s convicted of peculation, and his mother, Caecilia, had a
bad name as a woman of loose habits. Lucullus, while he was still a
youth, before he was a candidate for a magistracy and engaged in
public life, made it his first business to bring to trial his father's
accuser, Servilius the augur, as a public offender; and the matter
appeared to the Romans to be creditable to Lucullus, and they used to
speak of that trial as a memorable thing. It was, indeed, the popular
notion, that to prefer an accusation was a reputable measure, even
when there was no foundation for it, and they were glad to see the
young men fastening on offenders, like well-bred whelps laying hold of
wild beasts. However, there was much party spirit about that trial,
and some persons were even wounded and killed; but Servilius was
acquitted. Lucullus had been trained to speak both Latin and Greek
competently, so that Sulla, when he was writing his memoirs,[317]
dedicated them to Lucullus as a person who would put them together and
arrange his history better than himself; for the style of the oratory
of Lucullus was not merely suited to business and prompt, like that of
the other orators which disturbed the Forum--

"As a struck tunny throws about the sea,"[318]

but when it is out of the Forum is

"Dry, and for want of true discipline half dead"--

but he cultivated the appropriate and so-called liberal sciences, with
a view to self-improvement, from his early youth. When he was more
advanced in years he let his mind, as it were, after so many troubles,
find tranquillity and repose in philosophy, rousing to activity the
contemplative portion of his nature, and seasonably terminating and
cutting short his ambitious aspirations after his difference with
Pompeius. Now, as to his love of learning, this also is reported, in
addition to what has been mentioned: when he was a young man, in a
conversation with Hortensius,[319] the orator, and Sisenna,[320] the
historian, which began in jest, but ended in a serious proposition,
he agreed that if they would propose a poem and a history, Greek and
Roman, he would treat the subject of the Marsic war in whichsoever of
these two languages the lot should decide; and it seems that the lot
resulted in a Greek history, for there is still extant a Greek history
of the Marsic war by Lucullus.[321] Of his affection to his brother
Marcus[322] there were many proofs, but the Romans speak most of the
first; being