Lucullus

Lucullus

For his grandfather and namesake, see Lucius Licinius Lucullus.

Lucius Licinius Lucullus (c.118-57 B.C.), was one of the canonical great men of Roman history, ever included in the biographical collections of leading generals and politicians, which originated in the biographical compendium of great Romans published by his contemporary Marcus Terentius Varro. Two biographies of Lucullus survive today, Plutarch's Lucullus in the famous series of Parallel Lives, in which Lucullus is paired with the Athenian aristocratic politician and strategos Kimon, and # 74 in the slender Latin Liber de viris illustribus, of late and unknown authorship, the main sources for which appear to go back to Varro and his most significant successor in the genre, Gaius Iulius Hyginus.

Lucullus was an optimas or Aristocratic politician of the late Roman Republic, closely connected with Sulla. In the culmination of over twenty years of almost continuous military and government service, he became the main conqueror of the eastern kingdoms, exhibiting extreme boldness and incisive generalship, most famously in his victory in Armenian Arzanene at the battle of Tigranocerta in 69 BC during the Third Mithridatic War, a feat of arms usually regarded as the greatest military victory in Roman history.

He returned to Rome from his extensive conquests with such vast amounts of booty that the whole could not be fully accounted, and poured enormous sums into private building, husbandry and even aquaculture projects which shocked and amazed his contemporaries by their magnitude and lavishness. He also patronized the arts and sciences on a large scale, transforming his hereditary estate in the Tusculan highlands into a hotel-and-library complex for scholars and philosophers. He built the horti Lucullani on the Pincian Hill in Rome, the famous gardens of Lucullus, and in general became a cultural revolutionary in the deployment of imperial wealth. He died sometime during the winter of 57-56 B.C. and was buried at the family estate near Tusculum.

The sober and witty philosopher-historian, Lucius Aelius Tubero the Stoic, labelled him "Xerxes in a toga". After his great personal foe Pompey heard this, he came up with what he considered a very clever joke of his own, calling Lucullus "Xerxes in a toga".

Family and early career

Lucullus was a member of the prominent gens Licinia, of the family (stirps) of Luculli, which was probably ancient nobility of Tusculum. He was grandson of Lucius Licinius Lucullus (consul 151), and son of Lucius Lucullus (praetor c.104), who was convicted for embezzlement in 102/1 from his Sicilian command of 103-2.

The family of his mother Caecilia Metella (born c.137 B.C.) was one of the most powerful of the plebeian nobilitas, and was at the height of its success and influence in the last quarter of the 2nd century B.C. when Lucullus was born. She was the youngest child of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Calvus (consul 142 and censor 115-14), and half-sister of two of the most important Roman princes of the time, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus (cos.109, censor 102), and Lucius Caecilius Metellus Delmaticus (cos.119 and pontifex maximus) the father of Sulla's fourth wife Metella Scauri).

His first known military service was as tribune of soldiers serving in Sulla's army in Campania during the bellum Italicum (90-89 B.C.), when he is said to have distinguished himself for daring and intelligence.

The longest Quaestura, 88-80 B.C.

Lucullus was elected quaestor in winter 89-88 at the same elections in which Sulla was returned as consul with his friend Q. Pompeius Rufus, whose son was married to Sulla's eldest daughter, Cornelia. Lucullus was probably the quaestor mentioned as the sole officer in Sulla's army who could stomach accompanying the consul when he marched on Rome.
In autumn of the same year Sulla sent Lucullus ahead of him to Greece to take over the command of the Mithradatic War in his name.

The naval venture, 86-85

As the Roman siege of Athens was drawing towards a successful conclusion, Sulla's strategic attention began to focus more widely on subsequent operations against the main Pontic forces, and combating Mithradates' control of the sea lanes. He sent Lucullus to collect such a fleet as may be possible from Rome's allies along the eastern Mediterranean seaboard, first to the important but currently disturbed states of Cyrene and Ptolemaic Egypt. Lucullus set out from the Peiraieus in mid winter 87-6 BC with three Greek yachts (myoparones) and three light Rhodian biremes, hoping to evade the prevailing sea power of the Pontic fleets and their piratic allies by speed and taking advantage of the worst sailing conditions. He initially made Crete, and is said to have won over the cities to the Roman side. From there he crossed to Cyrene where the famous Hellenic colony in Africa was in dire condition following a vicious and exhausting civil war of nearly seven years' duration. Lucullus' arrival seems to have put a belated end to this terrible conflict, as the first official Roman presence there since the departure of the proconsul Caius Claudius Pulcher, who presided over its initial administrative incorporation into the Roman empire in 94 BC.

After Lucullus had defeated the Mithridatic admiral Neoptolemus in the Battle of Tenedos, he helped Sulla cross the Aegean to Asia. After a peace had been agreed, Lucullus stayed in Asia and collected the financial penalty Sulla imposed upon the province for its revolt. Lucullus, however, tried to lessen the burden that these impositions created.

