be observed of many other events in this war. Appian is perhaps the better authority for the bare historical facts; but so far as concerns the conduct and character of Sulla on this and other occasions, Plutarch has painted the man true to the life.

Sulla left L. Lucullus behind him to collect the money. (See Life of Lucullus, c. 4.) The story of Fimbria in Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 69, 70) differs from that of Plutarch in some respects, but it is near enough to show that though these two writers apparently followed different authorities, Plutarch has given the facts substantially correct.

When Sulla was within two stadia of Fimbria, he sent him orders to give up the army, which he was illegally commanding. Fimbria sent back an insulting message to the effect that Sulla also had no right to the command which he held. While Sulla was throwing up his intrenchments, and many of Fimbria's soldiers were openly leaving him, Fimbria summoned those who still remained to a meeting, and urged them to stay with him. Upon the soldiers saying that they would not fight against their fellow-citizens, Fimbria tore his dress, and began to intreat them severally. But the soldiers turned a deaf ear to him, and the desertions became still more numerous, on which Fimbria went round to the tents of the officers, and bribing some of them, he called another meeting, and commanded the soldiers to take the oath to him. As those who were hired by him called out that he ought to summon the men by name to take the oath, he called by the crier those who had received favours from him, and he called Nonius first who had been his partner in everything. Nonius refused to take the oath, and Fimbria drew his sword and threatened to kill him, but as there was a general shout, he became alarmed and desisted. However he induced a slave by money and the promise of his freedom to go to Sulla as a deserter, and to attempt his life. The man as he came near the act was alarmed, and this gave rise to suspicion, which led to his being seized, and he confessed. The army of Sulla, full of indignation and contempt, surrounded the camp of Fimbria, and abused him, calling him Athenion, which was the name of the fellow who put himself at the head of the rebel runaway slaves in Sicily, and was a king for a few days. Fimbria now despairing came to the rampart, and invited Sulla to a conference. But Sulla sent Rutilius; and this first of all annoyed Fimbria, as he was not honoured with a meeting, which is granted even to enemies. On his asking for pardon for any error that he might have committed, being still a young man, Rutilius promised that Sulla would allow him to pass safe to the coast, if he would sail away from Asia, of which Sulla was proconsul. Fimbria replied that he had better means than that, and going to Pergamum and entering the temple of Æsculapius, he pierced himself with his sword. As the wound was not mortal, he bade his slave plunge the sword into his body. The slave killed his master, and then killed himself on the body. Thus died Fimbria, who had done much mischief to Asia after Mithridates. Sulla allowed Fimbria's freedmen to bury their master; adding that he would not imitate Cinna and Marius, who had condemned many persons to death at Rome, and also refused to allow their bodies to be buried. The army of Fimbria now came over to Sulla, and was received by him and united with his own. Sulla also commissioned Curio to restore Nicomedes to Bithynia and Ariobarzanes to Cappadocia, and he wrote to the Senate about all these matters, pretending that he did not know that he had been declared an enemy.]

[Footnote 259: Thyateira was a town in Lydia about 45 miles from Pergamum.]

[Footnote 260: The original is simply "after being initiated;" but the Eleusinian mysteries are meant. The city of Eleusis was in Attica, and the sacred rites were those of Ceres and Proserpine (Demeter and Persephone). Those only who were duly initiated could partake in these ceremonies. An intruder ran the risk of being put to death. Livius (31, c. 14) tells a story of two Akarnanian youths who were not initiated, and during the time of the Initia, as he calls them, entered the temple of Ceres with the rest of the crowd, knowing nothing of the nature of the ceremonies. Their language and some questions that they put, betrayed them, and they were conducted to the superintendents of the temple; and though it was clear that they had erred entirely through ignorance, they were put to death as if they had committed an abominable crime. Toleration was no part of the religious system of Antiquity; that is, nothing was permitted which was opposed to any religious institution, though there was toleration for a great variety. Many illustrious persons were initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, which were maintained until Christianity became the general religion of the Empire. Marcus Aurelius, when he visited Athens, was initiated. The ceremonial of the temple may be collected to a certain extent from the ancient writers, but no one has yet succeeded in divining what were the peculiar doctrines of this place.]

[Footnote 261: Much has been written about this story, which cannot be literally true. The writings of Aristotle were not unknown to his immediate followers. If there is any truth in this story as told by Plutarch and Strabo (p. 608) it must refer to the original manuscripts of Aristotle. Part of the text of Plutarch is here manifestly corrupt. The subject has been examined by several writers. See art. "Aristotle," _Biog. Dict._ of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and Blakesley, _Life of Aristotle_, Cambridge 1839.]

[Footnote 262: This is Strabo the Geographer, but the passage is not in the Geography, and probably was in an historical work [Greek: Hupomnæmata historika] Ὑπομνήατα ἱστορικά, Strabo, p. 13) which he wrote, and which is cited by Plutarch in his Life of Lucullus, c. 28.]

[Footnote 263: These warm springs, which still exist, are on the west coast of Eubœa, opposite to the mainland. They were much resorted to in Plutarch's time, as appears from his Symposium (iv. Probl. 4). The place is named Galepsus in Wyttenbach's edition, but in a note the editor admits that the true name is Ædepsus. Demetrius Calatianus (quoted by Strabo, p. 60), who had recorded all the earthquakes in Greece, says that the hot springs at Thermopylæ and at Ædepsus once ceased to flow for three days owing to an earthquake, and those of Ædepsus, when they flowed again, broke out in a fresh place. The hot springs near Cape Therma in Eubœa are supposed to be those of Ædepsus. They are more copious than the springs of Thermopylæ on the opposite mainland, but of the same kind. "The water rushes down in a copious stream into the sea, the vapour from which is visible at a considerable distance." (_Penny Cyclopædia_, art. "Eubœa.")]

[Footnote 264: Halæae should probably be written Halæ. It was near the Euripus, within Bœotia and on the borders of Phokia. (Pansaunias, ix. 24.)]

[Footnote 265: The usual passage from Italy to Greece and Greece to Italy was between Brundisium and Dyrrachium. Compare Appian, _Civil Wars_, c. 79.]

[Footnote 266: This phenomenon is mentioned by Strabo (p. 316), Dion Cassius (41, c. 45), and Ælian (_Various History_, 13, c. 16). I do not know if this spot has been examined by any modern traveller. It is a matter of some interest to ascertain how long a phenomenon of this kind has lasted. The pitch-springs of Zante (Zakynthus), which Herodotus visited and describes (iv. 195), still produce the native pitch. Strabo, who had not seen the Nymphæum, describes it thus after the account of Poseidonius: "In the territory of Apollonia is a place called the Nymphæum; it is a rock which sends forth fire, and at the base of it are springs of warm asphaltus, the asphaltic earth, as it appears, being in a state of combustion: and there is a mine of it near on a hill. Whatever is cut out, is filled up again in course of time, as the earth which is thrown into the excavations changes into asphaltus, as Poseidonius says." We cannot conclude from this confused description what the real nature of the phenomenon was. Probably the asphaltus or bitumen was occasionally set on fire by the neighbouring people. (See the art. "Asphaltum," _Penny Cyclopædia_.)]

[Footnote 267: The Cohors was the tenth part of a Roman Legion. Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 82) says that on this occasion the opponents of Sulla made their cohorts contain 500 men each, so that a legion would contain 5000 men. According to this estimate there were 90,000 men under arms in Italy to oppose Sulla, who had five legions of Italian soldiers, six thousand cavalry and some men from Peloponnesus and Macedonia; in all forty thousand men. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, i. 79.) Appian says that he had 1,600 ships.]

[Footnote 268: This passage is explained by the cut p. 287 in Smith's _Dict. of Antiquities_, art. "Corona."]

[Footnote 269: Caius Junius Norbanus and L. Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus were now consuls B.C. 83.]

[Footnote 270: Silvium is a town in Apulia on the Appian road, on the Apennines. As to the burning of the Capitol, see Appian, _Civil Wars_, i. 86.]

[Footnote 271: Fidentia was in North Italy not far from Placentia (Piacenza): it is now Borgo San Donnino. Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 92) speaks of this battle near Placentia, which Lucullus gained over some of Carbo's troops, not over Carbo himself, as is stated by some modern writers. Carbo was now in Central Italy.]

[Footnote 272: Sulla, with Metellus Pius, who had joined him (Appian, _Civil Wars_, i. 80), met L. Scipio near Teanum in Campania. Sertorius was with Scipio. The circumstances are told by Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 86) as usual with more minuteness and very clearly. The main story is correct in Plutarch.]

[Footnote 273: Signia, now Segni, is in the Volscian mountains, 35 miles south-east of Rome. It was a Roman colony as old us the reign of Tarquinius Superbus, according to Livius (1, 55). This battle was fought B.C. 82, when Cn. Papinus Carbo was consul for the third time with the younger Marius. It appears that Sulla's progress towards Rome was not very rapid. Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 87) places the battle at Sacriportus, the situation of which is unknown.]

[Footnote 274: Cn. Cornelius Dolabella was consul B.C. 81. He was afterwards Proconsul of Macedonia, and had a triumph for his victories over the Thracians and other barbarian tribes. C. Julius Cæsar, when a young man (Cæsar, c. 4), prosecuted B.C. 77 Dolabella for mal-administration in his province. Dolabella was acquitted.]

[Footnote 275: Præneste, now Palestrina. This strong town was about 20 miles E. by S. of Rome near the source of the Trerus, now the Sacco, a branch of the Liris, the modern Garigliano.]

[Footnote 276: A Roman historian of the age of Augustus, who wrote Annals, of which there were twenty-two books.]

[Footnote 277: These were Cn. Pompeius Magnus, who afterwards was the great opponent of C. Julius Cæsar; his Life is written by Plutarch: M. Licinius Crassus, called Dives or the Rich, whose Life is written by Plutarch; Quintus Metellus Pius, the son of Metellus Numidicus; and P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus, whom Sulla made consul B.C. 79, when he declined the office himself.]

[Footnote 278: Carbo lost courage and ran away. He got safe to the African coast, whence, with many men of rank, he made his way to Sicily, and thence to the small island of Cossyra. Cn. Pompeius sent men to seize him, who caught Carbo and his company: Carbo's followers were immediately put to death pursuant to the orders of Pompeius. Carbo was brought to Pompeius, and placed at his feet in chains; and after Pompeius had insulted him who had thrice been consul by pronouncing an harangue over him, Carbo was put to death, and his head was sent to Sulla. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, i. 96.) The statement of Plutarch (_Pompeius_, c. 10) agrees with that of Appian. These and other acts of Pompeius should be remembered by those who are inclined to pity his fate. He was probably under a necessity to put Carbo to death pursuant to the orders of his muster Sulla, but the insult might have been spared.]

[Footnote 279: It is uncertain who he was. See Drumann, _Geschichte Roms_, ii. Claudii No. 26.]

[Footnote 280: See c. 33. Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 93) gives a different account of this affair before the Colline gate, but agrees with Plutarch in stating that Sulla's right wing was successful and the left was defeated. He says that Telesinus fell in the battle.]

[Footnote 281: Antemnæ was a few miles from Rome, near the junction of the Tiber and the Anio (Teverone).]

[Footnote 282: Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 93) briefly mentions this massacre. It took place in the Circus Flaminius, which was near the temple of Bellona.

Plutarch here starts a question which suggests itself to all men who have had any experience. It is a common remark that a man who has been raised from a low degree to a high station, or has become rich from being poor, is no longer the same man. Nobody expects those whom he has known in the same station as himself to behave themselves in the same way when they are exalted above it. Nobody expects a man who has got power to be the same man that he was in an humble station. Any man who has lived a reasonable time in the world and had extensive conversation with it knows this to be true. But is the man changed, or are his latent qualities only made apparent by his changed circumstances? The truth seems to be that latent qualities are developed by opportunity. All men have the latent capacities of pride, arrogance, tyranny, and cruelty. Cruelty perhaps requires the most opportunities for its development; and these opportunities are power, fear, and opposition to his will. It has been well observed, that all men are capable of crime, but different circumstances are necessary to develop this capacity in different men. All have their price; and some may be bought cheap. He who is above the temptation of money may yield to other temptations. The possession of power is the greatest temptation of all, as it offers the greatest opportunities for the development of any latent disposition; and every man has a point or two in which he is open to the insidious attacks of opportunity. In matters political, the main thing is to know, from the indications that a man gives when he has not power, what he will be when he has power: in the ordinary intercourse of life, the main thing is to judge of the character of those with whom we deal by compulsion or choice, to know how far we can trust what they say, how far their future conduct may be predicted from present indications. But to show what these indications are, belongs, as Plutarch says, to another inquiry than the present. The general rule of old was Distrust, which the crafty Sicilian, as Cicero (_Ad Attic._ i. 19) calls Epicharmus, was always whispering in his ear. Epicharmus has well expressed his maxim in a single line:

[Greek: Naphe kai memnas' apistein: arthra tauta ton phrenon.] Νᾶφε καὶ μέμνας' ἀπιστεῖν: άρθρα ταῦτα τῶν φρενῶν.

Wakeful be thou and distrustful: sinews these are to the mind.

This is the rule for the timid, and for them a safe one. But he who is always suspicious must not expect to be trusted himself; and when the bold command, he must be content to obey.]

[Footnote 283: This is not a Roman name. The nearest name to it is Aufidius. But it is conjectured that one Fufidius is meant here (see the note of Sintenis), and also in the Life of Sertorius (c. 26, 27). This is probably the Fufidius (Florus, iii. 21, where the name is written incorrectly Furfidius in some editions) who said, that "Some should be left alive that there might be persons to domineer over."]

[Footnote 284: A Proscriptio was a notice set up in some public place. This Proscription of Sulla was the first instance of the kind, but it was repeated at a later time. The first list of the proscribed, according to Appian (_Civil Wars_, i, 55), contained forty senators and about sixteen hundred equites. Sulla prefaced his proscription by an address to the people, in which he promised to mend their condition. Paterculus (ii. 28) states that the proscription was to the following effect:--That the property of the proscribed should be sold, that their children should be deprived of all title to their property, and should be ineligible to public offices; and further, that the sons of Senators should bear the burdens incident to their order and lose all their rights. This will explain the word Infamy, which is used a little below. Infamia among the Romans was not a punishment, but it was a consequence of conviction for certain offences; and this consequence was a civil disability; the person who became Infamis lost his vote, and was ineligible to the great public offices. He also sustained some disabilities in his private rights. Sulla therefore put the children of the proscribed in the same condition as if they had been found guilty of certain offences.

The consequence of these measures of Sulla was a great change of property all through Italy. Cities which had favoured the opposite faction were punished by the loss of their fortifications and heavy requisitions, such as the French army in the Revolutionary wars levied in Italy. Sulla settled the soldiers of twenty-three legions in the Italian towns as so many garrisons, and he gave them lands and houses by taking them from their owners. These were the men who stuck to Sulla while he lived, and attempted to maintain his acts after his death, for their title could only be defended by supporting his measures. These are "the men of Sulla," as Cicero sometimes calls them, whose lands were purchased by murder, and who, as he says (_Contra Rullum_, ii. 26), were in such odium that their title could not have stood a single attack of a true and courageous tribune.]

[Footnote 285: Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 94) states that Sulla made all the people in Præneste come out into the plain unarmed, that he picked out those who had served him, who were very few, and these he spared. The rest he divided into three bodies, Romans, Samnites, and Prænestines: he told the Romans that they deserved to die, but he pardoned them; the rest were massacred, with the exception of the women and young children.]

[Footnote 286: L. Sergius Catilina, who formed a conspiracy in the consulship of M. Tullius Cicero B.C. 63. (Life of Cicero.)]

[Footnote 287: Cn. Marius Gratidianus, the son of M. Gratidius of Arpinum. He was adopted by one of the Marii; by the brother of Caius Marius, as some conjecture.]

[Footnote 288: A vessel of stone or metal placed at the entrance of a temple that those who entered might wash their hands in it, or perhaps merely dip in a finger.]

[Footnote 289: Plutarch's expression is "he proclaimed himself Dictator," but this expression is not to be taken literally, nor is it to be supposed that Plutarch meant it to be taken literally. Sulla was appointed in proper form, though he did in fact usurp the power, and under the title of dictator was more than king. (Appian, _Civil Wars_, i. 98.) The terms of Sulla's election were that he should hold the office as long as he pleased; the disgrace of this compulsory election was veiled under the declaration that Sulla was appointed to draw up legislative measures and to settle affairs. Paterculus (ii. 28) mentions the 120 years as having elapsed since the time of a previous dictatorship, which was the year after Hannibal left Italy B.C. 202. As Sulla was elected Dictator in B.C. 81, Plutarch's statement is correct. (On the functions of the Dictator see Life of Cæsar, c. 37.)]

[Footnote 290: Manius Acilius Glabrio, who was prætor B.C. 70 during the proceedings against Verres. He was the son of the M. Acilius Glabrio who got a law passed on mal-administration in offices (repetundæ), and the grandson of the Glabrio who defeated King Antiochus near Thermopylæ. (See c. 12.)]

[Footnote 291: This murder is told more circumstantially by Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 101), who has added something that Plutarch should not have omitted. After saying to the people that Lucretius had been put to death by his order, Sulla told them a tale: "The lice were very troublesome to a clown, as he was ploughing. Twice he stopped his ploughing and purged his jacket. But he was still bitten, and in order that he might not be hindered in his work, he burnt the jacket; and I advise those who have been twice humbled not to make fire necessary the third time."]

[Footnote 292: Plinius (_H.N._ 33, c. 5) speaks of this triumph: it lasted two days. In the first day Sulla exhibited in the procession 15,000 pounds weight of gold and 115,000 pounds of silver, the produce of his foreign victories: on the second, 13,000 pounds weight of gold and 6000 pounds of silver which the younger Marius had carried off to Præneste after the conflagration of the Capitol and from the robbery of the other Roman temples.]

[Footnote 293: The term Felix appears on the coins of Sulla. Epaphroditus signifies a favourite of Aphrodite or Venus. (Eckhel, _Doctrina Num. Vet._ v. 190.) Eckhel infers from the guttus and lituus on one of Sulla's coins that he was an Augur.]

[Footnote 294: Sulla abdicated the dictatorship B.C. 79 in the consulship of P. Servilius Vatia Isauricus and Appius Claudius Pulcher. Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 103, &c.) speaks of the abdication. He made no attempt to secure to his family the power that he had acquired. It may be that he had no desire to perpetuate the power in his family; and it is certain that this could not have been accomplished. Sulla had only one son, and he was now a child. But it is certainly a striking trait in this man's character that he descended to a private station from the possession of unlimited power, and after, as Appian observes, having caused the death of more than one hundred thousand men in his Italian wars, besides ninety senators, fifteen consuls, and two thousand six hundred equites, not to mention those who were banished and whose property was confiscated, and the many Italian cities whose fortifications he had destroyed and whose lands and privileges he had taken away. Sulla's character was a compound of arrogance, self-confidence, and contempt of all mankind, which have seldom been united. But his ruling character was love of sensual pleasures. He was weary of his life of turmoil, and he returned to his property in the neighbourhood of Cumæ on the pleasant shore of Campania, where he spent his time on the sea, in fishing, and in sensual enjoyments. But he had nothing to fear; there were in Italy one hundred and twenty thousand men who had served under him, to whom he had given money and land; there was a great number of persons at Rome who had shared in his cruelties and the profits of them, and whose safely consisted in maintaining the safety of their leader. Besides this, he had manumitted above ten thousand vigorous men, once the slaves of masters who had been murdered by his orders, and made them Roman citizens under the name of Cornelii. These men were always in readiness to execute his orders. With these precautions, this blood-stained man retired to enjoy the sensual gratifications that he had indulged in from his youth upwards, glorying in his happy fortune and despising all mankind. No attempt to assassinate him is recorded, nor any apprehension of his on that score. He lived and died Sulla the Fortunate.]

[Footnote 295: M. Æmilius Lepidus and Q. Lutatius Catulus were consuls B.C. 78, the year of Sulla's death. Lepidus attempted to overthrow Sulla's constitution after Sulla's death. He was driven from Rome by Q. Catulus and Cn. Pompeius Magnus, and died B.C. 77 in Sardinia. This Lepidus was the father of M. Lepidus the associate of Cæsar Octavianus and M. Antonius in the triumvirate. (See the Life of M. Antonius.)

Catulus was the son of Lutatius Catulus who was once the colleague of C. Marius in the consulship. He has received great praise from Cicero. Sallustius calls him a defender of the aristocratical party, and C. Licinius Macer, as quoted by Sallustius in his History, says that he was more cruel than Sulla. We cannot trust Cicero's unqualified praise of this aristocrat nor the censure of Sallustius. What would Cicero's character be, if we had it from some one who belonged to the party of Catiline? and what is it as we know it from his own writings? Insincere, changing with the times, timid, revengeful, and, when he was under the influence of fear, cruel.]

[Footnote 296: The Greek word ([Greek: theatron] θέατρον) from which came the Roman Theatrum and our word Theatre, means a place for an exhibition or spectacle. The Roman word for dramatic representations is properly Scena. I do not know when the men and women had separate seats assigned to them in the theatres. A law of the tribune L. Roscius Otho B.C. 68 fixed the places in the theatres for the different classes, and it may have assigned separate seats to the women.]

[Footnote 297: Valeria was the daughter of M. Valerius Messala. She could not be the sister of Hortensius, for in that case her name would be Hortensia. The sister of the orator Hortensius married a Valerius Messala.]

[Footnote 298: Plutarch has translated the Roman word Imperator by the Greek Autocrator ([Greek: Autokratôr] Αὐτοκράτωρ), "one who has absolute power;" the title Autocrator under the Empire is the Greek equivalent of the Roman Imperator, but hardly an equivalent at this time. (See the Life of Cæsar.)]

[Footnote 299: This was the Quintus Roscius whom Cicero has so often mentioned and in defence of whom he made a speech which is extant. The subject of the action against Roscius is not easy to state in a few words. (See the Argument of P. Manutius, and the Essay of Unterholzner in Savigny's _Zeitschrift_, &c. i. p. 248.) Roscius is called Comœdus in the title of Cicero's oration and by Plutarch, but he seems to have acted tragedy also, as we may collect from some passages in Cicero. The general name at Rome for an actor was histrio; but the histrio is also contrasted by Cicero (_Pro Q. Roscio_, c. 10) with the comœdus, as the inferior compared with the higher professor of the art. Yet Roscius is sometimes called a histrio. Roscius was a perfect master of his art, according to Cicero; and his name became proverbial among the Romans to express a perfect master of any art. (Cicero, _De Oratore_, i. 28.) Cicero was intimate with Roscius, and learned much from him that was useful to him as an orator. Roscius wrote a work in which he compared oratory and acting. His professional gains were immense; and he had a sharp eye after his own interest, as the speech of Cicero shows.]

[Footnote 300: The original is [Greek: lusiodos] λυσιοδός, which is explained by Aristoxenus, quoted by Athenæus (p. 620), as I have translated it.]

