Lucullus Read online

  Lucullus Senior had served as urban praetor (praetor urbanus) in 104, and was propraetor when he went to Sicily. He seems, one might think, not to have found the task of suppressing the Slave War entirely to his liking, and at any rate he was not ultimately successful in his commission, despite the apparent achievement of a brilliant victory – the historian Diodorus Siculus argues that because of either laziness or bribery, the victor refused to finish his task.17 He was replaced in 102 by one Gaius Servilius, whose complaints about his predecessor led at least in part (if not directly) to the efforts of his cousin Servilius the Augur to prosecute the former commander.18 Lucullus Senior was charged ‘officially’ with extortion (the full Latin term for the offence was res repetundae pecuniae).19 Convicted of the offence, he was condemned to exile when his son was barely 16 – the age when a Roman youth traditionally assumed the ‘toga of manhood’ or toga virilis that signified his having reached the age of maturity. The Lucullus brothers thus made their entrance into adult society in the shadow of family disgrace and upheaval. There is every reason to believe that the boys’ father was indeed guilty of some sort of offence, as he would never be recalled from his exile and fades in shame from the pages of history.

  The pietas of the Luculli brothers may have been all the more striking in light of the fact that Lucullus Senior was not aided in his hour of need by his wife’s powerful relatives, the Metelli. We are not entirely sure why his in-laws abandoned him (Arthur Keaveney cites the cryptic note at De Viris Illustribus 62.4 that seems to refer to an offence taken by Metellus Numidicus to some aspect of Lucullus’ conduct of his praetorship).20 Lucullus Senior had few friends in the crisis of his life; he was able, however, to count on the loyalty of his two sons – a loyalty that would perhaps serve the brothers more effectively than the doomed father. The brothers would be together again at the end of Lucius’ life, when in his declining years he would depend on Marcus for sustenance and support.

  Lucullus’ Early Life

  But what of the son’s life in the years before his father’s Sicilian disaster, and in the immediate wake of the father’s trial and conviction? Admittedly we are without anything much in the way of information about Lucullus’ childhood. He may initially have been privately tutored at home (a common enough practice for wealthier families). If he travelled abroad in his youth, no record remains. Sometimes, classical personages who went on to achieve glory and renown would be remembered for offering signs of future achievement even in infancy and early youth. No such lore seems to have survived for Lucullus. Essentially, he first appears in the context of his father’s career-ending debacle (this is admittedly the result of our need to rely on Plutarch for a comprehensive account of his life; another biographer or historian might have made other emphases in describing his early life). We have no certain knowledge of whether or not the young Lucullus was aware of the military adventures that marked his youth; his childhood saw the war against Jugurtha that broke out in 112 BC, and the years surrounding his father’s disgrace were the same ones in which Gaius Marius won his victories over the Teutones and the Cimbri (102 and 101 BC). Indeed, Carthage had been destroyed less than thirty years before his birth (146 BC). Rome was well established as an international power, and Roman military and political affairs already stretched across the Mediterranean and far into the unsettled and often troubled regions to the north of Italy. And there were the first major engagements in the East, in the Greek world and in modern Turkey – a region that was, as any literate Roman knew, the mythological home of the Trojan ancestors of the Romans, the realm of Priam, of Aeneas and his son Iulus.

