mpaign was brilliantly carried out. With his small army, hardly
20,000 in all, Lucullus inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the
Armenian forces. Armenia was under his feet. He had shown all the
qualities of a great commander: clearness and steadiness of purpose,
complete confidence, the boldness and unresting energy of genius. As he
rested in winter quarters in South Armenia planning the conquest of
Persia and Parthia, he might well compare himself with Alexander.

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came from Rome that Lucullus had been superseded.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 lo