[Footnote 301: Appian does not mention this disease of Sulla, though other writers do. Appian merely speaks of his dying of fever. Zachariæ (Life of Sulla) considers the story of his dying of the lousy disease as a fabrication of Sulla's enemies, and probably of the Athenians whom he had handled so cruelly. This disease, called Morbus Pediculosus or Pthiriasis, is not unknown in modern times. Plutarch has collected instances from ancient times. Akastus belongs to the mythic period. Alkman lived in the seventh century B.C.: fragments of his poetry remain. This Pherekydes was what the Greeks called Theologus, a man who speculated on things appertaining to the nature of the gods. He is said to have been a teacher of Pythagoras, which shows that he belongs to an uncertain period. He was not a Philosopher; his speculations belonged to those cosmogonical dreams which precede true philosophy, and begin again when philosophy goes to sleep, as we see in the speculations of the present day. Kallisthenes is mentioned in Plutarch's Life of Alexander, c. 55. He was thrown into prison on a charge of conspiring against Alexander. This Mucius the lawyer ([Greek: nomikos] νομικός), or jurisconsultus, as a Roman would call him, is the P. Mucius Scævola who was consul in the year in which Tiberius Gracchus was murdered.

There were two Servile wars in Sicily. Plutarch alludes to the first which broke out B.C. 134, and is described in the Excerpts from the thirty-fourth book of Diodorus. Diodorus says that Eunus died of this disease in prison at Morgantina in Sicily.]

[Footnote 302: This town, also called Puteoli, the modern Pozzuolo, was near Sulla's residence. It was originally a Greek town; and afterwards a Roman colonia. Plutarch simply says that Granius "owed a public debt." Valerius Maximus (ix. 3) states that Granius was a Princeps of Puteoli and was slow in getting in the money which had been promised by the Decuriones of Puteoli towards the rebuilding of the Capitol. Sulla had said that nothing remained to complete his good fortune, except to see the Capitol dedicated. No wonder that the delay of Granius irritated such a man.]

[Footnote 303: The Roman words Postumus, Postuma, seem to have been generally used to signify a child born after the father's death. But they also signified a child born after the father had made a will. The word simply means "last." We use the expression "Posthumous child;" but the meaning of the word is often misunderstood. (On the effect of the birth of a Postumus on a father's will, see Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, art. "Heres, Roman.")

Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 101) speaks of Sulla's death. He saw his death coming and hastened to make his will: he died in his sixtieth year, the most fortunate man in his end and in everything else, both in name and estimation; if indeed, the historian wisely adds, a man should think it good fortune to have obtained all his wishes.

Sulla had the following children:--Cornelia, by Ilia; she married Q. Pompeius Rufus who was murdered B.C. 88, and she may have died before her father: Cornelius Sulla, a son by Metella, who died, as Plutarch has said, before his father: Faustus Cornelius Sulla and Fausta Cornelia, the twin children by Metella, who were both young when their father died. Faustus lost his life in Africa, when he was fighting on the Pompeian side. Fausta's first husband was C. Memmius, from whom she was divorced. She then married T. Annius Milo B.C. 55, who caught her in the act of adultery with the historian Sallustius, who was soundly hided by the husband and not let of till he had paid a sum of money. Sallustius did not forget this.]

[Footnote 304: It was considered a mark of intentional disrespect or of disapprobation, when a Roman made no mention of his nearest kin or friends in his will; and in certain cases, the person who was passed over could by legal process vindicate the imputation thus thrown on him. (See the article "Testamentum," in Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, under the head "Querela Inofficiosi.") Sulla did not like Cn. Pompeius. The only reason for keeping on terms with him was that he saw his talents and so wished to ally him to his family. For the same reason Sulla wished to put C. Julius Cæsar to death (Cæsar. 1): he predicted that he would be the ruin of the aristocratical party. Sulla made his friend Lucius Lucullus the guardian of his children and intrusted him with the final correction of his Memoirs. (See the Life of Lucullus, c. 1).]

[Footnote 305: The description of the funeral in Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 105, &c.) is a striking picture. Sulla was buried with more than regal pomp.

Plutarch's Life of Sulla has been spoken of as not one of his best performances. But so far as concerns Plutarch's object in writing these Lives, which was to exhibit character, it is as good as any of his Lives, and it has great merit. Whether his anecdotes are always authentic is a difficult matter to determine. Sulla had many enemies, and it is probable that his character in private life has been made worse than it was. The acts of his public life are well ascertained. Plutarch has nearly omitted all mention of him as a Reformer of the Roman Constitution and as a Legislator. Sulla's enactments were not like the imperial constitutions of a later day, the mere act of one who held the sovereign power: they were laws (leges) duly passed by the popular assembly. Yet they were Sulla's work, and the legislative body merely gave them the formal sanction. The object of Sulla's constitutional measures was to give an aristocratical character to the Roman constitution, to restore it to something of its pristine state, and to weaken the popular party by curtailing the power of the tribunes. The whole subject has often been treated, but at the greatest length by Zachariæ, _Lucius Cornelius Sulla, &c._, Heidelberg, 1834. Zachariæ has drawn the character of Sulla in an apologetical tone. I think the character of Sulla is drawn better by Plutarch, and that he has represented him as near to the life as a biographer can do. Whatever discrepancies there may he between Plutarch and other authorities, whatever Plutarch may have omitted which other authorities give, still he has shown us enough to justify his delineation of the most prominent man in the Republican Period of Rome, with the exception of the Dictator Cæsar. But to complete the view of his intellectual character, a survey of Sulla's legislation is necessary. Sulla was an educated man: he was not a mere soldier like Marius; he was not only a general; he was a man of letters, a lover of the arts, a keen discriminator of men and times, a legislator, and a statesman. He remodelled and reformed the whole criminal law of the Romans. His constitutional measures were not permanent, but it may truly be said that he prepared the way for the temporary usurpation of Cæsar and the permanent establishment of the Roman State under Augustus. I propose to treat of the Legislation of Sulla in an Appendix to a future volume.]

COMPARISON OF LYSANDER AND SULLA

Now that we have completed the second of these men's lives, let us proceed to compare them with one another. Both rose to greatness by their own exertions, though it was the peculiar glory of Lysander that all his commands were bestowed upon him by his countrymen of their own free will and by their deliberate choice, and that he never opposed their wishes or acted in opposition to the laws of his country. Now,--

"In revolutions, villains rise to fame,"

and at Rome, at the period of which we are treating, the people were utterly corrupt and degraded, and frequently changed their masters. We need not wonder at Sulla's becoming supreme in Rome when such men as Glaucia and Saturninus drove the Metelli into exile, when the sons of consuls were butchered in the senate-house, when silver and gold purchased soldiers and arms, and laws were enacted by men who silenced their opponents by fire and the sword. I cannot blame a man who rises to power at such a time as this, but I cannot regard it as any proof of his being the best man in the state, if the state itself be in such a condition of disorder. Now Lysander was sent out to undertake the most important commands at a time when Sparta was well and orderly governed, and proved himself the greatest of all the foremost men of his age, the best man of the best regulated state. For this reason Lysander, though he often laid down his office, was always re-elected by his countrymen, for the renown of his abilities naturally pointed him out as the fittest man to command: whereas Sulla, after being once elected to lead an army, remained the chief man in Rome for ten years, calling himself sometimes consul and sometimes dictator, but always remaining a mere military despot.

II. We have related an attempt of Lysander to subvert the constitution of Sparta; but he proceeded by a much more moderate and law-abiding means than Sulla, for he meant to gain his point by persuasion, not by armed force; and besides this he did not intend to destroy the constitution utterly, but merely to reform the succession to the throne. And it does not seem contrary to justice, that he who is best among his peers should govern a city, which ruled in Greece by virtue, not by nobility of blood.

A huntsman tries to obtain a good hound, and a horseman a good horse, but does not trouble himself with their offspring, for the offspring of his horse might turn out to be a mule. Just so in politics, the important point is, what sort of man a ruler is, not from what family he is descended. Even the Spartans in some cases dethroned their kings, because they were not king-like but worthless men. If then vice be disgraceful even in the nobly born, it follows that virtue does not depend upon birth, but is honoured for itself.

The crimes of Lysander were committed for, those of Sulla against, his friends. Indeed, what Lysander did wrong was done chiefly on behalf of his friends, as, in order to establish them securely in their various despotic governments, he caused many of their political opponents to be put to death. Sulla, on the other hand, reduced the army of Pompeius and the fleet which he himself had given to Dolabella to command, merely to gratify his private spite. When Lucretius Ofella sued for the consulship as the reward of many great exploits, he ordered him to be put to death before his face, and thus made all men fear and hate him by his barbarous treatment of his most intimate friends.

III. Their several esteem for pleasure and for riches prove still more clearly that Lysander was born to command men; Sulla to tyrannize over them. The former, although he rose to such an unparalleled height of power never was betrayed by it into any acts of insolent caprice, and there never was a man to whom the well-known proverb

"Lions at home, but foxes in the field,"

was less applicable, Sulla, on the other hand, did not allow his poverty when young or his years when old to hinder him in the pursuit of pleasure, but he enacted laws to regulate the marriages and morals of his countrymen, and indulged his own amorous propensities in spite of them, as we read in Sallust's history. In consequence of his vices, Rome was so drained of money that he was driven to the expedient of allowing the allied cities to purchase their independence by payment, and that, too, although he was daily proscribing the richest men and selling their property by public auction. Yet he wasted money without limit upon his courtiers. What bounds can we imagine he would set to his generosity when in his cups, seeing that once, when a great estate was being sold by public auction, he ordered the auctioneer to knock it down to a friend of his own for a mere nominal sum, and when some one else made a higher bid, and the auctioneer called out the additional sum offered, Sulla flew into a passion and exclaimed: "My friends, I am very hardly used if I may not dispose of my own plunder as I please." Now Lysander sent home to his countrymen even what he had himself received as presents together with the rest of the spoils. Yet I do not approve of him for so doing: for he did as much harm to Sparta by bestowing that money upon it as Sulla did harm to Rome by the money which he took from it: but I mention it as proving how little he cared for money. Each acted strangely towards his fellow-countrymen. Sulla regulated and improved the morals of Rome, although he himself was wasteful and licentious. Lysander filled his countrymen with the passions from which he himself was free. Thus the former was worse than the laws which he himself enacted, while the latter rendered his countrymen worse than himself, as he taught the Spartans to covet what he had learned to despise. So much for their political conduct.

IV. In warlike exploits, in brilliancy of generalship, in the number of victories he won, and the greatness of the dangers which he encountered, Sulla is immeasurably the greater. Lysander did indeed twice conquer in a sea-fight, and I will even allow him the credit of having taken Athens; no difficult matter, no doubt, but one which, brought him great glory because of its being so famous a city. In Bœotia and before Haliartus he was perhaps unlucky, yet his conduct in not waiting for the arrival of the great force under Pausanias, which was at Platæa, close by, seems like bad generalship. He would not stay till the main body arrived, but rashly assaulted the city, and fell by an unknown hand in an insignificant skirmish. He did not meet his death facing overwhelming odds, like Kleombrotus at Leuktra, nor yet in the act of rallying his broken forces, or of consummating his victory, as did Cyrus and Epameinondas. All these died as became generals and kings; but Lysander ingloriously flung away his life like any common light infantry soldier, and proved the wisdom of the ancient Spartans, who always avoided the attack of fortified places, where the bravest may fall by the hand of the most worthless man, or even by that of a woman or a child, as Achilles is said to have been slain by Paris at the gates of Troy. Turning now to Sulla, it is not easy to enumerate all the pitched battles he won, the thousands of enemies that he overthrew. He twice took Rome itself by storm, and at Athens he took Peiræus, not by famine like Lysander, but after a gigantic struggle, at the end of which he drove Archelaus into the sea.

It is important also to consider who were the generals to whom they were opposed. It must have been mere child's-play to Lysander to defeat Antiochus, the pilot of Alkibiades, and to outwit Philokles, the Athenian mob-orator,

"A knave, whose tongue was sharper than his sword,"

for they were both of them men whom Mithridates would not have thought a match for one of his grooms, or Marius for one of his lictors. Not to mention the rest of the potentates, consuls, prætors and tribunes with whom Sulla had to contend, what Roman was more to be dreaded than Marius? What king more powerful than Mithridates? Who was there in Italy more warlike than Lamponius and Pontius Telesinus? Yet Sulla drove Marius into exile, crushed the power of Mithridates, and put Lamponius and Pontius to death.

V. What, however, to my mind incontestably proves Sulla to have been the greater man of the two, is that, whereas Lysander was always loyally assisted by his countrymen in all his enterprises, Sulla, during his campaign in Bœotia, was a mere exile. His enemies were all-powerful at Rome. They had driven his wife to seek safety in flight, had pulled down his house, and murdered his friends. Yet he fought in his country's cause against overwhelming numbers, and gained the victory. Afterwards, when Mithridates offered to join him and furnish him with the means of overcoming his private enemies, he showed no sign of weakness, and would not even speak to him or give him his hand until he heard him solemnly renounce all claim to Asia Minor, engage to deliver up his fleet, and to restore Bithynia and Cappadocia to their native sovereigns. Never did Sulla act in a more noble and high-minded manner. He preferred his country's good to his own private advantage, and, like a well-bred hound, never relaxed his hold till his enemy gave in, and then began to turn his attention to redressing his own private wrongs.

Perhaps their treatment of Athens gives us some insight into their respective characters. Although that city sided with Mithridates and fought to maintain his empire, yet when Sulla had taken it he made it free and independent. Lysander, on the other hand, felt no pity for Athens when she fell from her glorious position as the leading state in Greece, but put an end to her free constitution and established the cruel and lawless government of the Thirty.

We may now conclude our review of their respective lives by observing that while Sulla performed greater achievements, Lysander committed fewer crimes: and that while we assign the palm for moderation and self-denial to the latter, that for courage and generalship be bestowed upon the former.

LIFE OF KIMON.

Peripoltas, the soothsayer, after he had brought back King Opheltas and the people under him to Bœotia, left a family which remained in high repute for many generations, and chiefly settled in Chæronea, which was the first city which they conquered when they drove out the barbarians. As the men of this race were all brave and warlike, they were almost reduced to extinction in the wars with the Persians, and in later times with the Gauls during their invasion of Greece, so that there remained but one male of the family, a youth of the name of Damon, who was surnamed Peripoltas, and who far surpassed all the youth of his time in beauty and spirit, although he was uneducated and harsh-tempered. The commander of a detachment of Roman soldiers who were quartered during the winter in Chæronea conceived a criminal passion for Damon, who was then a mere lad, and as he could not effect his purpose by fair means it was evident that he would not hesitate to use force, as our city was then much decayed, and was despised, being so small and poor. Damon, alarmed and irritated at the man's behaviour, formed a conspiracy with a few young men of his own age, not many, for secrecy's sake, but consisting of sixteen in all. These men smeared their faces with soot, excited themselves by strong drink, and assaulted the Roman officer just at daybreak, while he was offering sacrifice in the market-place. They killed him and several of his attendants, and then made their escape out of the city. During the confusion which followed, the senate of the city of Chæronea assembled and condemned the conspirators to death--a decree which was intended to excuse the city to the Romans for what had happened. But that evening, when the chief magistrates, as is their custom, were dining together, Damon and his party broke into the senate-house, murdered them all, and again escaped out of the city. It chanced that at this time Lucius Lucullus was passing near Chæronea with an armed force. He halted his troops, and, after investigating the circumstances, declared that the city was not to blame, but had been the injured party. As for Damon, who was living by brigandage and plunder of the country, and who threatened to attack the city itself, the citizens sent an embassy to him, and passed a decree guaranteeing his safety if he would return. When he returned they appointed him president of the gymnasium, and afterwards, while he was being anointed in the public baths, they murdered him there.

Our ancestors tell us that as ghosts used to appear in that place, and groans were heard there, the doors of the bath-room were built up; and even at the present day those who live near the spot imagine that shadowy forms are to be seen, and confused cries heard. Those of his family who survive (for there are some descendants of Damon) live chiefly in Phokis, near the city of Steiris. They call themselves Asbolomeni, which in the Æolian dialect means "sooty-faced," in memory of Damon having smeared his face with soot when he committed his crimes.

II. Now the city of Orchomenus, which is next to that of Chæronea, was at variance with it, and hired a Roman informer, who indicted the city for the murder of those persons killed by Damon, just as if it were a man. The trial was appointed to take place before the prætor of Macedonia, for at that time the Romans did not appoint prætors of Greece. When in court the representatives of Chæronea appealed to Lucullus to testify to their innocence, and he, when applied to by the prætor, wrote a letter telling the entire truth of the story, which obtained an acquittal for the people of Chæronea. Thus narrowly did the city escape utter destruction. The citizens showed their gratitude to Lucullus by erecting a marble statue to him in the market-place, beside that of Dionysus; and although I live at a much later period, yet I think it my duty to show my gratitude to him also, as I too have benefited by his intercession. I intend therefore to describe his achievements in my Parallel Lives, and thus raise a much more glorious monument to his memory by describing his real disposition and character, than any statue can be, which merely records his face and form. It will be sufficient for me if I show that his memory is held in grateful remembrance, for he himself would be the first to refuse to be rewarded for the true testimony which he bore to us by a fictitious narrative of his exploits. We think it right that portrait painters when engaged in painting a handsome face should neither omit nor exaggerate its defects; for the former method would destroy the likeness and the latter the beauty of the picture. In like manner, as it is hard, or rather impossible, to find a man whose life is entirely free from blame, it becomes our duty to relate their noble actions with minute exactitude, regarding them as illustrative of true character, whilst, whenever either a man's personal feelings or political exigencies may have led him to commit mistakes and crimes, we must regard his conduct more as a temporary lapse from virtue than as disclosing any innate wickedness of disposition, and we must not dwell with needless emphasis on his failings, if only to save our common human nature from the reproach of being unable to produce a man of unalloyed goodness and virtue.

III. It appears to me that the life of Lucullus furnishes a good parallel to that of Kimon. Both were soldiers, and distinguished themselves against the barbarians; both were moderate politicians and afforded their countrymen a brief period of repose from the violence of party strife, and both of them won famous victories. No Greek before Kimon, and no Roman before Lucullus, waged war at such a distance from home, if we except the legends of Herakles and Dionysus, and the vague accounts which we have received by tradition of the travels and exploits of Perseus in Ethiopia, Media, and Armenia, and of the expedition of Jason to recover the Golden Fleece.

Another point in which they agree is the incomplete nature of the success which they obtained, for they both inflicted severe losses on their enemies, but neither completely crushed them. Moreover we find in each of them the same generous hospitality, and the same luxurious splendour of living. Their other points of resemblance the reader may easily discover for himself by a comparison of their respective lives.

IV. Kimon was the son of Miltiades by his wife Hegesipyle, a lady of Thracian descent, being the daughter of King Olorus, as we learn from the poems addressed to Kimon himself by Archelaus and Melanthius. Thucydides the historian also was connected with Kimon's family, as the name of Olorus had descended to his father,[306] who also inherited gold mines in Thrace from his ancestors there. Thucydides is said to have died at Skapte Hyle, a small town in Thrace, near the gold mines. His remains were conveyed to Athens and deposited in the cemetery belonging to the family of Kimon, where his tomb is now to be seen, next to that of Elpinike, Kimon's sister. However, Thucydides belonged to the township of Halimus, and the family of Miltiades to that of Lakia.

Miltiades was condemned by the Athenians to pay a fine of fifty talents, and being unable to do so, died in prison, leaving Kimon and his sister Elpinike, who were then quite young children. Kimon passed the earlier part of his life in obscurity, and was not regarded favourably by the Athenians, who thought that he was disorderly and given to wine, and altogether resembled his grandfather Kimon, who was called Koalemus because of his stupidity.

Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who was a contemporary of Kimon, tells us that he never was taught music or any of the other usual accomplishments of a Greek gentleman, and that he had none of the smartness and readiness of speech so common at Athens, but that he was of a noble, truthful nature, and more like a Dorian of the Peloponnesus than an Athenian,

"Rough, unpretending, but a friend in need,"

as Euripides says of Herakles, which line we may well apply to Kimon according to the account of him given by Stesimbrotus. While he was still young he was accused of incest with his sister. Indeed Elpinike is not recorded as having been a respectable woman in other respects, as she carried on an intrigue with Polygnotus the painter; and therefore it is said that when he painted the colonnade which was then called the Peisianakteum, which is now called the Painted Porch, he introduced the portrait of Elpinike as Laodike, one of the Trojan ladies. Polygnotus was a man of noble birth, and he did not execute his paintings for money, but gratis, from his wish to do honour to his city. This we learn from the historians and from the poet Melanthius, who wrote--

"With deeds of heroes old, He made our city gay, In market-place and porch, Himself the cost did pay."

Some historians tell us that Elpinike was openly married to Kimon and lived as his wife, because she was too poor to obtain a husband worthy of her noble birth, but that at length Kallias, one of the richest men in Athens, fell in love with her, and offered to pay off the fine which had been imposed upon her father, by which means he won her consent, and Kimon gave her away to Kallias as his wife. Kimon indeed seems to have been of an amorous temperament, for Asterie, a lady of Salamis, and one Mnestra are mentioned by the poet Melanthius, in some playful verses he wrote upon Kimon, as being beloved by him; and we know that he was passionately fond of Isodike, the daughter of Euryptolemus the son of Megakles, who was his lawful wife, and that he was terribly afflicted by her death, to judge by the elegiac poem which was written to console him, of which Panætius the philosopher very reasonably conjectures Archelaus to have been the author.

V. All the rest that we know of Kimon is to his honour. He was as brave as Miltiades, as clever as Themistokles, and more straightforward than either. Nor was he inferior to either of them in military skill, while he far surpassed them in political sagacity, even when he was quite a young man, and without any experience of war. For instance, when Themistokles, at the time of the Persian invasion, urged the Athenians to abandon their city and territory, and resist the enemy at Salamis, on board of their fleet, while the greater part of the citizens were struck with astonishment at so daring a proposal, Kimon was seen with a cheerful countenance walking through the Kerameikus with his friends, carrying in his hand his horse's bridle, which he was going to offer up to the goddess Athena in the Acropolis, in token that at that crisis the city did not need horsemen so much as sailors. He hung up the bridle as a votive offering in the temple, and, taking down one of the shields which hung there, walked with it down towards the sea, thereby causing many of his countrymen to take courage and recover their spirits. He was not an ill-looking man, as Ion the poet says, but tall, and with a thick curly head of hair. As he proved himself a brave man in action he quickly became popular and renowned in Athens, and many flocked round him, urging him to emulate the glories won by his father at Marathon. The people gladly welcomed him on his first entrance into political life, for they were weary of Themistokles, and were well pleased to bestow the highest honours in the state upon one whose simple and unaffected goodness of heart had made him a universal favourite. He was greatly indebted for his success to the support given him by Aristeides, who early perceived his good qualities, and endeavoured to set him up as an opponent to the rash projects and crooked policy of Themistokles.

VI. When, after the repulse of the Persian invasion, Kimon was sent as general of the Athenian forces to operate against the enemy in Asia, acting under the orders of Pausanias, as the Athenians had not then acquired their supremacy at sea, the troops whom he commanded were distinguished by the splendour of their dress and arms, and the exactness of their discipline. Pausanias at this time was carrying on a treasonable correspondence with the king of Persia, and treated the allied Greek troops with harshness and wanton insolence, the offspring of unlimited power. Kimon, on the other hand, punished offenders leniently, treated all alike with kindness and condescension, and became in all but name the chief of the Greek forces in Asia, a position which he gained, not by force of arms, but by amiability of character. Most of the allies transferred their allegiance to Kimon and Aristeides, through disgust at the cruelty and arrogance of Pausanias. There is a tradition that Pausanias when at Byzantium became enamoured of Kleonike, the daughter of one of the leading citizens there. He demanded that she should be brought to his chamber, and her wretched parents dared not disobey the tyrant's order. From feelings of modesty Kleonike entreated the attendants at the door of his bedchamber to extinguish all the lights, and she then silently in the darkness approached the bed where Pausanias lay asleep. But she stumbled and overset the lamp.[307] He, awakened by the noise, snatched up his dagger, and imagining that some enemy was coming to assassinate him, stabbed the girl with it, wounding her mortally. It is said that after this her spirit would never let Pausanias rest, but nightly appeared to him, angrily reciting the verse--

"Go, meet thy doom; pride leadeth men to sin."