  Literary and Cultural Influences

  Some evidence, however, does survive to fill out the picture of the young Roman’s formative years – though of a more reflective, literary sort. Cicero’s speech in defence of the Greek poet Archias – the celebrated Pro Archia Poeta oration of 62 BC, to which we shall return as an important source of relevant testimony about the life of Lucullus – notes that Archias arrived in Rome in 102 BC, and that he was warmly received by the Luculli first of all.21 In fact, Archias is said by Cicero to have accompanied Marcus Lucullus to Sicily; the date of this mission is uncertain, as is the exact rationale for it.22 Some have concluded that Archias was a tutor of the brothers Lucullus, but this is nowhere stated in the surviving evidence – and we do well to remember that Archias was himself an adolescent at this time. The intimate connection of the Greek poet to the Lucullus family cannot, however, in any way be exaggerated. When Archias became a Roman citizen, he took the name of the family that had shown him such favour and patronage.23 And, as we shall soon enough see, Archias accompanied Lucius Lucullus on his quaestorship in the East, and remained a loyal friend of the family to the end.24 Many leading Romans of Lucullus’ day were particularly interested in Greek literature and the patronage of the literary arts. Lucullus seems to have been more given over to these pursuits than others, which may eventually have provided his enemies with an avenue of criticism and attack. Simply put, an educated Roman could be a lover of Greek literature – but there were limits of tolerance for phihellenism, and Lucullus may have provided an easy target for those who wanted to charge him with the alleged vice.25

  Lucullus’ early life, at any rate, was imbued with the spirit of Greek language and literature, and with the presence of a poet of some talent whose influence and inspiration were likely considerable.26 Bright and energetic, the young Lucullus was immersed in a world of epic, history, tragedy and lyric, as well as the vast treasure of Greek philosophical writings. The house of Lucullus was perhaps something of a small centre for the infusion of Hellenic culture into the Roman Republic; Lucius and Marcus Lucullus had a ready contemporary with deep knowledge of the vast tradition of Greek literature. Educated young Romans would soon become familiar with the martial and adventure epics of the ancient Greeks (especially Homer), the great corpus of tragic verse and the mammoth histories of the wars between the Greeks and the Persians, and the city-states of Athens and Sparta. Lucullus was introduced to the vast panorama of Greek literature and history, replete as it was with lessons for a young Roman aristocrat – lessons that the eager young reader would soon enough be able to put into practice in his own life.

  Talent in Forensic Oratory

  Rhetoric and oratory were also staples of the Roman educational system for young boys. In the business of avenging their father’s disgrace, Plutarch compares Lucullus and his younger brother Marcus to whelps or pups of good breeding, noble hounds that set out to hunt down and destroy the wild animals which had maligned and wronged their father. We do not know exactly when the brothers made their legal attack on Servilius; the charge levelled against the augur was perhaps that he had misappropriated public funds while serving as quaestor – but in fact we cannot be sure what exactly Servilius was accused of having done. We do know that violence broke out at the court proceedings; there were multiple injuries and even deaths in the chaos that attended the case. Plutarch’s comparison of the brothers to young dogs in ferocious attacks on feral beasts may reflect something of the physical altercations that disrupted the trial. But if Plutarch can be trusted – and in this instance there seems to be no compelling reason to think not – Lucius and his brother made a strikingly positive impression on the audience. Their entry into Roman public life did them no discredit, violent episodes notwithstanding. Lucius Lucullus did much with his education; talent in public speaking was a hallmark of a promising political career, and also had undeniable advantages in the military arena in terms of persuading one’s soldiers to follow one’s orders – an area in which, we shall see, Lucullus would eventually have difficulty, though not for lack of oratorical skill. For now, Lucullus was an acknowledged talent at one of the hallmark virtues of Roman public life, and he had all the appropriate credentials and trappings to embark on a public career.

  A Credible Historian

  For it seems that despite the acquittal of Servilius, the Lucullus brothers were admired
all the same for their rhetorical skills and ability, and that they did not suffer any handicap for the loss. Plutarch proceeds at once in his narrative to focus on the results of Lucullus’ literary and historical training. The young Lucullus became fluent in both Greek and Latin, and was credited with outstanding speaking and writing abilities both in and out of the world of politics and government. Some even credited him with composing a history of the Social War (91–88 BC) in Greek, no small feat for a native speaker of Latin. The subject matter, too, we might think, was no easy topic for historical composition. Indeed, to this day, scholars are often left without reliable ancient evidence for the bloody, bitter conflict; the Social War seems not to have attracted the attention and talents of Rome’s great historians – not surprisingly, given the subject matter and its inherent lack of glory.27

