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