The conduct of Pausanias in this matter so enraged the allied Greeks that, under Kimon's command, they besieged him in Byzantium, which they took by assault. He, however, escaped, and, it is said, fled for refuge to the oracle of the dead at Heraklea, where he called up the soul of Kleonike and besought her to pardon him. She appeared, and told him that if he went to Sparta he would soon be relieved of all his troubles, an enigmatical sentence alluding, it is supposed, to his approaching death there.

VII. Kimon, who was now commander-in-chief, sailed to Thrace, as he heard that the Persians, led by certain nobles nearly related to Xerxes himself, had captured the city of Eion on the river Strymon, and were making war upon the neighbouring Greek cities. His first act on landing was to defeat the Persians, and shut them up in the city. He next drove away the Thracian tribes beyond the Strymon, who supplied the garrison with provisions, and by carefully watching the country round he reduced the city to such straits that Boutes, the Persian general, perceiving that escape was impossible, set it on fire, and himself with his friends and property perished in the flames. When Kimon took the city he found nothing in it of any value, as everything had been destroyed in the fire together with the Persian garrison; but as the country was beautiful and fertile, he made it an Athenian colony. Three stone statues of Hermes at Athens were now set up by a decree of the people, on the first of which is written:--

"Brave men were they, who, by the Strymon fair, First taught the haughty Persians to despair;"

and on the second--

"Their mighty chiefs to thank and praise, The Athenians do these columns raise; That generations yet to come, May fight as well for hearth and home;"

and on the third--

"Mnestheus from Athens led our hosts of yore, With Agamemnon, to the Trojan shore; Than whom no chief knew better to array, The mail-clad Greeks, when mustering for the fray: Thus Homer sung; and Athens now, as then, Doth bear away the palm for ruling men."

VIII. These verses, although Kimon's name is nowhere mentioned in them, appeared to the men of that time excessively adulatory. Neither Themistokles nor Miltiades had ever been so honoured. When Miltiades demanded the honour of an olive crown, Sophanes of Dekeleia rose up in the public assembly and said,--"Miltiades, when you have fought and conquered the barbarians alone, you may ask to be honoured alone, but not before"--a harsh speech, but one which perfectly expressed the feeling of the people.

Why, then, were the Athenians so charmed with Kimon's exploit? The reason probably was because their other commanders had merely defended them from attack, while under him they had been able themselves to attack the enemy, and had moreover won territory near Eion, and founded the colony of Amphipolis. Kimon also led a colony to Skyros, which island was taken by Kimon on the following pretext.

The original inhabitants were Dolopes,[308] who were bad farmers, and lived chiefly by piracy. Emboldened by success they even began to plunder the strangers who came into their ports, and at last robbed and imprisoned some Thessalian merchants whose ships were anchored at Ktesium. The merchants escaped from prison, and laid a complaint against the people of Skyros before the Amphiktyonic council. The people refused to pay the fine imposed by the council, and said that it ought to be paid by those alone who had shared the plunder. These men, in terror for their ill-gotten gains, at once opened a correspondence with Kimon, and offered to betray the island into his hands if he would appear before it with an Athenian fleet. Thus Kimon was enabled to make himself master of Skyros, where he expelled the Dolopes and put an end to their piracies; after which, as he learned that in ancient times the hero Theseus, the son of Ægeus, after he had been driven out of Athens, took refuge at Skyros, and was murdered there by Lykomedes, who feared him, he endeavoured to discover where he was buried. Indeed there was an oracle which commanded the Athenians to bring back the bones of Theseus to their city and pay them fitting honours, but they knew not where they lay, as the people of Skyros did not admit that they possessed them, and refused to allow the Athenians to search for them. Great interest was now manifested in the search, and after his sepulchre[309] had with great difficulty been discovered, Kimon placed the remains of the hero on board of his own ship and brought them back to Athens, from which they had been absent four hundred years. This act made him very popular with the people of Athens, one mark of which is to be found in his decision in the case of the rival tragic poets. When Sophokles produced his first play, being then very young, Aphepsion,[310] the archon, seeing that party feeling ran high among the spectators, would not cast lots to decide who were to be the judges, but when Kimon with the other nine generals, his colleagues, entered to make the usual libation to the god, he refused to allow them to depart, but put them on their oath, and forced them to sit as judges, they being ten in number, one from each of the ten tribes. The excitement of the contest was much increased by the high position of the judges. The prize was adjudged to Sophokles, and it is said that Æschylus was so grieved and enraged at his failure that he shortly afterwards left Athens and retired to Sicily, where he died, and was buried near the city of Gela.

IX. Ion tells us that when quite a boy he came from Chios to Athens, and met Kimon at supper in the house of Laomedon. After supper he was asked to sing, and he sang well. The guests all praised him, and said that he was a cleverer man than Themistokles; for Themistokles was wont to say that he did not know how to sing or to play the harp, but that he knew how to make a state rich and great. Afterwards the conversation turned upon Kimon's exploits, and each mentioned what he thought the most important. Hereupon Kimon himself described what he considered to be the cleverest thing he had ever done. After the capture of Sestos and Byzantium by the Athenians and their allies, there were a great number of Persians taken prisoners, whom the allies desired Kimon to divide amongst them. He placed the prisoners on one side, and all their clothes and jewellery on the other, and offered the allies their choice between the two. They complained that he had made an unequal division, but he bade them take whichever they pleased, assuring them that the Athenians would willingly take whichever part they rejected. By the advice of Herophytus of Samos, who urged them to take the property of the Persians, rather than the Persians themselves, the allies took the clothes and jewels. At this Kimon was thought to have made a most ridiculous division of the spoil, as the allies went swaggering about with gold bracelets, armlets, and necklaces, dressed in Median robes of rich purple, while the Athenians possessed only the naked bodies of men who were very unfit for labour. Shortly afterwards, however, the friends and relations of the captives came down to the Athenian camp from Phrygia and Lydia, and ransomed each of them for great sums of money, so that Kimon was able to give his fleet four months' pay, and also to remit a large sum to Athens, out of the money paid for their ransom.

X. The money which Kimon had honourably gained in the war he spent yet more honourably upon his countrymen. He took down the fences round his fields, that both strangers and needy Athenians might help themselves to his crops and fruit. He provided daily a plain but plentiful table, at which any poor Athenian was welcome to dine, so that he might live at his ease, and be able to devote all his attention to public matters. Aristotle tells us that it was not for all the Athenians, but only for the Lakiadæ, or members of his own township, that he kept this public table. He used to be attended by young men dressed in rich cloaks, who, if he met any elderly citizen poorly clothed, would exchange cloaks with the old man; and this was thought to be a very noble act. The same young men carried pockets full of small change and would silently put money into the hands of the better class of poor in the market-place. All this is alluded to by Kratinus, the comic poet, in the following passage from his play of the Archilochi:

"I too, Metrobius, hoped to end My days with him, my noblest friend, Kimon, of all the Greeks the best, And, richly feasting, sink to rest. But now he's gone, and I remain unblest."

Moreover, Gorgias of Leontini says that Kimon acquired wealth in order to use it, and used it so as to gain honour: while Kritias, who was one of the Thirty, in his poems wishes to be

"Rich as the Skopads, and as Kimon great, And like Agesilaus fortunate."

Indeed, Lichas the Spartan became renowned throughout Greece for nothing except having entertained all the strangers who were present at the festival of the Gymnopædia: while the profuse hospitality of Kimon, both to strangers and his own countrymen, far surpassed even the old Athenian traditions of the heroes of olden days; for though the city justly boasts that they taught the rest of the Greeks to sow corn, to discover springs of water, and to kindle fire, yet Kimon, by keeping open house for all his countrymen, and allowing them to share his crops in the country, and permitting his friends to partake of all the fruits of the earth with him in their season, seemed really to have brought back the golden age. If any scurrilous tongues hinted that it was merely to gain popularity and to curry favour with the people that he did these things, their slanders were silenced at once by Kimon's personal tastes and habits, which were entirely aristocratic and Spartan. He joined Aristeides in opposing Themistokles when the latter courted the mob to an unseemly extent, opposed Ephialtes when, to please the populace, he dissolved the senate of the Areopagus, and, at a time when all other men except Aristeides and Ephialtes were gorged with the plunder of the public treasury, kept his own hands clean, and always maintained the reputation of an incorruptible and impartial statesman. It is related that one Rhœsakes, a Persian, who had revolted from the king, came to Athens with a large sum of money, and being much pestered by the mercenary politicians there, took refuge in the house of Kimon, where he placed two bowls beside the door-posts, one of which he filled with gold, and the other with silver darics.[311] Kimon smiled at this, and inquired whether he wished him to be his friend, or his hired agent; and when the Persian answered that he wished him to be a friend, he said, "Then take this money away; for if I am your friend I shall be able to ask you for it when I want it."

XI. When the allies of Athens, though they continued to pay their contribution towards the war against Persia, refused to furnish men and ships for it, and would not go on military expeditions any longer, because they were tired of war and wished to cultivate their fields and live in peace, now that the Persians no longer threatened them, the other Athenian generals endeavoured to force them into performing their duties, and by taking legal proceedings against the defaulters and imposing fines upon them, made the Athenian empire very much disliked. Kimon, on the other hand, never forced any one to serve, but took an equivalent in money from those who were unwilling to serve in person, and took their ships without crews, permitting them to stay at home and enjoy repose, and by their luxury and folly convert themselves into farmers and merchants, losing all their ancient warlike spirit and skill, while by exercising many of the Athenians in turn in campaigns and military expeditions, he rendered them the masters of the allies by means of the very money which they themselves supplied. The allies very naturally began to fear and to look up to men who were always at sea, and accustomed to the use of arms, living as soldiers on the profits of their own unwarlike leisure, and thus by degrees, instead of independent allies, they sank into the position of tributaries and subjects.

XII. Moreover, no one contributed so powerfully as Kimon to the humbling of the king of Persia; for Kimon would not relax his pursuit of him when he retreated from Greece, but hung on the rear of the barbarian army and would not allow them any breathing-time for rallying their forces. He sacked several cities and laid waste their territory, and induced many others to join the Greeks, so that he drove the Persians entirely out of Asia Minor, from Ionia to Pamphylia. Learning that the Persian leaders with a large army and fleet were lying in wait for him in Pamphylia, and wishing to rid the seas of them as far as the Chelidoniæ, or Swallow Islands, he set sail from Knidus and the Triopian Cape with a fleet of two hundred triremes, whose crews had been excellently trained to speed and swiftness of manœuvring by Themistokles, while he had himself improved their build by giving them a greater width and extent of upper deck, so that they might afford standing-room for a greater number of fighting men. On reaching the city of Phaselis, as the inhabitants, although of Greek origin, refused him admittance, and preferred to remain faithful to Persia, he ravaged their territory and assaulted the fortifications. However, the Chians who were serving in Kimon's army, as their city had always been on friendly terms with the people of Phaselis, contrived to pacify his anger, and by shooting arrows into the town with letters wrapped round them, conveyed intelligence of this to the inhabitants. Finally, they agreed to pay the sum of ten talents, and to join the campaign against the Persians. We are told by the historian Ephorus that the Persian fleet was commanded by Tithraustes, and the land army by Pherendates. Kallisthenes, however, says that the supreme command was entrusted to Ariomandes, the son of Gobryas, who kept the fleet idle near the river Eurymedon, not wishing to risk an engagement with the Greeks, but waiting for the arrival of a reinforcement of eighty Phœnician ships from Cyprus. Kimon, wishing to anticipate this accession of strength, put to sea, determined to force the enemy to fight. The Persian fleet at first, to avoid an engagement, retired into the river Eurymedon, but as the Athenians advanced they came out again and ranged themselves in order of battle. Their fleet, according to the historian Phanodemus, consisted of six hundred ships, but, according to Ephorus, of three hundred and fifty. Yet this great armament offered no effective resistance, but turned and fled almost as soon as the Athenians attacked. Such as were able ran their ships ashore and took refuge with the land army, which was drawn up in battle array close by, while the rest were destroyed, crews and all, by the Athenians. The number of the Persian ships is proved to have been very great, by the fact that, although many escaped, and many were sunk, yet the Athenians captured two hundred prizes.

XIII. The land forces now moved down to the beach, and it appeared to Kimon that it would be a hazardous undertaking to effect a landing, and to lead his tired men to attack fresh troops, who also had an immense superiority over them in numbers. Yet as he saw that the Greeks were excited by their victory, and were eager to join battle with the Persian army, he disembarked his heavy-armed troops, who, warm as they were from the sea-fight, raised a loud shout, and charged the enemy at a run. The Persian array met them front to front, and an obstinate battle took place, in which many distinguished Athenians fell. At length the Persians were defeated with great slaughter, and the Athenians gained an immense booty from the plunder of the tents and the bodies of the slain.

Kimon, having thus, like a well-trained athlete at the games, carried off two victories in one day, surpassing that of Salamis by sea, and that of Platæa by land, proceeded to improve his success by attacking the Phœnician ships also. Hearing that they were at Hydrum, he sailed thither in haste, before any news had reached the Phœnicians about the defeat of their main body, so that they were in anxious suspense, and on the approach of the Athenians were seized with a sudden panic. All their ships were destroyed, and nearly all their crews perished with them. This blow so humbled the pride of the king of Persia, that he afterwards signed that famous treaty in which he engaged not to approach nearer to the Greek seas than a horseman could ride in one day, and not to allow a single one of his ships of war to appear between the Kyanean[312] and Chelidonian Islands. Yet the historian Kallisthenes tells us that the Persians never made a treaty to this effect, but that they acted thus in consequence of the terror which Kimon had inspired by his victory; and that they removed so far from Greece, that Perikles with fifty ships, and Ephialtes with only thirty, sailed far beyond the Chelidonian Islands and never met with any Persian vessels. However, in the collection of Athenian decrees made by Kraterus, there is a copy of the articles of this treaty, which he mentions as though it really existed. It is said that on this occasion the Athenians erected an altar to Peace, and paid great honours to Kallias, who negotiated the treaty. So much money was raised by the sale of the captives and spoils taken in the war, that besides what was reserved for other occasions, the Athenians were able to build the wall on the south side of the Acropolis from the treasure gained in this campaign. We are also told that at this time the foundations of the Long Walls were laid. These walls, which were also called the Legs, were finished afterwards, but the foundations, which had to be carried over marshy places, were securely laid, the marsh being filled up with chalk and large stones, entirely at Kimon's expense. He also was the first to adorn the city with those shady public walks which shortly afterwards became so popular with the Athenians, for he planted rows of plane-trees in the market-place, and transformed the Academy from a dry and barren wilderness into a well-watered grove, full of tastefully-kept paths and pleasant walks under the shade of fine trees.

XIV. As some of the Persians, despising Kimon, who had set out from Athens with a very small fleet, refused to leave the Chersonese, and invited the Thracian tribes of the interior to assist them in maintaining their position, he attacked them with four ships only, took thirteen of the enemy's, drove out the Persians, defeated the Thracians, and reconquered the Chersonese for Athens. After this he defeated in a sea-fight the people of Thasos, who had revolted from Athens, captured thirty-three of their ships, took their city by storm, and annexed to Athens the district of the mainland containing the gold mines, which had belonged to the Thasians. From Thasos he might easily have invaded Macedonia and inflicted great damage upon that country, but he refrained from doing so. In consequence of this he was accused of having been bribed by Alexander, the king of Macedonia, and his enemies at home impeached him on that charge. In his speech in his own defence he reminded the court that he was the _proxenus_,[313] or resident agent at Athens, not of the rich Ionians or Thessalians, as some other Athenians were, with a view to their own profit and influence, but of the Lacedæmonians, a people whoso frugal habits he had always been eager and proud to imitate; so that he himself cared nothing for wealth, but loved to enrich the state with money taken from its enemies. During this trial, Stesimbrotus informs us that Elpinike, Kimon's sister, came to plead her brother's cause with Perikles, the bitterest of his opponents, and that Perikles answered with a smile, "Elpinike, you are too old to meddle in affairs of this sort." But for all that, in the trial he treated Kimon far more gently than any of his other accusers, and spoke only once, for form's sake.

XV. Thus was Kimon acquitted; and during the remainder of his stay in Athens he continued to oppose the encroachments of the people, who were endeavouring to make themselves the source of all political power. When, however, he started again on foreign service, the populace finally succeeded in overthrowing the old Athenian constitution, and under the guidance of Ephialtes greatly curtailed the jurisdiction of the Senate of the Areopagus, and turned Athens into a pure democracy. At this time also Perikles was rising to power as a liberal politician. Kimon, on his return, was disgusted at the degradation of the ancient Senate of the Areopagus, and began to intrigue with a view of restoring the aristocratic constitution of Kleisthenes. This called down upon him a storm of abuse from the popular party, who brought up again the old scandals about his sister, and charged him with partiality for the Lacedæmonians. These imputations are alluded to in the hackneyed lines of Eupolis:

"Not a villain beyond measure, Only fond of drink and pleasure; Oft he slept in Sparta's town, And left his sister here alone."

If, however, he really was a careless drunkard, and yet took so many cities and won so many battles, it is clear that if he had been sober and diligent he would have surpassed the most glorious achievements of any Greek, either before or since.

XVI. He was always fond of the Lacedæmonians, and named one of his twin sons Lacedæmonius, and the other Eleius. These children were borne to him by his wife Kleitoria, according to the historian Stesimbrotus; and consequently Perikles frequently reproached them with the low birth of their mother. But Diodorus the geographer says that these two and the third, Thessalus, were all the children of Kimon by Isodike, the daughter of Euryptolemus the son of Megakles. Much of Kimon's political influence was due to the fact that the Lacedæmonians were bitterly hostile to Themistokles, and wished to make him, young as he was, into a powerful leader of the opposite party at Athens. The Athenians at first viewed his Spartan partialities without dissatisfaction, especially as they gained considerable advantages by them; for during the early days of their empire when they first began to extend and consolidate their power, they were enabled to do so without rousing the jealousy of Sparta, in consequence of the popularity of Kimon with the Lacedæmonians. Most international questions were settled by his means, as he dealt generously with the subject states, and was viewed with especial favour by the Lacedæmonians.

Afterwards, when the Athenians became more powerful, they viewed with dislike Kimon's excessive love for Sparta. He was never weary of singing the praises of Lacedæmon to the Athenians, and especially, we are told by Stesimbrotus, when he wished to reproach them, or to encourage them to do bettor, he used to say, "That is not how the Lacedæmonians do it." This habit caused many Athenians to regard him with jealousy and dislike: but the most important ground of accusation against him was the following. In the fourth year of the reign of king Archidamus, the son of Zeuxidamus, at Sparta, the Lacedæmonian territory was visited by the greatest earthquake ever known there. The earth opened in many places, some of the crags of Taygetus fell down, and the whole city was destroyed, with the exception of five houses. It is related that while the boys and young men were practising gymnastics in the palæstra, a hare ran into the building, and that the boys, naked and anointed as they were, immediately ran out in pursuit of it, while the gymnasium shortly afterwards fell upon the young men who remained and killed them all. Their tomb is at this day called Seismatia, that is, the tomb of those who perished in the earthquake.

Archidamus, perceiving the great dangers with which this disaster menaced the state, and observing that the citizens thought of nothing but saving their most valuable property from the wreck, ordered the trumpet to sound, as though the enemy were about to attack, and made every Spartan get under arms and rally round him as quickly as possible. This measure saved Sparta; for the helots had gathered together from the country round about, and were upon the point of falling upon the survivors. Finding them armed and drawn up in order, they retreated to the neighbouring cities, and openly made war against the Spartans, having won over no small number of the Periœki to their side, while the Messenians also joined them in attacking their own old enemies. At this crisis the Spartans sent Perikleides as an ambassador to Athens to demand assistance. This is the man whom Aristophanes ridiculed in his play as sitting by the altars as a suppliant, with a pale face and a scarlet cloak, begging for an army.

We are told by Kritias that Ephialtes vigorously opposed his mission, and besought the Athenians not to assist in restoring a state which was the rival of Athens, but to let the pride of Sparta be crushed and trampled in the dust. Kimon, on the other hand, postponing the interests of his own country to those of the Lacedæmonians, persuaded the people of Athens to march a numerous body of men to assist them. The historian Ion has preserved the argument which had most effect upon the Athenians, and says that Kimon besought them not to endure to see Greece lame of one foot and Athens pulling without her yoke-fellow.

XVII. When Kimon with his relieving force marched to help the Lacedæmonians, he passed through the territory of Corinth. Lachartus objected to this, saying that he had marched in before he had asked leave of the Corinthians, and reminded him that when men knock at a door, they do not enter before the master of the house invites them to come in. Kimon answered, "Lachartus, you Corinthians do not knock at the doors of the cities of Megara or of Kleonæ, but break down the door and force your way in by the right of the stronger, just as we are doing now." By this timely show of spirit he silenced the Corinthians, and passed through the territory of Corinth with his army.

The Lacedæmonians invited the aid of the Athenians a second time, to assist in the reduction of the fortress of Ithomé, which was held by the Messenians and revolted helots; but when they arrived the Lacedæmonians feared so brilliant and courageous a force, and sent them back, accusing them of revolutionary ideas, although they did not treat any other of their allies in this manner. The Athenians retired, in great anger at the treatment they had received, and no longer restrained their hatred of all who favoured the Lacedæmonians. On some trifling pretext they ostracised Kimon, condemning him to exile for ten years, which is the appointed time for those suffering from ostracism. During this time the Lacedæmonians, after setting Delphi free from the Phokians, encamped at Tanagra, and fought a battle there with the Athenians, who came out to meet them. On this occasion Kimon appeared, fully armed, and took his place in the ranks among his fellow-tribesmen. However, the senate of the five hundred hearing of this, became alarmed, and, as his enemies declared that his only object was to create confusion during the battle and so to betray his countrymen to the Lacedæmonians, they sent orders to the generals, forbidding them to receive him. Upon this he went away, after having begged Euthippus the Anaphlystian and those of his friends who were especially suspected of Laconian leanings, to fight bravely, and by their deeds to efface this suspicion from the minds of their fellow-citizens. They took Kimon's armour, and set it up in their ranks; and then, fighting in one body round it with desperate courage, they all fell, one hundred in number, causing great grief to the Athenians for their loss, and for the unmerited accusation which had been brought against them. This event caused a revulsion of popular feeling in favour of Kimon, when the Athenians remembered how much they owed him, and reflected upon the straits to which they were now reduced, as they had been defeated in a great battle at Tanagra, and expected that during the summer Attica would be invaded by the Lacedæmonians. They now recalled Kimon from exile; and Perikles himself brought forward the decree for his restoration. So moderate were the party-leaders of that time, and willing to subordinate their own differences to the common welfare of their country.

XVIII. On his return Kimon at once put an end to the war, and reconciled the two states. After the peace had been concluded, however, he saw that the Athenians were unable to remain quiet, but were eager to increase their empire by foreign conquest. In order, therefore, to prevent their quarrelling with any other Greek state, or cruising with a large fleet among the islands and the Peloponnesian coast, and so becoming entangled in some petty war, he manned a fleet of two hundred triremes with the intention of sailing a second time to Cyprus and Egypt, wishing both to train the Athenians to fight against barbarians, and also to gain legitimate advantages for Athens by the plunder of her natural enemies. When all was ready, and the men were about to embark, Kimon dreamed that he saw an angry dog barking at him, and that in the midst of its barking it spoke with a human voice, saying,

"Go, for thou shalt ever be Loved both by my whelps and me."