  The tradition of Lucullus’ authorship of a history on the harrowing experience of the Social War – a war in which he would serve – is that the decision to compose a Greek history was the result of a lot or game of chance (the question was whether the work should be a prose history or an epic poem, and indeed whether it should be in Greek or Latin; the interlocutors with Lucullus were said to have been the orator Hortensius and the famous historian Sisenna – the greatest Roman historian of his age). The history of the Social or Marsic War is the only historical work credited to Lucullus in our sources. Plutarch claims that the history was extant in his time, but no trace of it has survived. Perhaps predictably, the argument has been made that Lucullus wrote no such book, or that the work of another was unjustly ascribed to the famous general. The Social War is among the least well-documented of Roman military engagements. By its very nature it was not the sort of conflict in which one could hope to achieve the sort of glory that could be attained by foreign conquest, settlement and plunder. It is perfectly reasonable to conclude that Lucullus was sufficiently fascinated by the formative military conflict of his youth to endeavour to write a history of the period. The composition of an account of the Social War would blend the young Roman’s cultural and military/political pursuits. In short, we have no reason to doubt the report of Lucullus historicus.

  There is a fascinating detail about Lucullus’ literary and historical aspirations in a letter of Cicero to Atticus (I.19.10).28 Cicero notes that Lucullus was in the habit of making deliberate mistakes in Greek in his historical composition, so that a reader might more readily recognize that the work was by a Roman hand. It is unknown to what works of history Cicero might be referring; it could be to the treatment of the Social War mentioned in Plutarch. Plutarch further notes that Lucius Cornelius Sulla (c. 138–78 BC) dedicated his memoirs to Lucullus, noting that Lucullus was better skilled at composing and arranging such a work of history.29 The context of Cicero’s comment on Lucullus is a passage where he notes that he is sending Atticus a sketch of his Greek work on his consulship. In contrast to Lucullus’ alleged deliberate use of solecisms, Cicero notes that any mistakes in his Greek were entirely unintentional. A Latin version is also promised, and a poem.

  A Book in His Honour

  Cicero also famously named a book after Lucullus – the second of his so-called Academica or treatment of epistemology, the theory of knowledge. We possess this ‘Book II’ of a work that was eventually reissued in four books, of which only part of the first survives.30 It would appear that Cicero’s work – which opens with a brief survey of certain aspects of Lucullus’ life – was a major influence on Plutarch in the composition of the opening of his biography of the general. Cicero notes that Lucullus gave no indication in his youth of the likelihood of a promising military career; he was, instead, a powerfully gifted orator and legal practitioner. Cicero credits Lucullus with having an especially gifted memory for the retention of facts and details, information that could be recalled at an instant for use in some interlocution or exchange of words. Cicero takes great effort to underscore Lucullus’ devotion to literature and philosophy.31 Magnum ingenium L. Luculli – the ‘great talent [or native ability] of Lucius Lucullus’ – is the subject of Cicero’s praise of the man. One almost receives the impression that Cicero saw in the young Lucullus a kindred spirit, something of a similarly gifted individual who might have won great fame in the courts – were he not to have travelled with Sulla to the East. Cicero’s Lucullus hones his skills and enhances his knowledge by ready conversation with those who were acknowledged as experts in different fields – and in the reading of military history. Lucullus stands in the proud tradition of those military figures who were avid readers of the deeds of their predecessors. For Cicero, the principal result of this education was the splendidly diverse skill of the man. Lucullus is credited with great ability in sieges, sea engagements, land warfare and even the mundane business of outfitting and provisioning an army in the field. One imagines that Cicero is being completely honest when he says that he laments that Lucullus’ manifold talents and gifts were absent for too long from Rome, with the great administrator and wise and just statesman unable to exercise his abilities in the capital. Cicero ascribed the motive of calumnia or calumny to Lucullus’ enemies, enemies who are labelled inimici – the Latin word for a personal enemy. These hateful individuals are blamed for delaying Lucullus’ triumph when he returned from the Third Mithridatic War.

