Next year Tigranes had gathered a fresh army and Lucullus determined to smash him by taking Artaxata, the capital of Armenia. But here he failed. The campaign was dreadful: the ground was covered with snow; the rivers icy. At last mutiny broke out, his men refused to go on. News came from Rome that Lucullus had been superseded. The plotters at Rome had got their way.
The fruits of victory had been snatched from Lucullus and left for Pompeius to garner. His soul might well be filled with bitterness as he came back to Rome. No one there realized what he had done; he had no party. The political struggle disgusted him more than ever. His solitariness had been increased by years of absolute power in the East. He withdrew into silent isolation, and the banquets which were the talk of Rome. Men gaped, but did not understand either the man or his work.
After Strenuous Years
In the life of Lucullus, as in Old Comedy, we find at the beginning the acts of a soldier and a statesman, but towards the end eating and drinking, and little else but revels and illuminations, and mere frivolity. For I count as frivolous his costly houses, with their porticoes and baths, and still more the pictures and statues and his pains in collecting such works of art at great expense, lavishing the magnificent fortune amassed during his campaigns on the site where even now, though luxury has increased so much, the gardens of Lucullus are counted among the noblest belonging to the Emperor. At Naples, too, and on the neighbouring coast he pierced hills with great tunnels, surrounded his house with ponds and channels of salt water for breeding fish, and even built out into the sea, so that Tubero, the Stoic philosopher, at the sight of this magnificence called him ‘Xerxes in a toga’. Besides all this, he had country seats near Tusculum, with gazebos and rooms and porticoes open to the air, where Pompeius came on a visit, and blamed him for lodging himself excellently in summer, but making a house that was uninhabitable in winter. Lucullus merely smiled and said, ‘Do you think that I have less sense than the cranes and storks, and do not change my home according to the season?’ At another time, when a Praetor was anxious to make his spectacle magnificent, and begged for a loan of some purple cloaks to dress the performers, Lucullus replied that he would give him some if he found that he had any. Next day he asked how many were wanted, and hearing that a hundred would be enough, he offered two hundred. Horace is thinking of this when he remarks that he considers a house poor when the valuables hidden and overlooked are not more than those known to the master.
Plutarch, xxxvi. 39.
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Cnaeus Pompeius
At the time of Sulla’s death the unanimous opinion of Rome would have fixed upon Cnaeus Pompeius as the one young man then alive who was likely to follow in his footsteps and rule the Roman world by his own will. And if there had been in Pompeius’s character the qualities which his rapid success seemed to promise, they would have been right. But the life of Pompeius shows how much circumstances—chance, opportunity, the good opinion of others, birth and wealth—can do for a man; and what they cannot do, unless he has within himself the qualities of mind and will which mark off the first-rate from the best second-rate. Greatness was, as it were, thrust upon him; but since he was not great in himself he could not achieve it. It is this that makes him so interesting a failure. His failure was due to the fact that at a supreme crisis he was called upon to do just the things he could not do. It was no accident that enabled Julius Caesar to succeed where he failed. For Caesar possessed in supreme degree the power to act with decision, which, when combined with clear judgement, makes the great man of action. At the crucial moment the judgement of Pompeius wavered: his will was uncertain. In ordinary peaceful times his weaknesses might never have been seen; but his life fell within an era of storm and stress when the stuff of which men are made is tested and shown.
Tall, strongly built, with curly hair and large eyes that though prominently set and wide open had a rather sleepy expression, Pompeius when young was often likened to Alexander the Great. He had his regular features and brilliant colouring, but in his eyes there was none of the fire or mystery that made Alexander seem to his contemporaries as beautiful as a god. His manners were grave and dignified. He gave all who saw him an impression of his importance. Pompeius had a very strong sense of his own importance. The thing he was most afraid of was of being laughed at. When he suspected that any one was doing this, he lost his temper.