This vision was very hard to interpret. Astyphilus of Poseidonia, a soothsayer and an intimate friend of Kimon's, told him that it portended his death, on the following grounds. The dog is the enemy of the man at whom he barks: now a man is never so much loved by his enemies as when he is dead; and the mixture of the voice, being partly that of a dog and partly that of a man, signifies the Persians, as their army was composed partly of Greeks and partly of barbarians. After this dream Kimon sacrificed to Dionysus. The prophet cut up the victim, and the blood as it congealed was carried by numbers of ants towards Kimon, so that his great toe was covered with it before he noticed them. At the moment when Kimon observed this, the priest came up to him to tell him that the liver of the victim was defective. However, he could not avoid going on the expedition, and sailed forthwith. He despatched sixty of his ships to Egypt, but kept the rest with him. He conquered the Phœnician fleet in a sea-fight, recovered the cities of Cilicia, and began to meditate an attack upon those of Egypt, as his object was nothing less than the utter destruction of the Persian empire, especially when he learned that Themistokles had risen to great eminence among the Persians, and had undertaken to command their army in a campaign against Greece. It is said that one of the chief reasons which caused Themistokles to despair of success was his conviction that he could not surpass the courage and good fortune of Kimon. He therefore committed suicide, while Kimon, who was now revolving immense schemes of conquest as he lay at Cyprus with his fleet, sent an embassy to the shrine of Ammon to ask something secret. What it was no one ever knew, for the god made no response, but as soon as the messengers arrived bade them return, as Kimon was already with him. On hearing this, they retraced their steps to the sea, and when they reached the headquarters of the Greek force, which was then in Egypt, they heard that Kimon was dead. On counting back the days to that on which they received the response, they perceived that the god had alluded to Kimon's death when he said that he was with him, meaning that he was among the gods.

XIX. According to most authorities Kimon died of sickness during a siege; but some writers say that he died of a wound which he received in a battle with the Persians. When dying he ordered his friends to conceal his death, but at once to embark the army and sail home. This was effected, and we are told by Phanodemus that no one, either of the enemy or of the Athenian allies conceived any suspicion that Kimon had ceased to command the forces until after he had been dead for thirty days. After his death no great success was won by any Greek general over the Persians, but they were all incited by their popular orators and the war-party to fight with one another, which led to the great Peloponnesian war. This afforded a long breathing-time to the Persians, and wrought terrible havoc with the resources of Greece. Many years afterwards Agesilaus invaded Asia, and carried on war for a short time against the Persian commanders who were nearest the coast. Yet he also effected nothing of any importance, and being recalled to Greece by the internal troubles of that country, left Persia drawing tribute from all the Greek cities and friendly districts of the sea-coast, although in the time of Kimon no Persian tax-gatherer or Persian horseman was ever seen within a distance of four hundred stades (fifty miles) from the sea.

His remains were brought back to Attica, as is proved by the monument which to this day is known as the "Tomb of Kimon." The people of Kitium,[314] also, however, pay respect to a tomb, said to be that of Kimon, according to the tale of the orator Nausikrates, who informs us that once during a season of pestilence and scarcity the people of Kitium were ordered by an oracle not to neglect Kimon, but to pay him honour and respect him as a superior being. Such a man as this was the Greek general.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 306: In Greece, where there were no permanent family names, it was usual for a family to repeat the same name in alternate generations. Thus we find that the kings of Cyrene were named alternately Battus and Archelaus for eight generations, and many other examples might be quoted.]

[Footnote 307: The Greek lamp was movable, and used to be set upon a tall slender lamp-stand or candelabrum.]

[Footnote 308: A Thessalian tribe.]

[Footnote 309: See vol. i. 'Life of Theseus,' ch. xxxvi.]

[Footnote 310: It has been conjectured from certain inscriptions that this name should be spelt Apsephion. But we know that Aphepsion was a Greek name, while the other form appears unmeaning. The passage is quoted in Clinton, 'Fasti Hell.,' but both forms are there used.]

[Footnote 311: The daric was a Persian coin, named after King Darius.]

[Footnote 312: The Kyanean or Black Islands were at the junction of the Bosporus with the Euxine, or Black Sea. The Chelidonian or Swallow Islands were on the south coast of Lycia.]

[Footnote 313: The office of _proxenus_ corresponds most nearly to the modern consul. He was bound to offer hospitality and assistance to any persons of the state which he represented; but it must be remembered that he was always a member of a foreign state.]

[Footnote 314: A seaport town in Cyprus.]

LIFE OF LUCULLUS.

I. The grandfather of Lucullus[315] was a man of consular rank, and his uncle on the mother's side was Metellus,[316] surnamed Numidicus. His father was convicted of peculation, and his mother, Cæcilia, had a bad name as a woman of loose habits. Lucullus, while he was still a youth, before he was a candidate for a magistracy and engaged in public life, made it his first business to bring to trial his father's accuser, Servilius the augur, as a public offender; and the matter appeared to the Romans to be creditable to Lucullus, and they used to speak of that trial as a memorable thing. It was, indeed, the popular notion, that to prefer an accusation was a reputable measure, even when there was no foundation for it, and they were glad to see the young men fastening on offenders, like well-bred whelps laying hold of wild beasts. However, there was much party spirit about that trial, and some persons were even wounded and killed; but Servilius was acquitted. Lucullus had been trained to speak both Latin and Greek competently, so that Sulla, when he was writing his memoirs,[317] dedicated them to Lucullus as a person who would put them together and arrange his history better than himself; for the style of the oratory of Lucullus was not merely suited to business and prompt, like that of the other orators which disturbed the Forum--

"As a struck tunny throws about the sea,"[318]

but when it is out of the Forum is

"Dry, and for want of true discipline half dead"--

but he cultivated the appropriate and so-called liberal sciences, with a view to self-improvement, from his early youth. When he was more advanced in years he let his mind, as it were, after so many troubles, find tranquillity and repose in philosophy, rousing to activity the contemplative portion of his nature, and seasonably terminating and cutting short his ambitious aspirations after his difference with Pompeius. Now, as to his love of learning, this also is reported, in addition to what has been mentioned: when he was a young man, in a conversation with Hortensius,[319] the orator, and Sisenna,[320] the historian, which began in jest, but ended in a serious proposition, he agreed that if they would propose a poem and a history, Greek and Roman, he would treat the subject of the Marsic war in whichsoever of these two languages the lot should decide; and it seems that the lot resulted in a Greek history, for there is still extant a Greek history of the Marsic war by Lucullus.[321] Of his affection to his brother Marcus[322] there were many proofs, but the Romans speak most of the first; being older than his brother, he did not choose to hold a magistracy by himself, but he waited till his brother was of the proper age, and so far gained the public favour that his brother in his absence was elected ædile jointly with him.

II. Though he was a young man during the Marsic war, he gave many proofs of courage and prudence; but it was rather on account of the solidity of his character and the mildness of his temper that Sulla attached Lucullus to himself, and from the beginning he constantly employed him in affairs of the greatest importance; one of which was the matter relating to the coinage. It was Lucullus who superintended the coining of most of the money in the Peloponnesus during the Mithridatic war, and it was named Lucullean after him, and continued for a long time to have a ready circulation, in consequence of the demands of the war. Afterwards, Sulla, who was in possession of the country about Athens,[323] but was shut out from supplies by sea by the enemy, who had the command of it, sent Lucullus to Egypt and Libya to get ships there. It was now the depth of winter, but still he set sail with three Greek piratical ships, and the same number of Rhodian biremes, exposing himself to a wide sea and to hostile vessels, which, owing to their having the superiority, were cruising about in great numbers and in all directions. However, he landed at Crete, and made the people friendly to his cause; and, finding the Cyrenæans in a state of confusion, owing to continual tyrannies and wars, he tranquillised and settled the state, by reminding the citizens of a certain expression of Plato, which the philosopher had addressed to them in a prophetic spirit. They asked him, as it appears, to draw up laws for them, and to settle their democracy after the model of a well-ordered polity; but he replied that it was difficult to legislate for the Cyrenæans while they were so prosperous. Nothing, indeed, is more difficult to govern than a man who considers himself prosperous; and, on the other hand, there is nothing more obedient to command than a man when he is humbled by fortune. And it was this that made the Cyrenæans tractable to Lucullus in his legislation for them. Sailing from Cyrene[324] to Egypt, he lost most of his vessels by an attack of pirates; but he escaped himself, and entered Alexandria in splendid style; for the whole fleet came out to meet him, as it was used to do when a king entered the port, equipped magnificently. The young king, Ptolemæus,[325] showed him other surprising marks of attention, and gave him a lodging and table in the palace, though no foreign general had ever before been lodged there. He also offered him an allowance for his expenditure, not such as he used to offer to others, but four times as much; Lucullus, however, would not receive anything more than his necessities required, nor yet any present, though the king sent presents to the value of eighty talents. It is said that Lucullus did not go up to Memphis,[326] nor make inquiry about any other of the wondrous and far-famed things in Egypt; he said that such things befitted an idle spectator, and one who had only to enjoy himself: not a man like himself, who had left the Imperator encamped under the bare sky, and close to the enemy's battlements.

Plutarch begins his Treatise which is intitled To an Uninstructed Prince with the same story about Plato and the Cyrenæans (_Moralia_, ed. Wyttenbach, vol. iv.).]

III. Ptolemæus declined the alliance, being afraid of the war; but he gave Lucullus ships to convoy him as far as Cyprus, and when he was setting sail he embraced him and paid him great attention, and presented him with an emerald set in gold, of great price. Lucullus at first begged to be excused from taking the present; but when the king showed him that the engraving contained his royal likeness, Lucullus was afraid to refuse the present, lest, if he should be supposed to sail away at complete enmity with the king, he might be plotted against on the sea. In his voyage along the coast Lucullus got together a number of vessels from the maritime towns except such as participated in piratical iniquities, and passed over to Cyprus, where, hearing that his enemies were lying in wait for him with their ships at the headlands, he drew up all his vessels, and wrote to the cities about winter quarters and supplies, as if he intended to stay there till the fine season. As soon as a favourable opportunity offered for his voyage, he launched his ships and got out to sea, and by sailing during the day with his sails down and low, and putting them up at night, he got safe to Rhodes. The Rhodians supplied him with some more ships, and he persuaded the people of Kos and Knidus to quit the king's side, and join him in an attack on the Samians. He drove the king's party also out of Chios, and he gave the people of Kolophon freedom by seizing Epigonus, their tyrant. It happened about this time that Mithridates had left Pergamum, and was shut up in Pitane.[327] While Fimbria[328] was keeping the king blockaded there on the land side and pressing the siege, Mithridates, looking to the sea, got together and summoned to him ships from every quarter, having given up all design of engaging and fighting with Fimbria, who was a bold man and had defeated him. Fimbria observing this, and being deficient in naval force, sent to Lucullus, and prayed him to come with his fleet and help him to take the most detested and the most hostile of kings, in order that Mithridates, the great prize, which had been followed through many contests and labours, might not escape the Romans, now that he had given them a chance of seizing him, and was caught within the nets. He said, if Mithridates was taken, no one would have more of the glory than he who stopped his flight and laid hold of him when he was trying to steal away; that if Mithridates were shut out from the land by him, and excluded from the sea by Lucullus, there would be a victory for both of them, and that as to the vaunted exploits of Sulla at Orchomenus and Chæronea,[329] the Romans would think nothing of them in comparison with this. There was nothing unreasonable in all that Fimbria said; and it was plain to every man that if Lucullus, who was at no great distance, had then accepted the proposal of Fimbria, and led his ships there and blockaded the port with his fleet, the war would have been at an end, and all would have been delivered from innumerable calamities. But whether it was that Lucullus regarded his duty to Sulla above all private and public interests, or that he detested Fimbria, who was an abandoned man, and had lately murdered his own friend and general,[330] merely from ambition to command, or whether it was through chance, as the Deity would have it, that he spared Mithridates, and reserved him for his own antagonist--he would not listen to Fimbria, but allowed Mithridates to escape by sea, and to mock the force of Fimbria. Lucullus himself, in the first place, defeated off Lektum in the Troad,[331] the king's ships, which showed themselves there, and again observing that Neoptolemus was stationed at Tenedos with a larger force, he sailed against him ahead of all the rest, in a Rhodian galley of five banks which was commanded by Demagoras, a man well affected to the Romans, and exceedingly skilful in naval battles. Neoptolemus came against him at a great rate, and ordered the helmsman to steer the ship right against the vessel of Lucullus; but Demagoras, fearing the weight of the king's vessel and the rough brass that she was fitted with, did not venture to engage head to head, but he quickly turned his ship round and ordered them to row her stern foremost,[332] and the vessel being thus depressed at the stern received the blow, which was rendered harmless by falling on those parts of the ship which were in the water. In the meantime his friends coming to his aid, Lucullus commanded them to turn his ship's head to the enemy; and, after performing many praiseworthy feats, he put the enemy to flight, and pursued Neoptolemus.

IV. After this, Lucullus joined Sulla in the Chersonesus, as he was going to cross the Hellespont, and he made the passage safe for him, and assisted his army in getting over. When the treaty was made, and Mithridates had sailed off to the Euxine, and Sulla had imposed a contribution[333] of twenty thousand talents on Asia, and Lucullus had been appointed to collect the money, and to strike coin, it appeared some small consolation to the cities of Asia for the harshness of Sulla that Lucullus not only behaved with honesty and justice, but conducted himself mildly in the discharge of so oppressive and disagreeable a duty. Though the Mitylenæans had openly revolted, Lucullus wished them to come to their senses, and to submit to some reasonable penalty for their ill-conduct in the matter of Marius;[334] but perceiving that they were under the influence of some evil dæmon, he sailed against them, and defeated them in a battle, and, after shutting them up in their walls, and establishing a blockade, he sailed out in open day to Elæa,[335] but he returned by stealth, and laying an ambuscade near the city, kept quiet. The Mitylenæans approached in disorder, and with confidence in the expectation of plundering a deserted camp; but Lucullus falling on them took a great number alive, and killed five hundred of them who made resistance. He also took six thousand slaves, and the rest of the booty was past count. But in the miseries which Sulla and Marius were at that time bringing on the people of Italy, without limit and of every kind, he had no share, being detained by his business in Asia by some happy fortune. Nevertheless, he had not less favour with Sulla than the rest of his friends; for, as I have said Sulla dedicated his memoirs to Lucullus, as a token of his affection, and finally he appointed him the guardian of his son, and passed by Pompeius. And this was probably the origin of the difference and the jealousy between Lucullus and Pompeius; for they were both young, and burning for distinction.

V. Shortly after Sulla's death, Lucullus was consul[336] with Marcus Cotta, about the hundred and seventy-sixth Olympiad. Many persons were again attempting to stir up the Mithridatic war, and Marcus said that the war was not ended, but only stopped for a time. It was for this reason that Lucullus was annoyed at the lot giving him for his province Gaul within (south of) the Alps, which offered no opportunity for great exploits. But the reputation of Pompeius, who was now in Iberia, stung him most, as it was expected that Pompeius, in preference to any one else, would be forthwith chosen to the command of the war against Mithridates, if it should happen that the Iberian war should be brought to a close. Accordingly, when Pompeius asked for money,[337] and wrote to say that if they did not send it he would leave Iberia and Sertorius, and lead his troops hack to Italy, Lucullus did all he could to get money sent, and to prevent Pompeius returning from Iberia on any pretence whatever while he was consul; for he considered that the whole State would be at the disposal of Pompeius if he were at Rome with so large an army. Cethegus,[338] also, who had then the power in his hands by always speaking and acting with a view to popularity, was at enmity with Lucullus, who detested his habits of life, which were nothing but a course of unnatural lusts, insolence, and violence. With Cethegus then Lucullus was at open war. There was, indeed another demagogue, Lucius Quintius,[339] who had set himself against Sulla's measures, and attempted to disturb the present settlement of affairs; but Lucullus, by much persuasion in private and reproof in public, drew him from his designs, and quieted his ambition, in as politic and wholesome a way as a man could do, by taking in hand so great a disease at its commencement.

VI. In the meantime news arrived of the death of Octavius,[340] the Governor of Cilicia. Now there were many eager competitors for the province, who courted Cethegus as the person who was best able to help them to it. As to Cilicia itself, Lucullus made no great account of that province; but, inasmuch as he thought, if he should get Cilicia, which bordered on Cappadocia, no one else would be sent to conduct the war against Mithridates, he left no means untried to prevent the province falling into other hands; and, at last, contrary to his natural disposition, he submitted from necessity to do an act which was not creditable, or commendable, though it was useful towards the end he had in view. There was a woman named Præcia, who was famed through Rome for her beauty and gallantry, and though in other respects she was no better than a common prostitute, yet, as she availed herself of her influence with those who visited her and talked to her, for the purpose of forwarding the interests and political views of her friends, she added to her other attractions the reputation of being a woman who was much attached to her friends, and very active in accomplishing anything, and she obtained great influence. Cethegus, who was then at the height of his popularity, and directed the administration, was captivated by Præcia, and began to cohabit with her, and thus the whole power of the State fell into her hands; for no public measure was transacted if Cethegus was not for it, and if Præcia did not recommend it to Cethegus. Now Lucullus gained over Præcia by presents and flattery; and, indeed, it was in itself a great boon to a proud woman, fond of public display, to be seen using her influence on behalf of Lucullus; and thus he soon had Cethegus speaking in his favour, and trying to get Cilicia for him. When Lucullus had once gained the province of Cilicia, it was no longer necessary for him to call in the aid of Præcia or Cethegus, but all alike readily put into his hands the conduct of the Mithridatic war, believing that it could not be managed better by any other person; for Pompeius was still fighting against Sertorius, and Metellus[341] had withdrawn from service by reason of his age, and these were the only persons who could be considered as rivals to Lucullus in any dispute about the command in the war. However, Cotta, the colleague of Lucullus, after making earnest application to the Senate, was sent with some ships to watch the Propontis,[342] and to defend Bithynia.

VII. Lucullus, with one legion which he had raised at home, crossed over into Asia, where he took the command of the rest of the forces, all of whom had long been spoiled by luxurious habits and living at free quarters; and the soldiers of Fimbria were said to have become difficult to manage, from being accustomed to obey no commander. They were the men who joined Fimbria in putting to death Flaccus, who was a consul and their general, and who gave up Fimbria himself to Sulla[343]--self-willed and lawless men, but brave and full of endurance, and experienced soldiers. However, in a short time, Lucullus took down the insolence of these soldiers, and changed the character of the rest, who then, for the first time, as it seems, knew what it was to have a genuine commander and leader; for under other generals, they were used to be courted, and spirited on to military service in such wise as was agreeable to them. As to the enemy, matters were thus: Mithridates, like most of the sophists,[344] full of boasting at first, and rising up against the Romans arrogantly, with an army unsubstantial in fact, but in appearance brilliant and pompous, had failed in his undertaking, and exposed himself to ridicule: but now, when he was going to commence the war a second time, taught by experience he concentrated his powers in a real and effectual preparation. Rejecting those motley numbers and many-tongued threats of the barbarians, and arms ornamented with gold and precious stones, which he considered to be the spoils of the victors, and to give no strength to those who possess them, he set about having Roman swords made, and heavy shields manufactured; and he got together horses which were well trained, instead of horses which were well caparisoned; and one hundred and twenty thousand foot-soldiers who were disciplined to the Roman order of battle, and sixteen thousand horse-soldiers, without reckoning the scythe-bearing four-horse chariots, and these were a hundred; besides, his ships were not filled with tents embroidered with gold, nor with baths for concubines, nor apartments for the women luxuriously furnished; but fitting them out fully with arms, missiles, and stores, he invaded Bithynia, where he was again gladly received by the cities, and not by these cities only, for a return of their former calamities had visited all Asia, which was suffering past endurance from the Roman money-lenders[345] and farmers of the taxes.[346] These men, who, like so many harpies, were plundering the people of their substance, Lucullus afterwards drove out; but, for the time, he endeavoured by reproof to make them more moderate in their conduct, and he stopped the insurrection of the towns, when, so to speak, not a single man in them was quiet.

VIII. While Lucullus was busied about these matters, Cotta, thinking it a good opportunity for himself, was preparing to fight with Mithridates; and, though many persons brought him intelligence that Lucullus was encamped in Phrygia on his advanced march, Cotta, thinking that he had the triumph all but in his hands, hastened to engage, that Lucullus might have no share in it. But he was defeated by land and by sea at the same time; and he lost sixty vessels with all the men in them, and four thousand foot-soldiers, and he was shut up in Chalkedon[347] and besieged there, and obliged to look for help at the hands of Lucullus. Now there were some who urged Lucullus not to care for Cotta, but to advance forward, as he would be able to seize the kingdom of Mithridates, which was unprotected; and this was the language of the soldiers especially, who were indignant that Cotta, not satisfied with ruining himself and those with him by his imprudent measures, should be a hindrance to their getting a victory without a contest when it was in their power; but Lucullus said in reply to all this in an harangue, that he would rather save one Roman from the enemy than get all that the enemy had. And when Archelaus,[348] who had commanded for Mithridates in Bœotia, and afterwards had left him, and was now in the Roman army, maintained that if Lucullus would only show himself in Pontus, he might make himself master of everything at once, Lucullus replied that he was not a greater coward than huntsmen, which he should be if he passed by the wild beasts and went to their empty dens. Saying this he advanced against Mithridates, with thirty thousand foot-soldiers and two thousand five hundred cavalry. On arriving in sight of the enemy, he was startled at their numbers, and wished to avoid a battle and to protract the time. Marius, however, whom Sertorius had sent from Iberia to Mithridates in command of a force, came out to meet Lucullus, and challenged him to the contest, on which Lucullus put his army in order of battle; and they were just on the point of commencing the engagement, when, without any evident change, but all at once, the sky opened, and there appeared a huge flame-like body, which came down between the two armies, in form most like a cask, and in colour resembling molten silver, so that both armies were alarmed at the sight and separated. This, it is said, took place in Phrygia, at a place called Otryæ. Lucullus, considering that it was not possible for any human resources or wealth to maintain for any length of time, and in the presence of an enemy, so many thousands as Mithridates had, ordered one of the prisoners to be brought to him, and asked him first how many messmates he had, and then how much provision he had left in his tent. When the man had given his answer, he ordered him to be removed, and he put the same question to a second, and to a third. Then comparing the amount of provisions that the enemy had with the number of those who were to be fed, he concluded that the enemy's provisions would fail them in three or four days. He now stuck still more closely to his plan of protracting the time, and he employed himself in getting into his camp a great store of provision, that he might have abundance himself, and so wait till the enemy was reduced to want.