  The Loyalty of the Brothers

  Literary skill and interest are seamlessly blended by Plutarch into an account of Lucullus’ pietas that encompasses not only duty to his father, but also love for his brother Marcus. Lucius is said to have waited for the younger Marcus to ‘catch up’ with him in years for the sake of running for political office.32 For a young man born into a challenging and often tumultuous age in the history of the Roman Republic, Lucius Lucullus was endowed both with a strong sense of family loyalty, and attentive devotion and concern to the timeless pleasures and educational wisdom afforded by literature and the arts. Lucius and Marcus would remain loyally devoted to each other. The younger brother would be responsible one day for overseeing the requiem for the older, indeed for taking care of his brother in the final stage of his life, when he suffered mental defect and disability.

  Lucius Lucullus was from the start, then, a man of both deeds and words. His training would have been firmly rooted in the traditions of classical antiquity, of Greek and Roman literature and the arts.33 In this education he is universally attested to have excelled. Lucullus’ eloquence, we might note, is also among the signal qualities attributed to him in the only other extant biography from antiquity, the brief life in the aforementioned De Viris Illustribus, a late Latin work of uncertain authorship and provenance.34 Eloquence follows nobility there in the short account of Lucullus’ vita; we do well to remember that he came of age in a time when there were many men of competitive skill levels in the art of oratory and declamation (Cicero and Caesar prominent among them). Lucullus was born into an age with no dearth of exceptional, outstanding public speakers, writers and scholars, and so the praise of his skills that we find in our ancient sources can be taken as indications of an especially gifted mind and ability.

  The Pursuit of the Beautiful or the Good

  We may also note that Plutarch ascribes to Lucullus a devotion even from youth to the ideal of the ‘beautiful’ or ‘good’, or in Greek, τò καλòν.35 This Platonic ideal may have been an especially attractive, appealing quality in his Roman subject. It speaks to an aesthetic and philosophical goal that stands in striking relief to the travails of republican political life. It is an eminently complimentary detail from the biographer about his subject. One of the important aspects of Lucullus’ life to consider will be the question of whether or not the noble-minded youth would succumb to decadence and ill-repute later in life – the problem of the general’s alleged descent into luxury and more hedonistic pursuits.36 Along the way, we shall also find it useful to investigate the philosophical schools to which Lucullus was most inclined to give his support and allegiance. Lucullus maintained a close relationship throughout his life with
the poet Archias, among other men of letters, and literature and the arts were always dear to his heart.37

  Sulla the Mentor

  Plutarch associates Lucullus’ steadfast constancy and mild disposition with the trust that Sulla put in the young plebeian almost from the start.38 Sulla was thus in some sense responsible for Lucullus’ introduction to military life and training; Lucullus first served in the devastating, bloody war between the Roman Republic and several Italian city-states – the so-called Social War (from the Latin socii, ‘allies’).39 The first war that Lucullus may well have experienced would appear to have furnished the material for his first foray into the literary and historical arts. If we can believe our extant sources – and there are no good reasons for doubting them on this point – Sulla was impressed with his young protégé both in military and civilian arts. Lucullus would impress his mentor both in his bravery and martial intelligence, and in his measured, eloquent expression and writing. The devoted friendship of the two men extended beyond the grave, as Sulla would leave the guardianship of his son to Lucullus as a provision of his last will and testament.40 Lucullus’ early life offers a somewhat odd juxtaposition of the mild and the violent; he may have had a reputation for the former, but he was witness on more than one occasion to the worst expressions of the latter. His defence of his father’s and family’s honour against Servilius demonstrated amply, too, that his mildness was not the result of a lack of resolution or cowardice.