d magnificently. The young king,
Ptolemaeus,[325] showed him other surprising marks of attention, and
gave him a lodging and table in the palace, though no foreign general
had ever before been lodged there. He also offered him an allowance
for his expenditure, not such as he used to offer to others, but four
times as much; Lucullus, however, would not receive anything more than
his necessities required, nor yet any present, though the king sent
presents to the value of eighty talents. It is said that Lucullus did
not go up to Memphis,[326] nor make inquiry about any other of the
wondrous and far-famed things in Egypt; he said that such things
befitted an idle spectator, and one who had only to enjoy himself: not
a man like himself, who had left the Imperator encamped under the bare
sky, and close to the enemy's battlements.

Plutarch begins his Treatise which is intitled To an Uninstructed
Prince with the same story about Plato and the Cyrenaeans (_Moralia_,
ed. Wyttenbach, vol. iv.).]

III. Ptolemaeus declined the alliance, being afraid of the war; but he
gave Lucullus ships to convoy him as far as Cyprus, and when he was
setting sail he embraced him and paid him great attention, and
presented him with an emerald set in gold, of great price. Lucullus at
first begged to be excused from taking the present; but when the king
showed him that the engraving contained his royal likeness, Lucullus
was afraid to refuse the present, lest, if he should be supposed to
sail away at complete enmity with the king, he might be plotted
against on the sea. In his voyage along the coast Lucullus got
together a number of vessels from the maritime towns except such as
participated in piratical iniquities, and passed over to Cyprus,
where, hearing that his enemies were lying in wait for him with their
ships at the headlands, he drew up all his vessels, and wrote to the
cities about winter quarters and supplies, as if he intended to stay
there till the fine season. As soon as a favourable opportunity
offered for his voyage, he launched his ships and got out to sea, and
by sailing during the day with his sails down and low, and putting
them up at night, he got safe to Rhodes. The Rhodians supplied him
with some more ships, and he persuaded the people of Kos and Knidus to
quit the king's side, and join him in an attack on the Samians. He
drove the king's party also out of Chios, and he gave the people of
Kolophon freedom by seizing Epigonus,