IX. In the meantime Mithridates resolved to attack the Kyzikeni,[349] who had received a blow in the battle at Chalkedon, for they had lost three thousand men and ten ships. Accordingly, wishing to give Lucullus the slip, he put himself in motion immediately after supper, taking advantage of a dark and rainy night; and he succeeded in planting his force at daybreak right opposite to the city, at the base of the mountain tract of the Adrasteia.[350] Lucullus, who perceived his movements and followed him, was well satisfied that he had not come up with the enemy while his own troops were out of battle order; and he posted his army near the village named Thrakia, in a position excellently adapted to command the roads and the places from which and through which the soldiers of Mithridates must bring their supplies. Now, as he had in his own mind a clear comprehension of the issue, he did not conceal it from his men; but as soon as he had chosen his ground, and the men had finished the entrenchments, he summoned them together, and confidently told them that he would, in a few days, give them a victory which would cost no blood. Mithridates had hemmed in the Kyzikeni with ten camps on the land side, and towards the sea with his ships, by blocking up the narrow channel which separates the city from the mainland, and thus he was besieging them on both sides. Though the citizens were disposed to resist the enemy boldly, and had determined to sustain all hardships for the sake of the Romans, they were troubled at not knowing where Lucullus was, and at having heard nothing of him. Yet the army of Lucullus was visible and in sight of the city; but the citizens were deceived by the soldiers of Mithridates, who pointed to the Romans in their entrenchments on the higher ground, and said, "Do you see them? That is the army of the Armenians and Medes, which Tigranes has sent to support Mithridates."

The Kyzikeni were alarmed to see such a host of enemies around them, and they had no hopes that they could be released, even if Lucullus should come. However, Demonax, who was sent to them by Archelaus, was the first to inform them of Lucullus being there. While they were distrusting his intelligence, and thinking that he had merely invented this story to comfort them in their difficulties, there came a youth, who had been captured by the enemy and made his escape. On their asking him where he supposed Lucullus to be, he laughed outright, for he thought they were making sport of him; but, seeing that they were in earnest, he pointed with his hand to the Roman camp, and the citizens again took courage. Now the lake Daskylitis[351] is navigable for boats of a considerable size, and Lucullus, drawing up the largest of them, and conveying it on a waggon to the sea-coast, put into it as many soldiers as it would hold. The soldiers crossed over by night unobserved, and got into the city.

X. It appears that the deity, also, admiring the bravery of the Kyzikeni, encouraged them by other manifest signs, and especially by this: the festival called Persephassia[352] was at hand, and as they had not a black cow to sacrifice, they made one of dough, and placed it at the altar. The cow which was intended to be the victim, and was fattening for the goddess, was pasturing, like the other animals of the Kyzikeni, on the opposite mainland; but on that day, leaving the rest of the herd by itself, it swam over the channel to the city and presented itself to be sacrificed. The goddess also appeared in a dream to Aristagoras, the town-clerk,[353] and said: "For my part, I am come, and I bring the Libyan fifer against the Pontic trumpeter. Bid the citizens, then, be of good cheer." The Kyzikeni were wondering at these words, when at daybreak the sea began to be disturbed by an unsteady, changing wind that descended upon it, and the engines of the king, which were placed near the walls--admirable contrivances of Nikonides the Thessalian--by their creaking and rattling showed what was going to happen: then a south-west wind, bursting forth with incredible fury, broke to pieces the other engines in a very short time, and shook and threw down the wooden tower, which was a hundred cubits high. It is told that Athena appeared to many of the people in Ilium in their sleep, streaming with copious sweat, showing part of her peplus rent, and saying that she had just returned from helping the Kyzikeni. And the people of Ilium used to show a stele[354] which contained certain decrees and an inscription about these matters.

XI. Mithridates, so long as he was deceived by his generals and kept in ignorance of the famine in his army, was annoyed at the Kyzikeni holding out against the blockade. But his ambition and his haughtiness quickly oozed away when he had discovered the straits in which his army was held, and that they were eating one another; for Lucullus was not carrying on the war in a theatrical way, nor with mere show; but, as the proverb says, was kicking against the belly, and contriving every means how he should cut off the food. Accordingly, while Lucullus was engaged in besieging a certain garrisoned post, Mithridates, seizing the opportunity, sent off into Bithynia nearly all his cavalry, with the beasts of burden, and all his superfluous infantry. Lucullus hearing of this, returned to his camp during the night, and early in the following morning, it being winter time, getting ready ten cohorts and the cavalry, he followed the troops of Mithridates, though it was snowing, and his soldiers suffered so much that many of them gave in by reason of the cold, and were left behind: however, with the rest he came up with the enemy at the river Rhyndakus,[355] and gave them such a defeat that the women came from the town of Apollonia and carried off the baggage and stripped the dead. Many fell in the battle, as might be supposed, but there were taken six thousand horses, with a countless number of baggage-beasts, and fifteen thousand men, all whom he led back past the camp of the enemy. I wonder at Sallustius saying that this was the first time that the Romans saw the camel;[356] for he must have supposed that the soldiers of Scipio, who some time before had defeated Antiochus, and those who had also fought with Archelaus at Orchomenus and Chæronea, were unacquainted with the camel. Now Mithridates had determined to fly as soon as he could; but, with the view of contriving something which should draw Lucullus in the other direction, and detain him in his rear, he sent his admiral, Aristonikus, to the Grecian sea, and Aristonikus was just on the point of setting sail when he was betrayed to Lucullus, who got him into his power, together with ten thousand pieces of gold which he was carrying to bribe a part of the Roman army with. Upon this Mithridates fled to the sea, and his generals led the land forces off. But Lucullus falling upon them at the river Granikus,[357] took many prisoners, and slew twenty thousand of them. It is said that near three hundred thousand persons were destroyed out of the whole number of camp-followers and fighting-men.

XII. Upon entering Kyzikus, Lucullus took his pleasure, and enjoyed a friendly reception suitably to the occasion; he next visited the Hellespont, and got his navy equipped. Arriving at the Troad,[358] he placed his tent within the sacred precincts of Aphrodite, and as he was sleeping there he thought that he saw the goddess in the night standing by him, saying:

"Why slumber, lion of the mighty heart? The fawns are near at hand."

Waking from sleep, Lucullus called his friends and told them his dream, while it was still night; and there came persons from Ilium, who reported that thirteen of the king's quinqueremes had been seen near the Achæan harbour, moving in the direction of Lemnos. Immediately setting sail, Lucullus captured these vessels and killed their commander, Isidorus, and he then advanced against the other captains. Now, as they happened to be at anchor, they drew all their vessels together up to the land, and, fighting from the decks, dealt blows on the men of Lucullus; for the ground rendered it impossible to sail round to the enemy's rear, and, as the ships of Lucullus were afloat, they could make no attack on those of the enemy, which were planted close to the land and securely situated. However, with some difficulty, Lucullus landed the bravest of his soldiers in a part of the island which was accessible, who, falling on the rear of the enemy, killed some and compelled the rest to cut their cables and make their escape from the land, and so to drive their vessels foul of one another, and to be exposed to the blows of the vessels of Lucullus. Many of the enemy perished; but among the captives there was Marius,[359] he who was sent from Sertorius. Marius had only one eye, and the soldiers had received orders from Lucullus, as they were setting out on the expedition, to kill no one-eyed man; for Lucullus designed to make Marius die a shameful and dishonourable death.

XIII. As soon as he had accomplished this, Lucullus hastened in pursuit of Mithridates; for he expected still to find him about Bithynia, and watched by Voconius, whom he had sent with ships to Nikomedia[360] to follow up the pursuit. But Voconius lingered in Samothrakia,[361] where he was getting initiated into mysteries and celebrating festivals. Mithridates, who had set sail with his armament, and was in a hurry to reach Pontus before Lucullus returned, was overtaken by a violent storm, by which some of his ships were shattered and others were sunk; and all the coast for many days was filled with the wrecks that were cast up by the waves. The merchant-vessel in which Mithridates was embarked could not easily be brought to land by those who had the management of it, by reason of its magnitude, in the agitated state of the water, and the great swell, and it was already too heavy to hold out against the sea, and was water-logged; accordingly the king got out of the vessel into a piratical ship, and, intrusting his person to pirates, contrary to expectation and after great hazard he arrived at Heraklea[362] in Pontus. Now it happened that the proud boast of Lucullus to the Senate brought on him no divine retribution.[363] The Senate was voting a sum of three thousand talents to equip a navy for the war, but Lucullus stopped the measure by sending a letter, couched in vaunting terms, in which he said, that without cost and so much preparation, he would with the ships of the allies drive Mithridates from the sea. And he did this with the aid of the deity; for it is said that it was owing to the anger of Artemis Priapine[364] that the storm fell on the Pontic soldiers, who had plundered her temple and carried off the wooden statue.

XIV. Though many advised Lucullus to suspend the war, he paid no heed to them: but, passing through Bithynia and Galatia, he invaded the country of the king. At first he wanted provisions, so that thirty thousand Galatians followed him, each carrying on his shoulders a medimnus of wheat; but as he advanced and reduced all into his power, he got into such abundance of everything that an ox was sold in the camp for a drachma, and a slave for four drachmæ; and, as to the rest of the booty, it was valued so little that some left it behind, and others destroyed it; for there were no means of disposing of anything to anybody when all had abundance. The Roman army had advanced with their cavalry and carried their incursions as far as Themiskyra and the plains on the Thermodon,[365] without doing more than wasting and ravaging the country, when the men began to blame Lucullus for peaceably gaining over all the cities, and they complained that he had not taken a single city by storm, nor given them an opportunity of enriching themselves by plunder. "Nay, even now," they said, "we are quitting Amisus,[366] a prosperous and wealthy city, which it would be no great matter to take, if any one would press the siege, and the general is leading us to fight with Mithridates in the wilds of the Tibareni and Chaldæans."[367] Now, if Lucullus had supposed that these notions would have led the soldiers to such madness as they afterwards showed he would not have overlooked or neglected these matters, nor have apologised instead to those men who were blaming his tardiness for thus lingering in the neighbourhood of insignificant villages for a long time, and allowing Mithridates to increase his strength. "This is the very thing," he said, "that I wish, and I am sitting here with the design of allowing the man again to become powerful, and to get together a sufficient force to meet us, that he may stay, and not fly from us when we advance. Do you not see that a huge and boundless wilderness is in his rear, and the Caucasus[368] is near, and many mountains which are full of deep valleys, sufficient to hide ten thousand kings who decline a battle, and to protect them? and it is only a few days' march from Kabeira[369] into Armenia, and above the plains of Armenia Tigranes[370] the King of Kings has his residence, with a force which enables him to cut the Parthian off from Asia, and he removes the inhabitants of the Greek cities up into Media, and he is master of Syria and Palestine, and the kings, the descendants of Seleucus, he puts to death, and carries off their daughters and wives captives. Tigranes is the kinsman and son-in-law of Mithridates. Indeed, he will not quietly submit to receive Mithridates as a suppliant; but he will war against us, and, if we strive to eject Mithridates from his kingdom we shall run the risk of drawing upon us Tigranes, who has long been seeking for a pretext against us, and he could not have a more specious pretext than to be compelled to aid a man who is his kinsman and a king. Why, then, should we bring this about, and show Mithridates, who does not know it, with whose aid he ought to carry on the war against us? and why should we drive him against his wish, and ingloriously, into the arms of Tigranes, instead of giving him time to collect a force out of his own resources and to recover his courage, and so fight with the Kolchi, and Tibareni, and Cappadocians, whom we have often defeated, rather than fight with the Medes and Armenians?"

XV. Upon such considerations as these, Lucullus protracted the time before Amisus without pushing the siege; and, when the winter was over, leaving Murena to blockade the city, he advanced against Mithridates, who was posted at Kabeira, and intending to oppose the Romans, as he had got together a force of forty thousand infantry and four thousand horse on whom he relied most. Crossing the river Lykus into the plain, Mithridates offered the Romans battle. A contest between the cavalry ensued, in which the Romans fled, and Pomponius, a man of some note, being wounded, was taken prisoner, and brought to Mithridates while he was suffering from his wounds. The king asked him if he would become his friend if his life were spared, to which Pomponius replied, "Yes, if you come to terms with the Romans; if not, I shall be your enemy." Mithridates admired the answer, and did him no harm. Now, Lucullus was afraid to keep the plain country, as the enemy were masters of it with their cavalry, and he was unwilling to advance into the hilly region, which was of great extent and wooded and difficult of access; but it happened that some Greeks were taken prisoners, who had fled into a cave, and the eldest of them, Artemidorus, promised Lucullus to be his guide, and to put him in a position which would be secure for his army, and also contained a fort that commanded Kabeira. Lucullus, trusting the man, set out at nightfall after lighting numerous fires, and getting through the defiles in safety; he gained possession of the position; and, when the day dawned, he was seen above the enemy, posting his soldiers in a place which gave him the opportunity of making an attack if he chose to fight, and secured him against any assault if he chose to remain quiet. At present neither general had any intention of hazarding a battle; but it is said, that while some of the king's men were pursuing a deer, the Romans met them and attempted to cut off their retreat, and this led to a skirmish, in which fresh men kept continually coming up on both sides. At last the king's men had the better, and the Romans, who from the ramparts saw their comrades falling, were in a rage, and crowded about Lucullus, praying him to lead them on, and calling for the signal for battle. But Lucullus, wishing them to learn the value of the presence and sight of a prudent general in a struggle with an enemy and in the midst of danger, told them to keep quiet; and, going down into the plain and meeting the first of the fugitives, he ordered them to stand, and to turn round and face the enemy with him. The men obeyed, and the rest also facing about and forming in order of battle, easily put the enemy to flight, and pursued them to their camp. Lucullus, after retiring to his position, imposed on the fugitives the usual mark of disgrace, by ordering them to dig a trench of twelve feet in their loose jackets, while the rest of the soldiers were standing by and looking on.

XVI. Now there was in the army of Mithridates a prince of the Dandarii,[371] named Olthakus (the Dandarii are one of the tribes of barbarians that live about the Mæotis), a man distinguished in all military matters where strength and daring are required, and also in ability equal to the best, and moreover a man who knew how to ingratiate himself with persons, and of insinuating address. Olthakus, who was always engaged in a kind of rivalry for distinction with one of the princes of the kindred tribes, and was jealous of him, undertook a great exploit for Mithridates, which was to kill Lucullus. The king approved of his design, and purposely showed him some indignities, at which, pretending to be in a rage, Olthakus rode off to Lucullus, who gladly received him, for there was a great report of him in the Roman army; and Lucullus, after some acquaintance with him, was soon pleased with his acuteness and his zeal, and at last admitted him to his table and made him a member of his council. Now when the Dandarian thought he had a fit opportunity, he ordered the slaves to take his horse without the ramparts, and, as it was noontide and the soldiers were lying in the open air and taking their rest, he went to the general's tent, expecting that nobody would prevent him from entering, as he was on terms of intimacy with Lucullus, and said that he was the bearer of some important news. And he would have entered the tent without any suspicion, if sleep, that has been the cause of the death of many generals, had not saved Lucullus; for he happened to be asleep, and Menedemus, one of his chamber-attendants, who was standing by the door, said that Olthakus had not come at a fit time, for Lucullus had just gone to rest himself after long wakefulness and many toils. As Olthakus did not go away when he was told, but said that he would go in, even should Menedemus attempt to prevent him, because he wished to communicate with Lucullus about a matter of emergency and importance, Menedemus began to get in a passion, and, saying that nothing was more urgent than the health of Lucullus, he shoved the man away with both his hands. Olthakus being alarmed stole out of the camp, and, mounting his horse, rode off to the army of Mithridates, without effecting his purpose. Thus, it appears, it is with actions just as it is with medicines--time and circumstance give to the scales that slight turn which saves alive, as well as that which kills.

XVII. After this Sornatius, with ten cohorts, was sent to get supplies of corn. Being pursued by Menander, one of the generals of Mithridates, Sornatius faced about and engaged the enemy, of whom he killed great numbers and put the rest to flight. Again, upon Adrianus being sent with a force, for the purpose of getting an abundant supply of corn for the army, Mithridates did not neglect the opportunity, but sent Menemachus and Myron at the head of a large body of cavalry and infantry. All this force, as it is said, was cut to pieces by the Romans, with the exception of two men. Mithridates concealed the loss, and pretended it was not so great as it really was, but a trifling loss owing to the unskilfulness of the commanders. However, Adrianus triumphantly passed by the camp of the enemy with many waggons loaded with corn and booty, which dispirited Mithridates, and caused irremediable confusion and alarm among his soldiers. Accordingly it was resolved not to stay there any longer. But, while the king's servants were quietly sending away their own property first, and endeavouring to hinder the rest, the soldiers, growing infuriated, pushed towards the passages that led out of the camp, and, attacking the king's servants, began to seize the luggage and massacre the men. In this confusion Dorylaus the general, who had nothing else about him but his purple dress, lost his life by reason of it, and Hermæus, the sacrificing priest, was trampled to death at the gates. The king himself,[372] without attendant or groom to accompany him, fled from the camp mingled with the rest, and was not able to get even one of the royal horses, till at last the eunuch Ptolemæus, who was mounted, spied him as he was hurried along in the stream of fugitives, and leaping down from his horse gave it to the king. The Romans, who were following in pursuit, were now close upon the king, and so far as it was a matter of speed they were under no difficulty about taking him, and they came very near it; but greediness and mercenary motives snatched from the Romans the prey which they had so long followed up in many battles and great dangers, and robbed Lucullus of the crowning triumph to his victory; for the horse which was carrying Mithridates was just within reach of his pursuers, when it happened that one of the mules which was conveying the king's gold either fell into the hands of the enemy accidentally, or was purposely thrown in their way by the king's orders, and while the soldiers were plundering it and getting together the gold, and fighting with one another, they were left behind. And this was not the only loss that Lucullus sustained from their greediness; he had given his men orders to bring to him Kallistratus, who had the charge of all the king's secrets; but those who were taking him to Lucullus, finding that he had five hundred gold pieces in his girdle, put him to death. However, Lucullus allowed his men to plunder the camp.

XVIII. After taking Kabeira and most of the other forts Lucullus found in them great treasures, and also places of confinement, in which many Greeks and many kinsmen of the king were shut up; and, as they had long considered themselves as dead, they were indebted to the kindness of Lucullus, not for their rescue, but for restoration to life and a kind of second birth. A sister also of Mithridates, Nyssa, was captured, and so saved her life; but the women who were supposed to be the farthest from danger, and to be securely lodged at Phernakia,[373] the sisters and wives of Mithridates, came to a sad end, pursuant to the order of Mithridates, which he sent Bacchides,[374] a eunuch, to execute, when he was compelled to take to flight. Among many other women there were two sisters of the king, Roxana and Statira, each about forty years of age and unmarried; and two of his wives, Ionian women, one of them named Berenike from Chios, and the other Monime a Milesian. Monime was much talked of among the Greeks, and there was a story to this effect, that though the king tempted her with an offer of fifteen thousand gold pieces, she held out until a marriage contract was made, and he sent her a diadem[375] with the title of queen. Now Monime hitherto was very unhappy, and bewailed that beauty which had given her a master instead of a husband, and a set of barbarians to watch over her instead of marriage and a family; and she lamented that she was removed from her native country, enjoying her anticipated happiness only in imagination, while she was deprived of all those real pleasures which she might have had at home. When Bacchides arrived, and told the women to die in such manner as they might judge easiest and least painful, Monime pulled the diadem from her head, and, fastening it round her neck, hung herself. As the diadem soon broke, "Cursed rag!" she exclaimed, "you won't even do me this service;" and, spitting on it, she tossed it from her, and presented her throat to Bacchides. Berenike took a cup of poison, and gave a part of it to her mother, who was present, at her own request. Together they drank it up; and the strength of the poison was sufficient for the weaker of the two, but it did not carry off Berenike, who had not drunk enough, and, as she was long in dying, she was strangled with the assistance of Bacchides. Of the two unmarried sisters of Mithridates it is said, that one of them, after uttering many imprecations on her brother and much abuse, drank up the poison. Statira did not utter a word of complaint, or anything unworthy of her noble birth; but she commended her brother for that he had not neglected them at a time when his own life was in danger, and had provided that they should die free and be secure against insult. All this gave pain to Lucullus, who was naturally of a mild and humane temper.

XIX. Lucullus advanced as far as Talaura,[376] whence four days before Mithridates had fled into Armenia to Tigranes. From Talaura Lucullus took a different direction, and after subduing the Chaldæi and Tibareni, and taking possession of the Less Armenia, and reducing forts and cities, he sent Appius to Tigranes to demand Mithridates; but he went himself to Amisus, which was still holding out against the siege. This was owing to Kallimachus the commander, who by his skill in mechanical contrivances, and his ingenuity in devising every resource which is available in a siege, gave the Romans great annoyance, for which he afterwards paid the penalty. Now, however, he was out-generailed by Lucullus, who, by making a sudden attack, just at that time of the day when he was used to lead his soldiers off and to give them rest, got possession of a small part of the wall, upon which Kallimachus quitted the city, having first set fire to it, either because he was unwilling that the Romans should get any advantage from their conquest, or with the view of facilitating his own escape. For no one paid any attention to those who were sailing out; but when the flames had sprung up with violence, and got hold of the walls, the soldiers were making ready to plunder. Lucullus, lamenting the danger in which the city was of being destroyed, attempted from the outside to help the citizens against the fire, and ordered it to be put out; yet nobody attended to him, and the soldiers called out for booty, and shouted and struck their armour, till at last Lucullus was compelled to let them have their way, expecting that he should thus save the city at least from the fire. But the soldiers did just the contrary; for, as they rummaged every place by the aid of torches, and carried about lights in all directions, they destroyed most of the houses themselves, so that Lucullus, who entered the city at daybreak, said to his friends with tears in his eyes, that he had often considered Sulla a fortunate man, but on this day of all others he admired the man's good fortune, in that when he chose to save Athens he had also the power; "but upon me," he said, "who have been emulous to imitate his example, the dæmon has instead brought the reputation of Mummius."[377] However, as far as present circumstances allowed, he endeavoured to restore the city. The fire indeed was quenched by the rains that chanced to fall, as the deity would have it, at the time of the capture, and the greatest part of what had been destroyed Lucullus rebuilt while he stayed at Amisus; and he received into the city such of the Amisenes as had fled, and settled there any other Greeks who were willing to settle, and added to the limits of the territory a tract of one hundred and twenty stadia. Amisus was a colony[378] of the Athenians, planted, as one might suppose, at that period in which their power was at its height and had the command of the sea. And this was the reason why many who wished to escape from the tyranny of Aristion[379] sailed to the Euxine and settled at Amisus, where they became citizens; but it happened that by flying from misfortune at home they came in for a share of the misfortunes of others. Lucullus, however, clothed all of them who survived the capture of the city, and, after giving each two hundred drachmæ besides, he sent them back to their home. On this occasion, Tyrannio[380] the grammarian was taken prisoner. Murena asked him for himself, and on getting Tyrannio set him free, wherein he made an illiberal use of the favour that he had received; for Lucullus did not think it fitting that a man who was esteemed for his learning should be made a slave first and then a freedman; for the giving him an apparent freedom was equivalent to the depriving him of his real freedom. But it was not in this instance only that Murena showed himself far inferior to his general in honourable feeling and conduct.