Return to Rome and the west, 80-74 B.C.

Lucullus returned in 80 BC and was elected curule aedile for 79, along with his brother Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, and gave splendid games.

The most obscure part of Lucullus' public career is the year he spent as praetor in Rome, followed by his command of Roman Africa, which probably lasted the usual two-year span for this province in the post-Sullan period. Plutarch's biography entirely ignores this period, 78 BC to 75 BC, jumping from Sulla's death to Lucullus' consulate. However Cicero briefly mentions his praetorship followed by the African command, while the surviving Latin biography, far briefer but more even as biography than Plutarch, comments that he "ruled Africa with the highest degree of justice". This command is significant in showing Lucullus performing the regular, less glamorous, administrative duties of a public career in the customary sequence and, given his renown as a Philhellene, for the regard he showed for subject peoples who were not Greek.
In these respects his early career demonstrates a generous and just nature, but also his political traditionalism in contrast to contemporaries such as Cicero and Pompey, the former of whom was always eager to avoid administrative responsibilities of any sort in the provinces, while Pompey rejected every aspect of a normal career, seeking great military commands at every opportunity which suited him, while refusing to undertake normal duties in peaceful provinces.

Two other notable transactions took place in 76 or 75 B.C. following Lucullus' return from Africa, his marriage to Claudia the youngest daughter of Appius Pulcher, and his purchase of the Marian hill top villa at Cape Misenum from Sulla's wretchedly avaricious eldest daughter Cornelia.

Consulship

Sulla dedicated his memoirs to Lucullus, and upon his death made him guardian of his son Faustus, preferring Lucullus over Pompey. Shortly after this, in 74, he became consul (along with Marcus Aurelius Cotta, Julius Caesar's uncle), and defended Sulla's constitution from the efforts of Lucius Quinctius.

Initially, he drew Cisalpine Gaul in the lots at the start of his consulship as his proconsular command after his year as consul was done, but he got himself appointed governor of Cilicia after its governor died, so as to also receive the command against Mithridates VI in the Third Mithridatic War.

The Eastern Wars, 73-67 B.C.

File:Lazicaandersen.jpg

Asia Minor, during Roman Republic conquest.

On arrival, Lucullus set out from his province to relieve the besieged Cotta in Bithynia. He harried the army of Mithridates and killed many of his soldiers. He then turned to the sea and raised a fleet amongst the Greek cities of Asia. With this fleet he defeated the enemy's fleet off Ilium and then off Lemnos. Turning back to the land, he drove Mithridates back into Pontus. He was wary of drawing into a direct engagement with Mithridates, due to the latter's superior cavalry. But after several small battles, Lucullus finally defeated him at the Battle of Cabira. He did not pursue Mithridates immediately, but instead he finished conquering the kingdom of Pontus and setting the affairs of Asia into order. His attempts to reform the rapacious Roman administration in Asia made him increasingly unpopular among the powerful publicani back in Rome.

In 69 BC he then led a campaign into Armenia against Tigranes II, Mithridates' son-in-law and ally, to whom Mithridates had fled after Cabeira. He began a siege of the new Armenian imperial capital of Tigranocerta in the Arzenene district. Tigranes returned from mopping up a Seleucid rebellion in Syria with his main host, which Lucullus annihilated despite odds of about ten to one against an army apparently unbeaten for more than twenty years. This was the famous battle of Tigranocerta. It was fought on the same (pre-Julian) calendar date as the Roman disaster at Arausio 36 years earlier, the day before the Nones of October according to the reckoning of the time (or October 6), which is Julian October 16, 69 BC. Tigranes retired to the northern regions of his kingdom to gather another army and defend his hereditary capital of Artaxata, while Lucullus moved off south-eastwards to the kingdom of the Kurds (Korduene) on the frontiers of the Armenian and Parthian empires. During the winter of 69-68 BC both sides opened negotiations with the Parthian king, Arsakes XVI, who was presently defending himself against a major onslaught from his rival Frahates III coming from Bactria and the far east.

In the summer of 68 BC Lucullus marched against Tigranes and crossed the Anti-Taurus range heading for the old Armenian capital Artaxata. Once again Tigranes was provoked to attack and in a major battle at the Arsanias River Lucullus once again routed the Armenian army. But he had left this campaign too late in the year and when the wintry season came on early in the Armenian Tablelands his troops mutinied, refusing to go further, and he was forced to withdraw southwards back into Arzenene. From there he proceeded back down through Korduene into old Assyria and in the late auutmn and early winter besieged and took Nisibis, the main Armenian fortress city in Northern Mesopotamia.

