[424] This Caius Memmius was tribune of the Plebs in the year B.C. 66, in which year Lucullus returned to Rome. Memmius was not satisfied with prosecuting M. Lucullus; he revenged himself for his failure by debauching his wife, to which Cicero alludes in the following passage (Ad Attic. i. 18): "C. Memmius has initiated the wife of M. Lucullus in his own sacred rites. Menelaus (M. Lucullus) did not like this, and has divorced his wife. Though that shepherd of Ida insulted Menelaus only; this Paris of ours has not considered either that Menelaus or Agamemnon should be free." Cicero is here alluding to the opposition which Memmius made to the triumph of L. Lucullus. Memmius was a man of ability, but of dissolute habits. He was accused of bribery at the consular election, and being convicted, retired to Athens. Several letters of Cicero to him are still extant. Lucretius dedicated his poem to Memmius. See the Note of Manutius on Cicero, Ad Familiares, xiii. 1.
Orelli (Onomastic. C. Memmius Gemillus) refers to Cicero, Pro Balbo, c. 2, to show that this Memmius was quæstor under Pompeius in his Spanish campaign. But according to Plutarch, a Memmius fell in battle in this war (Life of Sertorius, c. 21).
[425] Lucullus triumphed B.C. 63, in the consulship of Cicero. (Cicero, Academ. Prior, ii. 1.)
[426] Servilia was the half sister of M. Porcius Cato the younger. Livia, the daughter of M. Livius Drusus, who was consul B.C. 112 and the sister of the tribune M. Livius Drusus B.C. 91, was married to M. Porcius Cato, by whom she became the mother of M. Porcius Cato the younger, or of Utica. She was divorced from Cato, and then married Q. Servilius Cæpio, the brother of the Cæpio who was defeated by the Cimbri. Some critics made Cæpio her first husband. She had by Cæpio a daughter Servilia, who married L. Lucullus, and another Servilia, who married M. Junius Brutus and was the mother of M. Junius Brutus, one of the assassins of C. Julius Cæsar. Plutarch in various passages clearly distinguishes these two women, though some critics think there was only one Servilia. Cæsar was a lover of the mother of Brutus, and he gave her an estate at Naples. (Cicero, Ad Attic, xiv. 21.)
[427] This is the word of Plutarch ( τῆς ἀριστοκρατιᾶς), which he seems to use here like the Roman "Nobilitas" to express the body of the Nobiles or Optimates, as they were called by a term which resembled the Greek άριστοι. (See Tiberius Gracchus, c. 10, notes.)
[428] The original is made somewhat obscure by the words ὥσπερ οὐ, which introduce the concluding sentence; it is not always easy to see in such cases whose is the opinion that is expressed. Plutarch means to say that Lucullus thought that luxury was more suitable to his years than war or affairs of state, and that Pompeius and Crassus differed from him on this point. Compare the Life of Pompeius, c. 48.
[429] These gardens in the reign of Claudius belonged to Valerius Asiaticus. Messalina the wife of Claudius, coveted the gardens, and Valerius, after being charged with various offences was graciously allowed by the emperor to choose his own way of dying. In these same gardens Messalina was put to death. (Tacitus, Ann. xi. 1. 37.)
[430] There is the tunnel near Naples, called Posilipo, which is a Roman work, and is described by Strabo (p. 246); but its date is unknown.
[431] Tubero the Stoic was Q. Ælius Tubero, who was Tribune of the Plebs B.C. 133 and opposed Tiberius Gracchus. He was also an opponent of Caius (Cicero, Brutus, c. 31, and Meyer's notes). But this cannot be the contemporary of Lucullus, and Plutarch either means Q. Ælius Tubero the historian, or he has mistaken the period of Tubero the Stoic. Ruhnken proposes to read in the text of Plutarch "historian" for "stoic," but it is better to suppose that Plutarch was mistaken, about the age of the Stoic. The ownership of good sayings is seldom undisputed. Velleius Paterculus (ii. 83) attributes this to Pompeius Magnus. The allusion is to Xerxes the Persian, who dug a canal through the flat isthmus which connects the rocky peninsula of Athos with the mainland (Herodotus, vii. 22), which still exists.
[432] There is some corruption in the text; but the general meaning is clear enough.