XX. Lucullus now turned to the cities of Asia, in order that while he had leisure from military operations he might pay some attention to justice and the law, which the province had now felt the want of for a long time, and the people had endured unspeakable and incredible calamities, being plundered and reduced to slavery by the Publicani and the money-lenders, so that individuals were compelled to sell their handsome sons and virgin daughters, and the cities to sell their sacred offerings, pictures and statues. The lot of the citizens was at last to be condemned to slavery themselves, but the sufferings which preceded were still worse--the fixing of ropes and barriers,[381] and horses, and standing under the open sky, during the heat in the sun, and during the cold when they were forced into the mud or the ice; so that slavery was considered a relief from the burden of debt, and a blessing. Such evils as these Lucullus discovered in the cities, and in a short time he relieved the sufferers from all of them. In the first place, he declared that the rate of interest should be reckoned at the hundredth part,[382] and no more; in the second, he cut off all the interest which exceeded the capital; thirdly, what was most important of all, he declared that the lender should receive the fourth part of the income of the debtor; but any lender who had tacked the interest to the principal was deprived of the whole: thus, in less than four years all the debts were paid, and their property was given back to them free from all encumbrance. Now the common debt originated in the twenty thousand talents which Sulla had laid on Asia as a contribution, and twice this amount was repaid to the lenders, though they had indeed now brought the debt up to the amount of one hundred and twenty thousand talents by means of the interest. The lenders, however, considered themselves very ill used, and they raised a great outcry against Lucullus at Rome, and they endeavoured to bribe some of the demagogues to attack him; for the lenders had great influence, and had among their debtors many of the men who were engaged in public life. But Lucullus gained the affection of the cities which had been favoured by him, and the other provinces also longed to see such a man over them, and felicitated those who had the good luck to have such a governor.

XXI. Appius Clodius,[383] who was sent to Tigranes (now Clodius was the brother of the then wife of Lucullus), was at first conducted by the king's guides through the upper part of the country, by a route unnecessarily circuitous and roundabout, and one that required many days' journeying; but, as soon as the straight road was indicated to him by a freedman, a Syrian by nation, he quitted that tedious and tricky road, and, bidding his barbarian guides farewell, he crossed the Euphrates in a few days, and arrived at Antiocheia,[384] near Daphne. There he waited for Tigranes, pursuant to the king's orders (for Tigranes was absent, and still engaged in reducing some of the Phœnician cities), and in the meantime he gained over many of the princes who paid the Armenian a hollow obedience, among whom was Zarbienus, King of Gordyene,[385] and he promised aid from Lucullus to many of the enslaved cities, which secretly sent to him--bidding them, however, keep quiet for the present. Now the rule of the Armenians was not tolerable to the Greeks, but was harsh; and what was worse, the king's temper had become violent and exceedingly haughty in his great prosperity; for he had not only everything about him which the many covet and admire, but he seemed to think that everything was made for him. Beginning with expectations which were slight and contemptible, he had subdued many nations, and humbled the power of the Parthians as no man before him had done; and he filled Mesopotamia with Greeks, many from Cilicia and many from Cappadocia, whom he removed and settled. He also removed from their abodes the Skenite Arabians,[386] and settled them near him, that he might with their aid have the benefit of commerce. Many were the kings who were in attendance on him; but there were four who were always about him, like attendants or guards, and when he mounted his horse they ran by his side in jackets; and when he was seated and transacting business, they stood by with their hands clasped together, which was considered to be of all attitudes the most expressive of servitude, as if they had sold their freedom, and were presenting their bodies to their master in a posture indicating readiness to suffer rather than to act. Appius, however, was not alarmed or startled at the tragedy show; but, as soon as he had an opportunity of addressing the king, he told him plainly that he was come to take back Mithridates, as one who belonged to the triumphs of Lucullus, or to denounce war against Tigranes. Though the king made an effort to preserve a tranquil mien, and affected a smile while he was listening to the address, he could not conceal from the bystanders that he was disconcerted by the bold speech of the youth, he who had not for near five-and-twenty years[387] heard the voice of a free man; for so many years had he been king, or rather tyrant. However, he replied to Appius that he would not give up Mithridates, and that he would resist the Romans if they attacked him. He was angry with Lucullus because he addressed him in his letter by the title of King only, and not King of Kings, and, accordingly in his reply, Tigranes did not address Lucullus by the title of Imperator. But he sent splendid presents to Appius, and when they were refused he sent still more. Appius, not wishing to appear to reject the king's presents from any hostile feeling, selected from among them a goblet, and sent the rest back; and then with all speed set off to join the Imperator.

XXII. Now, up to this time, Tigranes had not deigned to see Mithridates,[388] nor to speak to him, though Mithridates was allied to him by marriage, and had been ejected from so great a kingdom; but, in a degrading and insulting manner, he had allowed Mithridates to be far removed from him, and, in a manner, kept a prisoner in his abode, which was a marshy and unhealthy place. However, he now sent for him with demonstrations of respect and friendship. In a secret conference which took place in the palace, they endeavoured to allay their mutual suspicions, by turning the blame on their friends, to their ruin. One of them was Metrodorus[389] of Skepsis, an agreeable speaker, and a man of great acquirements, who enjoyed so high a degree of favour with Mithridates that he got the name of the king's father. Metrodorus, as it seems, had once been sent on an embassy from Mithridates to Tigranes, to pray for aid against the Romans, on which occasion Tigranes asked him, "But you, Metrodorus, what do you advise me in this matter?" Metrodorus, either consulting the interests of Tigranes, or not wishing Mithridates to be maintained in his kingdom, replied, that, as ambassador, he requested him to send aid, but, in the capacity of adviser, he told him not to send any. Tigranes reported this to Mithridates, to whom he gave the information, not expecting that he would inflict any extreme punishment on Metrodorus. But Metrodorus was forthwith put to death, and Tigranes was sorry for what he had done, though he was not altogether the cause of the misfortune of Metrodorus: indeed what he had said merely served to turn the balance in the dislike of Mithridates towards Metrodorus; for Mithridates had for a long time disliked Metrodorus, and this was discovered from his private papers, that fell into the hands of the Romans, in which there were orders to put Metrodorus to death. Now, Tigranes interred the body with great pomp, sparing no expense on the man, when dead, whom he had betrayed when living. Amphikrates the rhetorician also lost his life at the court of Tigranes, if he too deserves mention for the sake of Athens. It is said that he fled to Seleukeia,[390] on the Tigris, and that when the citizens there asked him to give lectures on his art, he treated them with contempt, saying, in an arrogant way, that a dish would not hold a dolphin. Removing himself from Seleukeia, he betook himself to Kleopatra, who was the daughter of Mithridates, and the wife of Tigranes; but he soon fell under suspicion, and, being excluded from all communion with the Greeks, he starved himself to death. Amphikrates also received an honourable interment from Kleopatra, and his body lies at Sapha, a place in those parts so called.

XXIII. After conferring on Asia, the fulness of good administration and of peace, Lucullus did not neglect such things as would gratify the people and gain their favour; but during his stay at Ephesus he gained popularity in the Asiatic cities by processions and public festivals in commemoration of his victories, and by contests of athletes and gladiators. The cities on their side made a return by celebrating festivals, called after the name of Lucullus, to do honour to the man; and they manifested towards him what is more pleasing than demonstrations of respect, real affection. Now, when Appius had returned, and it appeared that there was to be war with Tigranes, Lucullus again advanced into Pontus, and, getting his troops together, he besieged Sinope,[391] or rather the Cilicians of the king's party, who were in possession of the city; but the Cilicians made their escape by night, after massacring many of the Sinopians, and firing the city. Lucullus, who saw what was going on, made his way into the city, and slaughtered eight thousand of the Cilicians, who were left there; but he restored to the rest of the inhabitants their property, and provided for the interests of Sinope, mainly by reason of a vision of this sort: he dreamed that a man stood by him in his sleep, and said, "Advance a little, Lucullus; for Autolykus is come, and wishes to meet with you." On waking, Lucullus could not conjecture what was the meaning of the vision; but he took the city on that day, and, while pursuing the Cilicians, who were escaping in their ships, he saw a statue lying on the beach, which the Cilicians had not had time to put on board; and the statue was the work of Sthenis,[392] one of his good performances. Now, somebody told Lucullus that it was the statue of Autolykus, the founder of Sinope. Autolykus is said to have been one of those who joined Herakles from Thessalia, in his expedition against the Amazons, and a son of Deimachus. In his voyage home, in company with Demoleon and Phlogius, he lost his ship, which was wrecked at the place called Pedalium, in the Chersonesus:[393] but he escaped with his arms and companions to Sinope, which he took from the Syrians: for Sinope was in possession of the Syrians, who were descended from Syrus, the son of Apollo, according to the story, and Sinope, the daughter of Asopus. On hearing this, Lucullus called to mind the advice of Sulla, who in his 'Memoirs' advised to consider nothing so trustworthy and safe as that which is signified in dreams. Lucullus was now apprised that Mithridates and Tigranes were on the point of entering Lycaonia and Cilicia, with the intention of anticipating hostilities by an invasion of Asia, and he was surprised that the Armenian, if he really intended to attack the Romans, did not avail himself of the aid of Mithridates, in the war when he was at the height of his power, nor join his forces to those of Mithridates when he was strong but allowed him to be undone and crushed; and now began a war that offered only cold hopes, and throw himself on the ground to join those who were already there and unable to rise.

XXIV. Now, when Machares also, the son of Mithridates, who held the Bosporus, sent to Lucullus a crown worth one thousand gold pieces, and prayed to be acknowledged a friend and ally[394] of the Romans, Lucullus, considering that the former war was at an end, left Sornatius in those parts to watch over the affairs of Pontus with six thousand soldiers. He set out himself with twelve thousand foot soldiers, and not quite three thousand horse, to commence a second campaign, wherein he seemed to be making a hazardous move, and one not resting on any safe calculation; for he was going to throw himself among warlike nations and many thousands of horsemen, and to enter a boundless tract, surrounded by deep rivers and by mountains covered with perpetual snow; so that his soldiers, who were generally not very obedient to discipline, followed unwillingly and made opposition: and at Rome the popular leaders raised a cry against him, and accused him of seeking one war after another, though the State required no wars, that he might never lay down his arms so long as he had command, and never stop making his private profit out of the public danger; and in course of time the demagogues at Rome accomplished their purpose. Lucullus, advancing by hard marches to the Euphrates, found the stream swollen and muddy, owing to the winter season, and he was vexed on considering that it would cause loss of time and some trouble if he had to get together boats to take his army across and to build rafts. However, in the evening the water began to subside, and it went on falling all through the night, and at daybreak the bed of the river was empty. The natives observing that some small islands in the river had become visible, and that the stream near them was still, made their obeisance to Lucullus; for this had very seldom happened before, and they considered it a token that the river had purposely made itself tame and gentle for Lucullus, and was offering him an easy and ready passage. Accordingly, Lucullus took advantage of the opportunity, and carried his troops over: and a favourable sign accompanied the passage of the army. Cows feed in that neighbourhood, which are sacred to Artemis Persia, a deity whom the barbarians on the farther side of the Euphrates venerate above all others; they use the cows only for sacrifice, which at other times ramble at liberty about the country, with a brand upon them, in the form of the torch of the goddess, and it is not very easy, nor without much trouble, that they can catch the cows when they want them. After the army had crossed the Euphrates one of these cows came to a rock, which is considered sacred to the goddess, and stood upon it, and there laying down its head, just as a cow does when it is held down tight by a rope, it offered itself to Lucullus to be sacrificed. Lucullus also sacrificed a bull to the Euphrates, as an acknowledgment for his passage over the river. He encamped there for that day, and on the next and the following days he advanced through Sophene[395] without doing any harm to the people, who joined him and gladly received the soldiers; and when the soldiers were expressing a wish to take possession of a fortress, which was supposed to contain much wealth, "That is the fortress," said Lucullus, "which we must take first," pointing to the Taurus[396] in the distance; "but this is reserved for the victors." He now continued his route by hard marches, and, crossing the Tigris, entered Armenia.

XXV. Now, as the first person who reported to Tigranes that Lucullus was in the country got nothing for his pains, but had his head cut off, nobody else would tell him, and Tigranes was sitting in ignorance while the fires of war were burning round him, and listening to flattering words, That Lucullus would be a great general if he should venture to stand against Tigranes at Ephesus, and should not flee forthwith from Asia, at the sight of so many tens of thousands. So true it is, that it is not every man who can bear much wine, nor is it any ordinary understanding that in great prosperity does not lose all sound judgment. The first of his friends who ventured to tell him the truth was Mithrobarzanes; and he, too, got no reward for his boldness in speaking; for he was sent forthwith against Lucullus, with three thousand horsemen and a very large body of infantry, with orders to bring the general alive, and to trample down his men. Now, part of the army of Lucullus was preparing to halt, and the rest was still advancing. When the scouts reported that the barbarian was coming upon them, Lucullus was afraid that the enemy would fall upon his troops while they were divided and not in battle order, and so put them into confusion. Lucullus himself set to work to superintend the encampment, and he sent Sextilius, one of his legati, with sixteen hundred horsemen, and hoplitæ[397] and light-armed troops, a few more in number, with orders to approach close to the enemy, and wait till he should hear that the soldiers who were with him had made their encampment. Sextilius wished to follow his orders; but he was compelled to engage by Mithrobarzanes, who was confidently advancing against him. A battle ensued, in which Mithrobarzanes fell fighting; and the rest, taking to flight, were all cut to pieces with the exception of a few. Upon this Tigranes left Tigranocerta,[398] a large city which he had founded, and retreated to the Taurus, and there began to get together his forces from all parts: but Lucullus, allowing him no time for preparation, sent Murena to harass and cut off those who were collecting to join Tigranes, and Sextilius on the other side to check a large body of Arabs, who were approaching to the king. It happened just at the same time that Sextilius fell on the Arabs as they were encamping and killed most of them, and Murena, following Tigranes, took the opportunity of attacking him as he was passing through a rough and narrow defile with his army in a long line. Tigranes fled, and left behind him all his baggage; and many of the Armenians were killed and still more taken prisoners.

XXVI. After this success Lucullus broke up his camp and marched against Tigranocerta, which he surrounded with his lines, and began to besiege. There were in the city many Greeks, a part of those who had been removed from Cilicia, and many barbarians who had fared the same way with the Greeks, Adiabeni,[399] and Assyrians, and Gordyeni and Cappadocians, whose native cities Tigranes had digged down, and had removed the inhabitants and settled them there. The city was also filled with wealth and sacred offerings, for every private individual and prince, in order to please the king, contributed to the increase and ornament of the city. For this reason Lucullus pressed the siege, thinking that Tigranes would not endure this, but even contrary to his judgment, would come down in passion and fight a battle; and he was not mistaken. Now, Mithridates, both by messengers and letters, strongly advised Tigranes not to fight a battle, but to cut off the enemy's supplies by means of his cavalry; and Taxiles[400] also, who had come from Mithridates to join Tigranes, earnestly entreated the king to keep on the defensive, and to avoid the arms of the Romans, as being invincible. Tigranes at first readily listened to this advice: but when the Armenians and Gordyeni had joined him with all their forces, and the kings were come, bringing with them all the power of the Medes and Adiabeni, and many Arabs had arrived from the sea that borders on Babylonia, and many Albanians from the Caspian, and Iberians, who are neighbours of the Albanians; and not a few of the tribes about the Araxes,[401] who are not governed by kings, had come to join him, induced by solicitations and presents, and the banquets of the king were filled with hopes and confidence and barbaric threats, and his councils also,--Taxiles narrowly escaped death for opposing the design of fighting, and it was believed that Mithridates wished to divert Tigranes from obtaining a great victory, merely from envy. Accordingly, Tigranes would not even wait for Mithridates, for fear he should share in the glory; but he advanced with all his force, and greatly complained to his friends, it is said, that he would have to encounter Lucullus alone, and not all the Roman generals at once. And his confidence was not altogether madness nor without good grounds, when he looked upon so many nations and kings following him, and bodies of hoplitæ, and tens of thousands of horsemen; for he was at the head of twenty thousand bowmen and slingers and fifty-five thousand horsemen, of whom seventeen thousand were clothed in armour of mail, as Lucullus said in his letter to the Senate, and one hundred and fifty thousand hoplitæ, some of whom were drawn up in cohorts and others in phalanx; and of road-makers, bridge-makers, clearers of rivers, timber-cutters, and labourers for other necessary purposes, there were thirty-five thousand, who, being placed behind the fighting men, added to the imposing appearance and the strength of the army.

XXVII. When Tigranes had crossed the Taurus, and, showing himself with all his forces, looked down on the Roman army, which was encamped before Tigranocerta, the barbarians in the city hailed his appearance with shouts and clapping of hands, and from their walls with threats pointed to the Armenians. As Lucullus was considering about the battle, some advised him to give up the siege, and march against Tigranes; others urged him not to leave so many enemies in his rear, nor to give up the siege. Lucullus replied, that singly they did not advise well, but that taken both together the counsel was good; on which he divided his army. He left Murena with six thousand foot to maintain the siege; and himself taking twenty-four cohorts, among which there were not above ten thousand hoplitæ, with all his cavalry and slingers and bowmen, to the number of about one thousand, advanced against the enemy. Lucullus, encamping in a large plain by the bank of the river, appeared contemptible to Tigranes, and furnished matter for amusement to the king's flatterers. Some scoffed at him, and others, by way of amusement, cast lots for the spoil, and all the generals and kings severally applied to the king, and begged the matter might be intrusted to each of them singly, and that Tigranes would sit as a spectator. Tigranes also attempted to be witty, and, in a scoffing manner, he uttered the well-known saying, "If they have come as ambassadors, there are too many of them; if as soldiers, too few." Thus they amused themselves with sarcastic sayings and jokes. At daybreak Lucullus led out his troops under arms. Now the barbarian army was on the east side of the river; but, as the river makes a bend towards the west, at a part where it was easiest to ford, Lucullus led his troops out, and hurried in that direction, which led Tigranes to think that he was retreating; and calling Taxiles to him he said, with a laugh, "Don't you see that these invincible Roman warriors are flying?" Taxiles replied: "I should be pleased, O king, at any strange thing happening which should be lucky to you; but the Roman soldiers do not put on their splendid attire when they are on a march; nor have they then their shields cleaned, and their helmets bare, as they now have, by reason of having taken off the leathern coverings; but this brightness of their armour is a sign they are going to fight, and are now marching against their enemies." While Taxiles was still speaking the first eagle came in sight; for Lucullus had now faced about, and the cohorts were seen taking their position in manipuli for the purpose of crossing the river: on which Tigranes, as if he were hardly recovering from a drunken bout, called out two or three times, "What, are they coming against us?" and so, with much confusion, the enemy's soldiers set about getting into order, the king taking his position in the centre, and giving the left wing to the King of the Adiabeni, and the right to the Mede, on which wing also were the greater part of the soldiers, clad in mail, occupying the first ranks. As Lucullus was going to cross the river, some of the officers bade him beware of the day, which was one of the unlucky days which the Romans call black days; for on that day Cæpio[402] and his army were destroyed in a battle with the Cimbri. Lucullus replied in these memorable words: "Well, I will make it a lucky day for the Romans." The day was the sixth of October.

XXVIII. Saying this, and bidding his men be of good cheer, Lucullus began to cross the river, and advanced against the enemy, at the head of his soldiers, with a breastplate of glittering scaly steel, and a cloak with a fringed border, and he just let it be seen that his sword was already bare, thereby indicating that they must forthwith come to close quarters with the enemy, who fought with missiles, and by the rapidity of the attack cut off the intervening space, within which the barbarians could use their bows. Observing that the mailed cavalry, which had a great reputation, were stationed under an eminence, crowned by a broad level space, and that the approach to it was only a distance of four stadia, and neither difficult nor rough, he ordered the Thracian cavalry and the Gauls who were in the army, to fall on them in the flank, and to beat aside their long spears with their swords. Now the mailed horsemen rely solely on their long spears, and they can do nothing else, either in their own defence or against the enemy, owing to the weight and rigidity of their armour, and they look like men who are walled up in it. Lucullus himself, with two cohorts, pushed on vigorously to the hill, followed by his men, who were encouraged by seeing him in his armour, enduring all the fatigue on foot, and pressing forwards. On reaching the summit, Lucullus stood on a conspicuous spot, and called out aloud: "We have got the victory! Fellow soldiers, we have got the victory!" With these words he led his men against the mailed horsemen, and ordered them not to use their javelins yet, but every man to hold them in both hands, and to thrust against the enemy's legs and thighs, which are the only parts of these mailed men that are bare. However, there was no occasion for this mode of fighting; for the enemy did not stand the attack of the Romans, but, setting up a shout and flying most disgracefully, they threw themselves and their horses, with all their weight, upon their own infantry, before the infantry had begun the battle, so that so many tens of thousands were defeated before a wound was felt or blood was drawn. Now the great slaughter began when the army turned to flight, or rather attempted to fly, for they could not really fly, owing to the closeness and depth of their ranks, which made them in the way of one another. Tigranes, riding off at the front, fled with a few attendants, and, seeing that his son was a partner in his misfortune, he took off the diadem from his head, and, with tears, presented it to him, at the same time telling him to save himself, as he best could, by taking some other direction. The youth would not venture to put the diadem on his head, but gave it to the most faithful of his slaves to keep. This slave, happening to be taken, was carried to Lucullus, and thus the diadem of Tigranes, with other booty, fell into the hands of the Romans. It is said that above one hundred thousand of the infantry perished, and very few of the cavalry escaped. On the side of the Romans, a hundred were wounded, and five killed. Antiochus[403] the philosopher, who mentions this battle in his 'Treatise on the Gods,' says that the sun never saw a battle like it. Strabo, another philosopher,[404] in his 'Historical Memoirs,' says that the Romans were ashamed, and laughed at one another, for requiring arms against such a set of slaves. And Livius[405] observed that the Romans never engaged with an enemy with such inferiority of numbers on their side, for the victors were hardly the twentieth part of the defeated enemy, but somewhat less. The most skilful of the Roman generals, and those who had most military experience, commended Lucullus chiefly for this, that he had out-generalled the two most distinguished and powerful kings by two most opposite manœuvres, speed and slowness; for he wore out Mithridates, at the height of his power, by time and protracting the war; but he crushed Tigranes by his activity: and he was one of the very few commanders who ever employed delay when he was engaged in active operations, and bold measures when his safety was at stake.

XXIX. Mithridates made no haste to be present at the battle, because he supposed that Lucullus would carry on the campaign with his usual caution and delay; but he was advancing leisurely to join Tigranes. At first he fell in with a few Armenians on the road, who were retreating in great alarm and consternation, and he conjectured what had happened, but as he soon heard of the defeat from a large number whom he met, who had lost their arms and were wounded, he set out to seek Tigranes. Though he found Tigranes destitute of everything, and humbled, Mithridates did not retaliate for his former haughty behaviour, but he got down from his horse, and lamented with Tigranes their common misfortunes; he also gave Tigranes a royal train that was attending on him, and encouraged him to hope for the future. Accordingly, the two kings began to collect fresh forces. Now, in the city of Tigranocerta[406] the Greeks had fallen to quarrelling with the barbarians, and were preparing to surrender the place to Lucullus, on which he assaulted and took it. Lucullus appropriated to himself the treasures in the city, but he gave up the city to be plundered by the soldiers, which contained eight thousand talents of coined money, with other valuable booty. Besides this, Lucullus gave to each man eight hundred drachmæ out of the produce of the spoils. Hearing that many actors had been taken in the city, whom Tigranes had collected from all quarters, with the view of opening the theatre which he had constructed, Lucullus employed them for the games and shows in celebration of the victory. The Greeks he sent to their homes, and supplied them with means for the journey, and in like manner those barbarians who had been compelled to settle there; the result of which was that the dissolution of one city was followed by the restoration of many others, which thus recovered their citizens, by whom Lucullus was beloved as a benefactor and a founder. Everything else also went on successfully and conformably to the merits of the general, who sought for the praise that is due to justice and humanity, and not the praise that follows success in war: for the success in war was due in no small degree, to the army and to fortune, but his justice and humanity proved that he had a mild and well-regulated temper; and it was by these means that Lucullus now subdued the barbarians without resorting to arms; for the kings of the Arabs came to him to surrender all that they had, and the Sopheni also came over to him. He also gained the affection of the Gordyeni so completely that they were ready to leave their cities, and to follow him, as volunteers, with their children and wives, the reason of which was as follows: Zarbienus, the King of the Gordyeni, as it has been already told, secretly communicated, through Appius, with Lucullus about an alliance, being oppressed by the tyranny of Tigranes; but his design was reported to Tigranes, and he was put to death, and his children and wife perished with him, before the Romans invaded Armenia. Lucullus did not forget all this; and, on entering Gordyene, he made a funeral for Zarbienus, and, ornamenting the pile with vests, and the king's gold, and the spoils got from Tigranes, he set fire to it himself, and poured libations on the pile, with the friends and kinsmen of the king, and gave him the name of friend and ally of the Roman people. He also ordered a monument to be erected to him at great cost; for a large quantity of gold and silver was found in the palace of Zarbienus, and there were stored up three million medimni of wheat, so that the soldiers were well supplied, and Lucullus was admired, that without receiving a drachma from the treasury, he made the war support itself.

