ed 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 praetors,
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 w