During the winter of 68-67 BC at Nisibis, his authority over his army was more seriously undermined by the efforts of his young brother-in-law Publius Clodius Pulcher, apparently acting in the interests and pay of Pompey, who was eager to succeed Lucullus in the eastern command. This allowed Mithridates and Tigranes to retake much of their respective kingdoms.

At the machination of the equites and Pompeian supporters back in Rome, Lucullus was replaced by Pompey in 66 BC and returned to Rome.

Final years, 66-57 B.C.

See also: Gardens of Lucullus

The opposition to him continued on his return. In his absence Pompey had shamefully usurped control over Sulla's children, contrary to the father's testament, and now in Pompeius' absence the latter's intimate and hereditary political ally Gaius Memmius co-ordinated the opposition to Lucullus' just claim to a triumph. Memmius delivered at least four speeches de triumpho Luculli Asiatico, and the antagonism towards Lucullus aroused by the Pompeians proved so effective that the enabling law (lex curiata) required to hold a triumph was delayed for three years. In this period Lucullus was forced to reside outside the pomerium, which curtailed his involvement in day to day politics centred on the Forum. Instead of returning fully to political life (although, as a friend of Cicero, he did act in some issues,) he mostly retired to extravagant leisure, or, in Plutarch's words,:

quitted and abandoned public affairs, either because he saw that they were already beyond proper control and diseased, or, as some say, because he had his fill of glory, and felt that the unfortunate issue of his many struggles and toils entitled him to fall back upon a life of ease and luxury...[for] in the life of Lucullus, as in an ancient comedy, one reads in the first part of political measures and military commands, and in the latter part of drinking bouts, and banquets, and what might pass for revel-routs, and torch-races, and all manner of frivolity.

He used the vast treasure he amassed during his wars in the East to live a life of luxury. He had splendid gardens outside the city of Rome, as well as villas around Tusculum and Neapolis. The one near Neapolis included fish ponds and man-made extensions into the sea, and was only one of many elite senators' villas around the Bay of Naples. Pompey is said by Pliny to have referred often to Lucullus as "Xerxes in Roman dress".

Gastronome

So famous did Lucullus become for his banqueting that the word lucullan now means lavish, luxurious and gourmet.

Once, Cicero and Pompey succeeded in inviting themselves to dinner with Lucullus, but, curious to see what sort of meal Lucullus ate when alone, forbade him to send word ahead to his servants to prepare a meal for guests. However, Lucullus outsmarted them. He ordered that his servants serve him in the Apollo Room, and as his servants had been schooled ahead of time as to precisely what to make for each of the different dining rooms, Cicero and Pompey ate the most luxurious of all meals.

Another tale runs that one of his servants, upon hearing that he would have no guests for dinner, served only one course. Lucullus reprimanded his servant saying, "What, did not you know, then, that today Lucullus dines with Lucullus?". He was also responsible for bringing the sweet cherry and the apricot to Rome.

Lucullus & higher learning

Lucullus was extremely well educated in Latin and Greek, and showed a keen interest in literature and philosophy from earliest adulthood. He established life-long friendships with the Greek poet Archias of (Syrian) Antioch, who migrated to Rome around 102 B.C., and with one of the leading Academic philosophers of the time, Antiochus of Ascalon.
During his long delay in the royal palace at Alexandreia in the summer of 86 B.C. Lucullus witnessed the beginning of the major schism in the Platonic Academy in the 1st century, the so-called Sosos Affair. His friend and companion Antiochos of Askalon received, evidently from the Great Library, a copy of a work by the Scholarch of the Academy, Philon of Larisa, so radical in its sceptical stance that Antiochos was sufficiently disturbed to doubt the attribution of authorship to his old teacher. But more recent pupils of Philon, chiefly Herakleitos of Tyre, were able to assure him of the book's authenticity. Antiochos and Herakleitos dissected it at length in Lucullus' presence, and in the ensuing weeks while the Roman party continued to await the arrival of the king from the south, Antiochos composed a vigorous polemic against Philon entitled Sosos, which marked his definitive break with Philon's so-called "Sceptical Academy", and the beginning of the separate, more conservative, school eventually called the Old Academy.

Decline & death

Lucullus is reported by Plutarch to have lost his mind at the end and went intermittently crazy as he aged. Lucullus' brother Marcus oversaw his funeral.

Marriages

• Clodia Luculli whom he married as her first husband, but divorced c.66 on his return to Rome after friction in Asia with her brother.
• Servilia Caepionis Minor, the younger sister of Servilia Caepionis, also notorious for her loose morals, but mother of Lucullus's only son.

Plutarch writes:

After his divorce from Clodia, who was a licentious and base woman, he married Servilia, a sister of Cato, but this, too, was an unfortunate marriage. For it lacked none of the evils which Clodia had brought in her train except one, namely, the scandal about her brothers. In all other respects Servilia was equally vile and abandoned, and yet Lucullus forced himself to tolerate her, out of regard for Cato. At last, however, he put her away.