XXX. While Lucullus was here, there came an embassy from the King of the Parthians[407] also, who invited him to friendship and an alliance. This proposal was agreeable to Lucullus, and in return he sent ambassadors to the Parthian, who discovered that he was playing double and secretly asking Mesopotamia from Tigranes as the price of his alliance. On hearing this Lucullus determined to pass by Tigranes and Mithridates as exhausted antagonists, and to try the strength of the Parthians, and to march against them, thinking it a glorious thing, in one uninterrupted campaign, like an athlete, to give three kings in succession the throw, and to have made his way through three empires, the most powerful under the sun, unvanquished and victorious. Accordingly he sent orders to Sornatius and the other commanders in Pontus to conduct the army there to him, as he was intending to advance from Gordyene farther into Asia. These generals had already found that the soldiers were difficult to manage and mutinous; but now they made the ungovernable temper of the soldiers quite apparent, being unable by any means of persuasion or compulsion to move the soldiers, who, with solemn asseverations, declared aloud that they would not stay even where they were, but would go and leave Pontus undefended. Report of this being carried to the army of Lucullus effected the corruption of his soldiers also, who had been made inert towards military service by the wealth they had acquired and their luxurious living, and they wanted rest; and, when they heard of the bold words of the soldiers in Pontus, they said they were men, and their example ought to be followed, for they had done enough to entitle them to be released from military service, and to enjoy repose.

XXXI. Lucullus, becoming acquainted with these and other still more mutinous expressions, gave up the expedition against the Parthians, and marched a second time against Tigranes. It was now the height of summer; and Lucullus was dispirited after crossing the Taurus, to see that the fields were still green,[408] so much later are the seasons, owing to the coldness of the air. However, he descended from the Taurus, and, after defeating the Armenians, who twice or thrice ventured to attack him, he plundered the villages without any fear; and, by seizing the corn which had been stored up by Tigranes, he reduced the enemy to the straits which he was apprehending himself. Lucullus challenged the Armenians to battle by surrounding their camp with his lines and ravaging the country before their eyes; but, as this did not make them move after their various defeats, he broke up and advanced against Artaxata, the royal residence of Tigranes, where his young children and wives were, thinking that Tigranes would not give them up without a battle. It is said that Hannibal the Carthaginian, after the defeat of Antiochus by the Romans, went to Artaxas the Armenian, to whose notice he introduced many useful things; and, observing a position which possessed great natural advantages and was very pleasant, though at that time unoccupied and neglected, he made the plan of a city on the ground, and, taking Artaxas there, showed it to him, and urged him to build up the place. The king, it is said, was pleased, and asked Hannibal to superintend the work; and thereupon a large and beautiful city sprung up, and, being named after the king, was declared to be the capital of Armenia. Tigranes did not let Lucullus quietly march against Artaxata, but, moving with his forces on the fourth day, he encamped opposite to the Romans, placing the river Arsanias between him and the enemy, which river the Romans must of necessity cross on their route to Artaxata. After sacrificing to the gods, Lucullus, considering that he had the victory in his hands, began to lead his army across the river, with twelve cohorts in the van, and the rest placed as a reserve to prevent the enemy from attacking his flank. There was a large body of picked cavalry opposed to the Romans, and in front of them Mardi mounted archers, and Iberians[409] armed with spears, on whom Tigranes relied more than any of his mercenaries, as being the most warlike of all. However, they showed no gallant spirit; but, after a slight skirmish with the Roman cavalry, they did not venture to stand the attack of the infantry, and separating and taking to flight on both sides they drew after them the cavalry in the pursuit. At the moment when this part of the enemy was dispersed, the cavalry, which was about Tigranes, rode forward, and Lucullus was alarmed when he saw their brave appearance and numbers. He recalled the cavalry from the pursuit, and himself was the first to meet the Satrapeni,[410] who were posted opposite to him with the king's chief officers; but before they came to close quarters, the enemy was panic-struck and turned to flight. Of three kings at the same time opposed to the Romans, Mithridates of Pontus appears to have fled most disgracefully; for he did not stay to hear even the shouts of the Romans. The pursuit was continued for a great distance and all night long, and the Romans were wearied with killing and taking prisoners, and getting valuables and booty. Livius[411] says that in the former battle a greater number of the enemy, but in this more men of rank fell and were taken prisoners.

XXXII. Elated and encouraged by this victory, Lucullus was intending to advance farther into the country, and to subdue the barbarian; but contrary to what one would have expected at the season of the autumnal equinox, they were assailed by heavy storms, generally snow-storms, and, when the sky was clear, there was hoar-frost and ice, owing to which the horses could not well drink of the rivers, by reason of the excessive cold; and they were difficult to ford, because the ice broke, and the rough edges cut the horses' sinews. And as the greater part of the country was shaded and full of defiles and wooded, the soldiers were kept continually wet, being loaded with snow while they were marching, and spending the night uncomfortably in damp places. Accordingly, they had not followed Lucullus for many days after the battle when they began to offer resistance, at first making entreaties and also sending the tribunes to him, and then collecting in a tumultuous manner, with loud shouts in their tents by night, which is considered to be an indication that an army is in a state of mutiny. Yet Lucullus urged them strongly, and called on them to put endurance in their souls till they had taken and destroyed the Armenian Carthage, the work of their greatest enemy, meaning Hannibal. Not being able to prevail on them, he led them back by a different pass over the Taurus, and descended into the country called Mygdonike, which is fertile and warm, and contains a large and populous city, which the barbarians called Nisibis,[412] but the Greeks Antiocha Mygdonike. The city was defended in name by Gouras, a brother of Tigranes, but in fact by the experience and mechanical skill of Kallimachus, who had given Lucullus great trouble in the siege of Amisus also. Lucullus seated himself before the city, and, by availing himself of every mode of pressing a siege, in a short time he took the city by storm. Gouras, who surrendered himself to Lucullus, was treated kindly; but he would not listen to Kallimachus, though he promised to discover concealed treasures of great value; and he ordered him to be brought in chains to be punished for the conflagration by which he destroyed Amisus and deprived Lucullus of the object of his ambition and an opportunity of displaying his friendly disposition to the Greeks.

XXXIII. So far one may say that fortune accompanied Lucullus and shared his campaigns: but from this time, just as if a wind had failed him, trying to force everything and always meeting with obstacles, he displayed indeed the courage and endurance of a good commander, but his undertakings produced him neither fame nor good opinion, and even the reputation that he had he came very near losing by his want of success and his fruitless disputes. Lucullus himself was in no small degree the cause of all this; for he was not a man who tried to gain the affection of the soldiery, and he considered everything that was done to please the men as a disparagement to the general's power, and as tending to destroy it. But, what was worst of all, he was not affable to the chief officers and those of the same rank as himself; he despised everybody, and thought no man had any merit compared with his own.[413] These bad qualities, it is said, that Lucullus had, though he possessed many merits. He was tall and handsome, a powerful speaker, and equally prudent in the Forum and the camp. Now, Sallustius says that the soldiers were ill-disposed towards him at the very commencement of the war before Kyzikus, and again at Amisus, because they were compelled to spend two winters in succession in camp. They were also vexed about the other winters, for they either spent them in a hostile country, or encamped among the allies under the bare sky; for Lucullus never once entered a Greek and friendly city with his army. While the soldiers were in this humour, they received encouragement from the demagogues at Rome, who envied Lucullus, and charged him with protracting the war through love of power and avarice. They said that he all but held at once Cilicia, Asia, Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Pontus, Armenia, and the parts as far as the Phasis, and that at last he had plundered even the palace of Tigranes, as if he had been sent to strip kings and not to conquer them. This, it is said, was urged by one of the prætors, Lucius Quintus,[414] by whom they were mainly persuaded to pass a decree to send persons to supersede Lucullus in his province. They also decreed that many of the soldiers under Lucullus should be released from service.

XXXIV. To these causes, in themselves so weighty, there was added another that, most of all, ruined the measures of Lucullus; and this was Publius Clodius, a violent man, and full of arrogance and audacity. He was the brother of the wife of Lucullus, a woman of most dissolute habits, whom he was also accused of debauching. At this time he was serving with Lucullus, and he did not get all the distinction to which he thought himself entitled. In fact, he aspired to the first rank, and, as there were many preferred before him, in consequence of his character, he secretly endeavoured to win the favour of Fimbria's army, and to excite the soldiers against Lucullus, by circulating among them words well suited to those who were ready to hear them, and were not unaccustomed to be courted. These were the men whom Fimbria had persuaded to kill the consul Flaccus, and to choose himself for their general. Accordingly, they gladly listened to Clodius, and called him the soldier's friend, for he pretended to feel indignant at their treatment. "Was there never to be an end," he would say, "to so many wars and dangers, and were they to wear out their lives in fighting with every nation, and wandering over every country, and getting no equivalent for so much service, but, instead thereof, were they to convoy waggons and camels of Lucullus, loaded with cups of gold, set with precious stones, while the soldiers of Pompeius were now living as citizens,[415] and with their wives and children were sitting quiet in the enjoyment of fertile lands and cities, though they had not driven Mithridates and Tigranes into uninhabited wildernesses, nor pulled down the palaces of Asia, but had fought with exiles in Iberia, and runaway slaves in Italy? Why, then, if there is never to be an end of our service, do we not reserve what remains of our bodies and our lives for a general who considers the wealth of the soldiers his chief glory?" By such causes as these the army of Lucullus was corrupted, and his soldiers refused to follow him either against Tigranes or against Mithridates, who immediately made an irruption from Armenia into Pontus, and endeavoured to recover his power; but alleging the winter as an excuse, the soldiers lingered in Gordyene, expecting every moment that Pompeius, or some other commander,[416] would arrive to supersede Lucullus.

XXXV. But when news came that Mithridates had defeated Fabius,[417] and was marching against Sornatius and Triarius, through very shame the soldiers followed Lucullus. Triarius, being ambitious to snatch the victory which he thought was in his grasp, before Lucullus, who was near, should arrive, was defeated in a great battle. It is said that above seven thousand Romans fell, among whom were a hundred and fifty centurions, and twenty-four tribunes; and Mithridates took the camp. Lucullus arrived a few days after, and secreted from the soldiers Triarius, whom in their passion, they wore looking for; and, as Mithridates was not willing to fight, but was waiting for Tigranes, who was already coming down with a large force, Lucullus determined to march back, and to fight with Tigranes before he and Mithridates could unite. As he was on his march the soldiers of Fimbria mutinied, and left their ranks, considering that they were released from service by the decree of the Senate, and that Lucullus had no longer any right to the command, now that the provinces were assigned to others. Upon this there was nothing, however inconsistent with his dignity, which Lucullus did not submit to do--supplicating the soldiers individually, and going about from tent to tent in humble manner, and with tears in his eyes, and sometimes even taking the soldiers by the hand. But they rejected his proffered hand, and threw down before him their empty purses, and told him to fight with the enemy himself, for he was the only person who knew how to get rich from them. However, at the request of the rest of the army, the soldiers of Fimbria were constrained, and agreed to stay to the end of summer, and if, in the meantime, no enemy should come down to fight them, they were then to be released. Lucullus was of necessity obliged to acquiesce in this, or else to be left alone, and give up the country to the barbarians. He therefore kept the soldiers together, without making any further attempt to force them, or lead them out to battle, for he was well content if they would stay with him, and he allowed Cappadocia to be ravaged by Tigranes, and Mithridates to resume his arrogance, as to whom he had written to the Senate, to inform them that he was completely subdued; and the commissioners[418] were now with him who had been sent to settle the affairs of Pontus, on the supposition that the country was completely in the power of the Romans. Indeed, the commissioners were now witnesses that Lucullus was not his own master, but was treated with contumely and insult by the soldiers, who carried their audacity towards their commander so far, that, at the close of the summer, they put on their armour, and drawing their swords, challenged to battle the enemy who were no longer there, but had already moved off. After uttering the war shout, and flourishing their swords in the air, they left the camp, declaring that the time was up which they had agreed to stay with Lucullus. The rest of the soldiers were summoned by Pompeius by letter, for he had been appointed to the command[419] in the war against Mithridates and Tigranes, by the favour of the people, and through the influence of the demagogues; though the Senate and the nobles thought that Lucullus was wronged, inasmuch as he was not superseded in a war, but in a triumph; and it was not the command, but the honours of the command that he was compelled to divest himself of, and to surrender to others.

XXXVI. But it appeared a still greater wrong to those who were with Lucullus in Asia, that Lucullus had not the power either to reward or punish for anything that was done in the war; nor did Pompeius allow any person to go to him, nor to pay any attention to the orders and regulations that he was making in concert with the ten commissioners, but he obstructed him by publishing counter edicts, and by the fear which he inspired from having a larger force. However, their friends agreed to bring them together, and they met in a village of Galatia, where they saluted one another in a friendly manner, and each congratulated the other on his victories. Lucullus was the elder, but Pompeius had the greater reputation, because he had oftener had the command, and enjoyed two triumphs. Fasces, wreathed with bay,[420] were carried before both generals in token of their victories. But, as Pompeius had made a long march through a country without water and arid, the bays upon his fasces were withered, which the lictors of Lucullus observing, in a friendly manner gave them bays out of their own, which were fresh and green. And this the friends of Pompeius interpreted as a good omen; for, in fact, the exploits of Lucullus served to set off the command of Pompeius. But the conference[421] resulted in no amicable arrangement, and they separated with increased aversion towards each other. Pompeius also annulled the regulations of Lucullus, and he took off with him all the soldiers with the exception of sixteen hundred, whom he left to Lucullus for his triumph; and even these did not follow him very willingly: so ill suited was the temper of Lucullus, or so unlucky was he in securing that which, of all things, is the chief and greatest in a general; for, if he had possessed this quality, with the other many and great virtues that he had, courage, activity, judgment, and justice, the Roman empire would not have had the Euphrates for its limit, but the remotest parts of Asia, and the Hyrkanian Sea;[422] for all the other nations had already been defeated by Tigranes, and the Parthian power was not such as it afterwards showed itself to be in the campaign of Crassus,[423] nor so well combined, but owing to intestine and neighbouring wars, was not even strong enough to repel the attacks of the Armenians. But it seems to me that the services of Lucullus to his country were less than the harm he did it in other things; for his trophies in Armenia, which were erected on the borders of Parthia, and Tigranocerta, and Nisibis, and the great wealth that was brought from these cities to Rome, and the display of the diadem of Tigranes in his triumph, urged Crassus to attack Asia, and to think that the barbarians were only spoil and booty, and nothing else. But Crassus soon felt the Parthian arrows, and so proved that Lucullus had got the advantage over the enemy, not through their want of skill or cowardice, but by his own courage and ability. This, however, happened afterwards.

XXXVII. When Lucullus returned to Rome, first of all he found that his brother Marcus was under prosecution by Caius Memmius,[424] for what he had done in his quæstorship at the command of Sulla. Upon Marcus being acquitted, Memmius transferred his attack to Lucullus himself, and endeavoured to excite the people against him, and persuaded them not to give him a triumph, on the ground that he had appropriated to himself much of the spoils, and had prolonged the war. Now that Lucullus was involved in a great struggle, the first and most powerful men, mingling themselves among the tribes, by much entreaty and exertion with difficulty persuaded the people to allow Lucullus to have a triumph;[425] not, however, like some, a triumph which was striking and bustling, from the length of the procession, and the quantity of things that were displayed, but he decorated the circus of Flaminius with the arms of the enemy, of which he had a great quantity, and with the royal engines of war; and it was a spectacle in itself far from being contemptible. In the procession a few of the mailed horsemen, and ten of the scythe-bearing chariots moved along, with sixty of the king's friends and generals, and a hundred and ten brazen-beaked ships of war also were carried in the procession, and a gold statue of Mithridates six feet high, and a shield ornamented with precious stones, and twenty litters loaded with silver vessels, and two-and-thirty loaded with golden cups, armour, and money. All this was carried on men's shoulders; but there were eight mules that bore golden couches, and fifty-six carried silver in bars, and a hundred and seven others carried silver coin to the amount of near two million seven hundred thousand pieces. There were also tablets, on which was written the amount of money that Lucullus had supplied Pompeius with for the pirates' war, and the amount that he had paid to those who had the care of the ærarium; and besides this, it was added that every soldier received nine hundred and fifty drachmæ. After this Lucullus feasted all the city in a splendid style, and the surrounding villages which the Romans call Vici.

XXXVIII. After Lucullus had divorced Clodia, who was a loose and unprincipled woman, he married Servilia,[426] the sister of Cato, but neither was this a happy marriage; for he thus escaped only one of the misfortunes that resulted from his union with Clodia, the scandal about her brothers: in every other respect Servilia was as abominable as Clodia and a licentious woman, and yet Lucullus was obliged to bear with her from regard to Cato; but at last he put her away. Lucullus had raised the highest expectations in the Senate, who hoped to find in him a counterpoise to the overbearing conduct of Pompeius and a defender of the aristocracy,[427] inasmuch as he had the advantage of great reputation and influence; but he disappointed these hopes and gave up political affairs, either because he saw that they were already in a difficult position and not in a healthy state, or, as some say, because he was satisfied with glory, and wished to fall back to an easy and luxurious life, after his many contests and dangers, which had not been followed by the most fortunate of results. Some commend him for making such a change, whereby he avoided what had befallen Marius, who, after his Cimbrian victories and that great and glorious success, did not choose to dedicate himself to honour so great and to be an object of admiration, but through insatiate desire of glory and power, though an old man, entered into political warfare with young men, and so ended his career in dreadful acts, and in sufferings more dreadful than acts; and they say that Cicero also would have had a better old age if he had withdrawn from public life after the affair of Catiline, and Scipio after he had added the conquest of Numantia to that of Carthage, if he had then stopped; for there is a close to a political period also, and political contests as well as those of athletes are censured when a man's vigour and prime have failed him. But Crassus and Pompeius sneered[428] at Lucullus for giving himself up to pleasure and extravagant living, as if a luxurious life was not more unsuitable to persons of his age than affairs of state and military command.

XXXIX. Now in the life of Lucullus, as in an ancient comedy, we may read, in the first part, of political measures and military command, and, in the last part, of drinking and feasts, and hardly anything but revels, and torches, and all kinds of amusement; for I reckon among amusements, expensive buildings, and construction of ambulatories and baths, and still more paintings and statues, and eagerness about works of this kind, all which he got together at great cost, and to this end spent profusely the wealth which he had accumulated to a large and splendid amount in his military command; for, even now, when luxury of this kind has increased, the gardens of Lucullus are reckoned among the most sumptuous of the imperial gardens.[429] But with respect to his works on the sea-coast and in the neighbourhood of Neapolis, where he suspended as it were hills by digging great tunnels,[430] and threw around his dwelling-places circular pieces of sea-water and channels for the breeding of fish, and built houses in the sea, Tubero the Stoic,[431] on seeing them, called him Xerxes in a toga. He had also country residences in the neighbourhood of Tusculum, and towers commanding prospects,[432] and open apartments and ambulatories, which Pompeius on visiting found fault with Lucullus, that he had arranged his house in the best way for summer, but had made it unfit to live in during the winter. On which Lucullus said, with a smile, "You think, then, I have less sense than the cranes and storks, and do not change my residence according to the seasons." On one occasion, when a prætor was ambitious to signalize himself in the matter of a public spectacle, and asked of Lucullus some purple cloaks for the dress of a chorus, Lucullus replied, that he would see if he had any and would give them to him; and the day after he asked the prætor how many he wanted. The prætor said that a hundred would be enough, on which Lucullus told him to take twice as many; in allusion to which the poet Flaccus[433] has remarked, that he does not consider a man to be rich, if the property that he cares not for and knows nothing about is not more than that which he sees.

XL. The daily meals of Lucullus were accompanied with all the extravagance of newly-acquired wealth; for it was not only by dyed coverlets for his couches, and cups set with precious stones, and choruses and dramatic entertainments, but by abundance of all kinds of food and dainty dishes, curiously prepared, that he made himself an object of admiration to the uninstructed. Now Pompeius gained a good reputation in an illness that he had; for the physician had ordered him to eat a thrush, and, on his domestics telling him that a thrush could not be found in the summer season except at the house of Lucullus, where they were fed, Pompeius would not consent to have one got from there; but remarking to his physician, "What, if Lucullus were not so luxurious, could not Pompeius live?" bade them get for him something else that could be easily procured. Cato, who was his friend and connected with him by marriage, was so much annoyed at his life and habits that, on one occasion, when a young man had delivered in the senate a tedious and lengthy discourse, quite out of season, on frugality and temperance, Cato got up and said, "Won't you stop, you who are as rich as Crassus, and live like Lucullus, and speak like Cato?" Some say that a remark to this effect was made, but that it was not by Cato.

XLI. That Lucullus was not merely pleased with this mode of living, but prided himself upon it, appears from the anecdotes that are recorded. It is said, that he feasted for many days some Greeks who visited Rome, and that they, feeling as Greeks would do[434] on the occasion, began to be ashamed and to decline the invitation, on the ground that he was daily incurring so much expense on their account; but Lucullus said to them with a smile, "It is true, Greeks, that this is partly done on your account, but mainly on the account of Lucullus." One day, when he was supping alone, a single course and a moderate repast had been prepared for him, at which he was angry, and called for the slave whose business it was to look after such matters. The slave said, that he did not suppose that he would want anything costly, as no guest was invited. "What sayest thou?" said Lucullus, "didst thou not know that to-day Lucullus sups with Lucullus?" Now, this matter being much talked of in the city, as one might expect, there came up to Lucullus, as he was idling in the Forum, Cicero and Pompeius, of whom Cicero was among his most intimate friends; but between Lucullus and Pompeius there was some difference, arising out of the affair of the command in the Mithridatic war, and yet they were accustomed to associate and talk together frequently in a friendly manner. Accordingly, Cicero saluted him, and asked him how he was disposed to receive visitors, to which Lucullus replied, "Exceedingly well," and invited them to pay him a visit. "We wish," said Cicero, "to sup with you to-day, just in the same way as if preparation were made for yourself only." Lucullus began to make some difficulty, and to ask them to allow him to name another day; but they said they would not, nor would they let him speak to his servants, that he might not have the opportunity of ordering anything more than what was preparing for himself. However, at his request, they allowed him just to tell one of his slaves in their presence, that he would sup on that day in the Apollo; for this was the name of one of his costly apartments. This trick of Lucullus was not understood by his guests; for it is said that to every banqueting-room there was assigned the cost of the feast there, and every room had its peculiar style of preparation and entertainment, so that when the slaves heard in which room their master intended to sup, they also knew what was to be the cost of the supper and the kind of decoration and arrangement. Now, Lucullus was accustomed to sup in the Apollo at the cost of fifty thousand drachmas, and this being the cost of the entertainment on the present occasion, Pompeius and Cicero were surprised at the rapidity with which the banquet had been got ready and the costliness of the entertainment. In this way, then, Lucullus used his wealth, capriciously, just as if it were a captive slave and a barbarian.

