structions
and disregarded the Senate's order to return, which paved the way for
conquest. Pompeius, whose slow mind and cautious temper could never have
started such a policy, saw from Rome what Lucullus's fighting was
leading up to. He saw the golden prize at the end of his efforts and
determined to snatch it from him. In this he succeeded. But the credit
or blame of making Rome an imperial power, a power that rules by force
over alien races, belongs not to him but to Lucullus. This was not
understood at the time. Lucullus, disappointed and embittered, came back
to Rome and was known to his contemporaries not as the man who laid the
foundations of the empire, but as the giver of the most luxurious and
extraordinary banquets ever eaten. The proverb associated with his
name--'Dining with Lucullus'--shows this. His feasts were famous; the
rarest foods from every part of the known world were on his table. His
gardens too were wonderful, and his house glowed with all the treasures
of the distant East. Among the treasures he brought back was one little
noticed in his day--the cherry-tree. This soon grew all over Italy, but
that Lucullus had brought it was forgotten. Like everything else that he
did, it failed to bring him fame.

The family of L. Licinius Lucullus was one of the oldest in Rome and one
of those not too numerous ones which maintained not only the pride of
ancient race but the idea that good birth carried duties with it. He was
poor but excessively proud, and belonged to that small Conservative
group from which Rutilius Rufus and Livius Drusus came. His mind was
clear and highly educated, cultivated in the full sense. As a soldier he
was extremely able. The way in which the ordinary politician made money
and bought votes disgusted him. In the main he stood sternly aloof from
the scramble for office and wealth.

After Sulla's death--he had been one of Sulla's most capable
officers--he retired to private life and watched with cold scorn the way
in which the affairs of the State were mismanaged both at home and
abroad; the long struggle with Sertorius, the rise of Pompeius, by good
luck rather than, he thought, by merit. He had strong feelings and a
good deal of the ambition that moves in almost every mind that is aware
of its own powers, but he detested intrigue and had no aptitude for it.
He was unpopular, because of his habit of saying what he thought, both
in public and in private, about the corrupt politicia