Lucullus. To me and Caesar.
Caesar. I would have asked permission——
Lucullus. Caius Julius, you have nothing to ask of Polybius and Thucydides; nor of Xenophon, the next to them on the table.
Caesar. Thucydides! the most generous, the most unprejudiced, the most sagacious, of historians. Now, Lucullus, you whose judgment in style is more accurate than any other Roman’s, do tell me whether a commander, desirous of writing his Commentaries, could take to himself a more perfect model than Thucydides?
Lucullus. Nothing is more perfect, nor ever will be: the scholar of Pericles, the master of Demosthenes, the equal of the one in military science, and of the other not the inferior in civil and forensic; the calm dispassionate judge of the general by whom he was defeated, his defender, his encomiast. To talk of such men is conducive not only to virtue but to health.
This other is my dining-room. You expect the dishes.
Caesar. I misunderstood—I fancied——
Lucullus. Repose yourself, and touch with the ebony wand, beside you, the sphinx on either of those obelisks, right or left.
Caesar. Let me look at them first.