References

Ancient sources

• Plutarch, Lucullus, also the lives of Kimon, Sulla, Pompeius, Cicero, Cato
• Ziegler, Konrat (ed.) Plutarchi Vitae Parallelae, Vol.I, Fasc.1 (Teubner, Leipzig, 4th edition, 1969), I: ΘΗΣΕΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΡΩΜΥΛΟΣ, II: ΣΟΛΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΟΠΛΙΚΟΛΑΣ, III: ΘΕΜΙΣΤΟΚΛΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΜΙΛΛΟΣ, IV: ΑΡΙΣΤΕΙΔΗΣ ΚΑΙ ΚΑΤΩΝ, V: ΚΙΜΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΛΕΥΚΟΛΛΟΣ.
• Liber de viris illustribus, 74
• Cassius Dio Roman History, book XXXVI
• Appian Roman History, book XII: Mithridateios
• Cicero Lucullus, also known as Academica Prior, book II
• Cicero pro Archia poeta 5-6, 11, 21, 26, 31
• Cicero de imperio Cn. Pompei 5, 10, 20-26
• Cicero pro L. Murena 20, 33-34, 37, 69
• Cicero pro A. Cluentio Habito 137
• Cicero ad Atticum, I 1.3, 14.5, 16.15, XIII 6
• Julius Frontinus Stratagems, II 1.14, 2.4 (Tigranocerta), 5.30, 7.8, III 13.6
• Malcovati, Henrica (ed.) Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta, Liberae Rei Publicae (Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum Paravianum, Torino, 1953; 4th edition, 1976), 307-9 (Orator #90)

• Memnon, history of Herakleia Pontike, 9th century epitome in the ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗ of Photius of Byzantium (codex 224)

- ed. René Henry Photius Bibliotheque Tome IV: Codices 223-229 (Association Guillaume Budé, Paris, 1965), pp.48-99: Greek text with French translation
- ed. Karl Müller FHG (Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum), vol.III, 525ff.: Greek text with Latin translation
- ed. Felix Jacoby FGrH 434 (Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, commenced 1923): Greek text, critical commentary in German

• Phlegon of Tralles, fragments

- ed. Müller FHG, III, 602ff.
- ed. Jacoby FGrH 257
- English translations and commentary by William Hansen, Phlegon of Tralles' Book of Marvels (University of Exeter Press, 1996)

• Inscriptions.

- ILS 60 (Latin career elogium from Arretium)
- SIG³ 743, AE 1974, 603 (both Greek from Hypata, as quaestor in late 88)
- SIG³ 745 (Greek from Rhodes, when pro quaestore, 84/3)
- Ins.Délos 1620 (Latin statue base titulus from Delos when pro quaestore, 85/80)
- BE 1970, p.426 (two Greek tituli when imperator, 72/66, one from Andros, the other from Klaros)

Modern works

Major studies.

• Eckhardt, Kurt: "Die armenischen Feldzüge des Lukullus",

pt.I Introduction. Klio, 9 (1909), 400-412
pt.II Das Kriegsjahr 69. Klio, 10 (1910), 72-115
pt.III Das Kriegsjahr 68. Klio, 10 (1910), 192-231

• Gelzer, Matthias: "L. Licinius Lucullus cos.74", in Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol.13 (1926), s. v. Licinius (104), colls.376-414.
• Baker, George Philip: Sulla the Fortunate: Roman General and Dictator (J Murray, London, 1927; reprint by Cooper Square Press, 2001) reprint ISBN 0-8154-1147-2
• Van Ooteghem, J: Lucius Licinius Lucullus, (Brussels, 1959)
• Glucker, J: Antiochus and the Late Academy (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1978), P.510

- reviewed by Jonathan Barnes, JRS 71 (1981), 205-6

• Keaveney, Arthur: Lucullus. A Life. (London/New York: Routledge, 1992). ISBN 0-415-03219-9.

Shorter articles.

• Badian, Ernst: s. v. Lucullus (2), p.624 in The Oxford Classical Dictionary (ed.2, 1970)
• Bennett, W H: "The date of the death of Lucullus", Classical Review, 22 (1972), 314
• Jones, C P: "Plutarch Lucullus 42, 3-4", Hermes, 110 (1982), 254-56
• Tatum, W J: "Lucullus and Clodius at Nisibis (Plutarch, Lucullus 33-34)", Athenaeum, 79 (1991)
• Hillman, Thomas P: "When did Lucullus retire?", Historia, 42 (1993), 211-228
• Dix, T. Keith: "The Library of Lucullus", Athenaeum, 88 (2000), 441-464

External links

• Bust of Lucullus