XLII. What he did as to his collection of books is worth notice and mention. He got together a great number of books which were well transcribed, and the mode in which they were used was more honourable to him than the acquisition of them; for the libraries were open to all, and the walking-places which surrounded them, and the reading rooms were accessible to the Greeks without any restriction, and they went there as to an abode of the Muses, and spent the day there in company with one another, gladly betaking themselves to the libraries from their other occupations. Lucullus himself often spent some time there with the visitors, walking about in the ambulatories, and he used to talk there with men engaged in public affairs on such matters as they might choose; and altogether his house was a home and a Greek prytaneum[435] to those who came to Rome. He was fond of philosophy generally, and well disposed to every sect, and friendly to them all; but from the first he particularly admired and loved the Academy,[436] not that which is called the New Academy, though the sect was then flourishing by the propagation of the doctrines of Karneades by Philo, but Old Academy, which at that time had for its head a persuasive man and a powerful speaker, Antiochus of Askalon, whom Lucullus eagerly sought for his friend and companion, and opposed to the followers of Philo, of whom Cicero also was one. Cicero wrote an excellent treatise upon the doctrines of this sect, in which he made Lucullus[437] the speaker in favour of the doctrine of comprehension[438] and himself the speaker on the opposite side. The book is entitled 'Lucullus.' Lucullus and Cicero were, as I have said, great friends, and associated in their political views, for Lucullus had not entirely withdrawn from public affairs, though he had immediately on his return to Rome surrendered to Crassus and Cato the ambition and the struggle to be the first man in the state and have the greatest power, considering that the struggle was not free from danger and great mortification; for those who looked with jealousy on the power of Pompeius put Crassus and Cato at the head of their party in the Senate, when Lucullus declined to take the lead, but Lucullus used to go to the Forum to support his friends, and to the Senate whenever it was necessary to put a check on any attempt or ambitious design of Pompeius. The arrangements which Pompeius made after his conquest of the kings, Lucullus contrived to nullify, and when Pompeius proposed a distribution of lands[439] Lucullus with the assistance of Cato prevented it from being made, which drew Pompeius to seek the friendship of Crassus and Cæsar, or rather to enter into a combination with them, and by filling the city with arms and soldiers he got his measures ratified after driving out of the Forum the partisans of Cato and Lucullus. The nobles being indignant at these proceedings, the party of Pompeius produced one Vettius,[440] whom, as they said, they had detected in a design on the life of Pompeius. When Vettius was examined before the Senate, he accused others, and before the popular assembly he named Lucullus as the person by whom he had been suborned to murder Pompeius. But nobody believed him, and it soon became clear that the man had been brought forward by the partisans of Pompeius to fabricate a false charge, and to criminate others, and the fraud was made still more apparent, when a few days after the dead body of Vettius was thrown out of the prison; for, though it was given out that he died a natural death[441] there were marks of strangulation and violence on the body, and it was the opinion that he had been put to death by those who suborned him.

XLIII. This induced Lucullus still more to withdraw from public affairs; and when Cicero was banished from Rome, and Cato[442] was sent to Cyprus, he retired altogether. Before he died, it is said that his understanding was disordered and gradually failed. Cornelius Nepos says that Lucullus did not die of old age nor of disease, but that his health was destroyed by potions given him by Callisthenes, one of his freedmen, and that the potions were given him by Callisthenes with the view of increasing his master's affection for him, a power which the potions were supposed to have, but they so far disturbed and destroyed his reason, that during his lifetime his brother managed his affairs. However, when Lucullus died, the people grieved just as much as if he had died at the height of his military distinction and his political career, and they flocked together and had his body carried to the Forum by the young men of the highest rank and were proceeding forcibly to have it interred in the Campus Martius where Sulla was interred; but, as nobody had expected this, and it was not easy to make the requisite preparations, the brother of Lucullus prayed and prevailed on the people to allow the funeral ceremony to take place on the estate at Tusculum, where preparations for it had been made. Nor did he long survive; but as in age and reputation he came a little after Lucullus, so he died shortly after him, a most affectionate brother.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 315: The complete name of Lucullus was L. Licinius Lucullus. The Licinii were a Plebeian Gens, to which belonged the Luculli, Crassi, Murænæ, and others. Lucius Licinius Lucullus, the grandfather of Plutarch's Lucullus, was the son of L. Licinius Lucullus, who was curule ædile B.C. 202, and the first who gave nobility to his family. This grandfather of Lucullus was consul B.C. 151 with P. Postumius Albinus. He conquered the Vaccæi, Cantabri, and other nations of Spain, hitherto unknown to the Romans. Appian (_Iberica_, c. 52) gives an instance of his cruelty and perfidy in his Spanish wars. L. Licinius Lucullus, the father, was prætor B.C. 103. In B.C. 102 he went to take the command against the slaves who were in rebellion in Sicily under Athenion. He conducted the war ill, and on his return he was prosecuted for peculation and convicted. His punishment was exile. It is not known what the offence was that Servilius was charged with.]

[Footnote 316: This Metellus was the conqueror of Jugurtha; he was consul B.C. 109. See the Life of Marius, c. 7. His sister Cæcilia was the wife of L. Licinius Lucullus, the father of Plutarch's Lucullus; she was also the mother of Marcus the brother of Lucius Lucullus.]

[Footnote 317: See Life of Sulla, c. 6.]

[Footnote 318: This line is also quoted by Plutarch in his Treatise 'De Sera Numinis Vindicta,' c. 10.]

[Footnote 319: I should have translated the Greek word ([Greek: dikologos] δικολόγος) "orator." Jurist in Plutarch is [Greek: nomodeiktês] νομοδείκτης (Plutarch, _Tib. Gracchus_, c. 9) or [Greek: nomikos] νομικός. Quintus Hortensius Ortalus, the orator, was a friend and rival of Cicero, who often speaks of him. He began his career as a pleader in the courts at the age of nineteen, and continued his practice for forty-four years. (_Brutus_, c. 64, and the note in H. Meyer's edition.)]

[Footnote 320: L. Cornelius Sisenna, a man of patrician family, was prætor, B.C. 119, and in the next year he was governor of Sicily. He and Hortensius defended C. Verres against Cicero. He wrote the history of the Marsic war and of the war of Sulla in Italy, which he continued to the death of Sulla. The historical work of Sallustius began where that of Sisenna ended. Cicero (_De Legg_. i. 2) says that Sisenna was the best historical writer that had then appeared at Rome. He wrote other works also, and he translated into Latin the lewd stories of Aristides the Milesian (Plutarch, _Crassus_, c. 32; Ovidius, _Tristia_, ii. v. 443).

See Cicero, _Brutus_, c. 64, and the notes in Meyer's edition; Krause, _Vitæ et Frag. Vet. Histor. Roman._ p. 299.]

[Footnote 321: It appears from this that the History of the Marsic war by Lucullus was extant in the time of Plutarch. Cicero (_Ad Attic_. i. 19) mentions this Greek history of Lucullus.]

[Footnote 322: This Marcus was adopted by M. Terentius Varro, whence after his adoption he was called M. Terentius Varro Lucullus. The curule ædileship of the two brothers belongs to the year B.C. 79, and the event is here placed, after Plutarch's fashion, not in the proper place in his biography, but the story is told incidentally as a characteristic of Lucullus. I have expressed myself ambiguously at the end of this chapter. It should be "that Lucullus in his absence was elected ædile with his brother." (Cicero, _Academ. Prior_. ii. 1.)]

[Footnote 323: See Life of Sulla, c. 13, &c.]

[Footnote 324: Drumann (_Geschichte Roms_, Licinii Luculli, p. 121, n. 80) observes that this winter expedition of Lucullus was "not after the capture of Athens, as Plutarch, Lucullus, c. 2," states, and he refers to Appian (_Mithridat._ c. 33). But Plutarch's account is not what Drumann represents it to be. This expedition was in the winter of B.C. 87 and 86. Ælian (_Var. Hist._ ii. 42) tells a similar story of Plato and the Arcadians, and Diogenes Lærtius (iii. 17) has a like story about Plato and the Arcadians and Thebans.]

[Footnote 325: This can only be Ptolemæus VIII., sometimes called Soter II. and Lathyrus, who was restored to his kingdom B.C. 89-8. The difficulty that Kaltwasser raises about Lathyrus being in Cyprus at this time is removed by the fact that he had returned from Cyprus. As to Plutarch calling him a "young man," that is a mistake; or Plutarch may have confounded him with his younger brother Alexander.]

[Footnote 326: Plutarch is alluding to the Pyramids, and to the great temples of Memphis.]

[Footnote 327: Pitane was one of the old Greek towns of Æolis, situated on the coast at the mouth of the Evenus, and opposite to the island of Lesbos, now Mytilene.]

[Footnote 328: See Life of Sulla, c. 12.]

[Footnote 329: See Life of Sulla, c. 21.]

[Footnote 330: This was the consul L. Valerius Flaccus. See the Life of Sulla, c. 20.]

[Footnote 331: Lektum is a promontory of the Troad, which is that district of Asia Minor that took its name from the old town of Troja or Troia, and lay in the angle between the Hellespont (the Dardanelles), and the Ægean or Archipelago. It is fully described by Strabo, lib. xiii.]

[Footnote 332: Kaltwasser has translated this passage differently from his predecessors: "turned his ship aside by a quick movement and made all his men crowd to the stern." But his version is probably wrong. The expression [Greek: epi prumnan ôsasthai] ἐπὶ πρύμναν ώασθαι is perhaps equivalent to [Greek: prumnon krouesthai] πρύμνον κρούεσθαι. (Thucydides, i. 50.)]

[Footnote 333: See Life of Sulla, c. 24, 25.]

[Footnote 334: It is conjectured by Leopoldus that there is an error here, and that the name should be Manius, and that Manius Aquilius is meant, whom, together with others, the Mitylenæans gave up in chains to Mithridates. (Vell. Paterc. ii. 18.)]

[Footnote 335: This is a place on the coast of the mainland, and east of Pitane.]

[Footnote 336: Lucullus was consul B.C. 74, with M. Aurelius Cotta for his colleague.]

[Footnote 337: See the Life of Pompeius, c. 20, and the Life of Sertorius, c. 21.]

[Footnote 338: P. Cornelius Cethegus originally belonged to the party of Marius, and he accompanied the younger Marius in his flight to Africa B.C. 88 (Life of Marius, c. 40). He returned to Rome B.C. 87, and in the year B.C. 83 he attached himself to Sulla after his return from Asia and was pardoned. After Sulla's death he had great influence at Rome, though he never was consul. Cicero (_Brutus_, c. 48), speaks of him as thoroughly acquainted with all the public business and as having great weight in the Senate.]

[Footnote 339: He is commemorated by Cicero (_Brutus_, c. 62) as a man well fitted for speaking in noisy assemblies. He was a tribune in the year of the consulship of Lucullus.]

[Footnote 340: This was L. Octavius, who was consul with C. Aurelius Cotta B.C. 75.]

[Footnote 341: Q. Cæcilius Metellus Pius. See the Life of Sertorius.]

[Footnote 342: This is the closed sea that lies between the two channels, by one of which, the Thracian Bosporus or the channel of Constantinople, it is connected with the Euxine or Black Sea, and by the other, the Hellespontus or Dardanelles, it is connected with the Ægean Sea or the Archipelago. This is now the Sea of Marmora. Part of the southern and eastern coast belonged to Bithynia. The city of Kyzikus was within the Propontis.]

[Footnote 343: See the Life of Sulla, c. 25.]

[Footnote 344: The sophists of Plutarch's time were rhetoricians, who affected to declaim on any subject, which they set off with words and phrases and little more. One of the noted masters of this art, Aristides of Bithynia, might have been known to Plutarch, though he was younger than Plutarch. Many of his unsubstantial declamations are extant. Plutarch in his Life of Lucullus, c. 22, has mentioned another of this class.]

[Footnote 345: The Romans carried on a thriving trade in this way in the provinces. In Cicero's period we find that many men of rank did not scruple to enrich themselves in this manner; and they were unsparing creditors.]

[Footnote 346: The word ([Greek: telônai] τελώναι) which I have elsewhere translated by the Roman word Publicani, means the men who farmed the taxes in the provences. The Publicani at this period belonged to the order of the Equites. A number of them associated themselves in a partnership (societas) for the farming of the taxes of some particular province. These associations had their agents in the provinces and a chief manager (magister) at Rome. The collection of the taxes gave employment to a great number of persons; and thus the Publicani had at their disposal numerous places in the provinces, which gave them great influence at Rome. (Cicero, _Pro Cn. Plancio_, c. 19.) The taxes were taken at some sum that was agreed upon; and we find an instance mentioned by Cicero (_Ad Attic._ i. 17) in which their competition or their greediness led them to give too much and to call on the Senate to cancel the bargain. The Romans at this time derived little revenue from Italy, and the large expenditure had to be supplied out of the revenue raised in the provinces and collected by the Publicani. The Publicani thus represented the monied interest of modern times, and the state sometimes required their assistance to provide the necessary supplies.

It seems probable that the Publicani who farmed the taxes of a province, underlet them to others; which would be one cause of oppression. These Collectors ([Greek: telônai] τελώναι) are called Publicans in the English version of the New Testament, where they are no doubt very justly coupled with sinners.]

[Footnote 347: Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 71) states that Mithridates invaded Bithynia, for King Nikomedes had just died childless and left his kingdom to the Romans. Cotta fled before him and took refuge in Chalkedon, a city situated on the Asiatic side of the Thracian Bosporus opposite to the site of Constantinople. The consul would not go out to meet the enemy, but his admiral Nudus with some troops occupied the strongest position in the plain. However, he was defeated by Mithridates and with difficulty got again into the city. In the confusion about the gates the Romans lost three thousand men. Mithridates also broke through the chain that was thrown across the harbour and burnt four ships and towed the other sixty off. His whole loss was only twenty men.]

[Footnote 348: See the Life of Sulla, c. 11. Mithridates was much dissatisfied with the terms of the peace that had been brought about by Archelaus, who fearing for his life went over to Murena, who was left by Sulla in the command in Asia. At the instigation of Archelaus, Murena attacked and plundered Comana in Cappadocia, which belonged to Mithridates, and contained a temple of great sanctity and wealth. Mithridates in vain complained to Murena, and then sent an embassy to Rome. Appian considers this conduct of Murena as the commencement of the Second Mithridatic War, B.C. 83. The Third commenced B.C. 74 with the league of Mithridates and Sertorius. (Appian, _Mithridat_. 64-68; Life of Sertorius, c. 24.)]

[Footnote 349: Kyzikus. The ruins of this ancient city, now Bal Kiz, that is Palæa Kyzikus, lie near to the east of the sandy isthmus which now connects the peninsula of Kyzikus with the mainland. Hamilton (_Researches in Asia Minor_, &c., London, 1842, ii. 102), says that "the loose and rubbly character of the buildings of Kyzikus little accords with the celebrity of its architects; and although some appear to have been cased with marble, none of them give an idea of the solid grandeur of the genuine Greek style." Yet Strabo (p. 575) describes this city as among the first of Asia. In his time the present peninsula was an island, which was connected with the mainland by two bridges: the city was near the bridges, and had two harbours that could be closed. Under the Romans in Strabo's time, Kyzikus was a Free City (_Libera Civitas_).]

[Footnote 350: This range is described by Strabo as opposite to Kyzikus, on the mainland. Kaltwasser states that Strabo called the Adrasteia of Plutarch by the name Dindymus; but this is a mistake, in which he is not singular. Dindymus was a solitary hill, and on the peninsula near the town of Kyzikus.]

[Footnote 351: This is a small lake near the coast of the Propontis, at the back of which and more inland are two larger lakes, called respectively by ancient geographers, Miletopolitis (now Moniyas) and Apollonias (now Abullionte). The lake Daskylitis is not marked in the map which accompanies Hamilton's work.]

[Footnote 352: Persephassa, or Persephone, whom the Romans call Proserpina, was the patron goddess of Kyzikus. Compare Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 75).]

[Footnote 353: What he was I don't know. Kaltwasser translates the word ([Greek: grammatistê] γραμματιστῇ) "the public schoolmaster;" but he is inclined to take Reiske's conjecture [Greek: grammatei] γραμματεῖ because the grammateus was an important functionary in the Greek towns, and a "public schoolmaster" is not mentioned as an ordinary personage at this period. But Kaltwasser has not observed that [Greek: grammatistês] γραμματιστής signifies a clerk or secretary in various passages (Herodotus, iii. 123, 128; vii. 100). If [Greek: grammatistês] γραμματιστής could only signify a schoolmaster, it would be necessary to alter the reading. One cannot suppose that the goddess would reveal herself to a schoolmaster; or that a schoolmaster could venture to announce that he had received the honour of such a communication. When Romulus after his sudden disappearance again appeared to assure the anxious citizens, Julius Proculus was selected by him as the person to whom he showed himself; or Julius Proculus was one of the few who could claim to have the story of such an appearance believed. (Liv. i. 16.)]

[Footnote 354: I have kept the Greek word ([Greek: stêlê] στήλη), for no English word exactly expresses the thing. It was a stone placed upright, with an inscription on a flat surface, the summit of which sometimes ended with an ornamental finish. There are several in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 355: This river enters Lake Apollonias on the south side of the lake, and issues from the north side of the lake, whence it flows in a general north direction into the Propontis. Apollonia, now commonly called Abullionte, though the Greeks still call it by its ancient name, is situated on a small island which is on the east side of Lake Apollonias and is now connected with the mainland by a wooden bridge. If the battle was fought on the river, the women must have gone a considerable distance for their plunder. (Hamilton, _Researches_, &c. ii. 88, &c.)]

[Footnote 356: Kaltwasser remarks that Livius (37, c. 40) mentions camels as being in the army of Antiochus. The passage of Sallustius must have been in his Roman History.]

[Footnote 357: This river is to the west of Kyzikus and enters the Propontis by a general north course. On the banks of this river Alexander won his first victory in his Persian Campaign. (Arrian, _Anab._ i. 14.) Appian, in his account of the defeat of the army of Mithridates (_Mithridat. War_, c. 76) places it on the Æsepus, a river which lies between Kyzikus and the Granikus, and also flows into the Propontis. He also adds that the Æsepus was then at its greatest flood, which contributed to the loss of Mithridutes. But it appears from Appian that the remnant of the army of Mithridates crossed the Granikus also, for they reached Lampsakus.]

[Footnote 358: The Troad is a district, but Plutarch expresses himself as if he meant a town. It appears that Lucullus was near Ilium. The Achæan harbour, or harbour of the Achæans, is near the promontory Sigeium.]

[Footnote 359: Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 77) simply says that Lucullus ordered Varius (the Marius of Plutarch) to be put to death.]

[Footnote 360: This town was at the eastern extremity of the long inlet of the Propontis, called the Gulf of Astakus. Mithridates according to Appian (_Mithridat. War_, c. 76) fled in his ships from Kyzikus to Parium, which is near the western extremity of the Propontis and west of the Granikus. From Parium he sailed to Nikomedia, a fact omitted by Plutarch, which explains the other fact, which he does mention, of Voconius being ordered to Nikomedia to look after the king.]

[Footnote 361: This island lies in the Archipelago off the coast of Thrace. It was noted for certain religious rites in honour of the gods called Kabeiri. (Strabo, p. 472.)]

[Footnote 362: This place was on the coast of Bithynia. Appian (c. 78) says that Mithridates landed at Sinope (Sinab), a large town considerably east of Heraklea, on the coast of the Black Sea; and that from Sinope he went along the coast to Amisus. See c. 23.]

[Footnote 363: This notion is common in the Greek writers; the gods brought misfortune on those whose prosperity was excessive, and visited them with punishment for arrogant speaking and boasting. Among instances of those whose prosperity at last brought calamity on them was Polykrates, tyrant of Samos (Herodotus, iii. 125); a notorious instance of the danger of prosperity. See vol. i. Life of Camillus, ch. 37, note.]

[Footnote 364: Artemis was so called from a town Priapus, which is on the south coast of the Propontis, and is placed in the maps a little west of the outlet of the Granikus. Strabo (p. 587) says that the Granikus flows between the Æsepus and Priapus; and that some say that Priapus was a Milesian colony, others a colony of Kyzikus. It derived its name from the god Priapus, who was in great repute here and in Lampsakus. The soldiers of Mithridates seem to have committed the excesses spoken of by Plutarch in their march through Priapus to Lampsakus.

The word for wooden statue is [Greek: xoanon] ξόανον which is sometimes simply translated statue. I am not aware that it is ever used by Pausanias, who often uses the word, in any other sense than that of a statue of wood.]

[Footnote 365: The Thermodon is a river of Asia Minor which flows through the plain of Themiskyra into the Black Sea. There is now a small town, Thermeh, on the left bank of the river. Plutarch might be supposed to be speaking of a town Themiskyra, and so some persons have understood him; but perhaps incorrectly, for no town Themiskyra is mentioned by any other writer.]

[Footnote 366: Amisus, now Samsun, is on the coast of the Black Sea, between the Halys, Kizil Ermak, and the Iris, Yechil Ermak. The ruins of the old town are about a mile and a half N.N.W. of the modern town. "The pier which defended the ancient harbour may be distinctly traced, running out about 300 yards to the S.E., but chiefly under water. It consists of large blocks of a volcanic conglomerate, some of which measure nineteen feet by six or eight, and ten feet in thickness; whilst a little farther north another wall extends E.N.E. to a natural reef of rocks." (Hamilton, _Researches in Asia Minor_, &c. i. 290.)]

[Footnote 367: These tribes were in the neighbourhood of the Thermodon. They were encountered by the Ten Thousand in their retreat (_Anab._ v. 5). The Chaldæans, whom Xenophon names Chalybes, were neighbours of the Tibareni: but he also speaks of another tribe of the same name (iv. 5, &c.) who lived on the borders of Armenia.]

[Footnote 368: The great mountain region between the Black Sea and the Caspian.]

[Footnote 369: The position of Kabeira is uncertain. Strabo (p. 556) says that it is about 150 stadia south of the Paryadres range; but he does not say that it is on the Lykus. It may be collected from the following chapter of Plutarch that it was near the Lykus. Pompeius made Kabeira a city and named it Diopolis. A woman named Pythodoris added to it and called it Sebaste, that is, in Latin, Augusta, and it was her royal residence at the time when Strabo wrote.]

[Footnote 370: The reign of Tigranes in Armenia began about B.C. 96. Little is known of his early history. He become King of Syria about B.C. 83, and thus he supplanted the kings, the descendants of Seleukus. He lost Syria after his defeat by Lucullus, B.C. 69; and he was finally reduced to the limits of his native kingdom by Pompeius, B.C. 66. (See the Life of Pompeius, c. 23.)]

[Footnote 371: Some writers read Dardarii. The Dandarii are mentioned by Strabo (p. 495) as one of the tribes on the Mæotis or Sea of Azoff. Mithridates held the parts on the Bosporus. Appian (_Mithridat. War_,