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Lucullus
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- For his grandfather and namesake, see Lucius Licinius Lucullus.
Lucius Licinius Lucullus (ca.118-57 BC), is one of the canonical great men of Roman history, always included in the biographical collections of leading generals and politicians, two of which survive today despite the slender surviving literature from the antiquity.
He was an optimas or Aristocratic party politician of the late Roman Republic, closely connected with Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
In the culmination of over twenty years of almost continuous service to the Republican state and Empire, Lucullus became the main conqueror of the eastern kingdoms, exhibiting unsurpassed extremes in boldness and generalship, most famously in his victory in Armenian Arzanene at the battle of Tigranocerta in 69 BC during the Third Mithridatic War, an almost impossible feat of arms usually regarded as the greatest military victory in Roman history.
He returned to Rome from his extensive conquests with such vast amounts of booty that the whole could not be fully accounted, and poured enormous sums into private building, husbandry and even aquaculture projects which shocked and amazed his contemporaries by their magnitude and lavishness.
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- For his grandfather and namesake, see Lucius Licinius Lucullus.
Lucius Licinius Lucullus (ca.118-57 BC), is one of the canonical great men of Roman history, always included in the biographical collections of leading generals and politicians, two of which survive today despite the slender surviving literature from the antiquity.
He was an optimas or Aristocratic party politician of the late Roman Republic, closely connected with Lucius Cornelius Sulla.
In the culmination of over twenty years of almost continuous service to the Republican state and Empire, Lucullus became the main conqueror of the eastern kingdoms, exhibiting unsurpassed extremes in boldness and generalship, most famously in his victory in Armenian Arzanene at the battle of Tigranocerta in 69 BC during the Third Mithridatic War, an almost impossible feat of arms usually regarded as the greatest military victory in Roman history.
He returned to Rome from his extensive conquests with such vast amounts of booty that the whole could not be fully accounted, and poured enormous sums into private building, husbandry and even aquaculture projects which shocked and amazed his contemporaries by their magnitude and lavishness. He also patronized the arts and sciences on a large scale, transforming his hereditary estate in the Tusculan highlands into an extraordinary hotel-and-library complex for scholars and philosophers. He built the horti Lucullani on the Pincian Hill in Rome, the famous gardens of Lucullus, and in general became a cultural revolutionary in the deployment of imperial wealth.
The sober and witty philosopher-historian, Lucius Aelius Tubero the Stoic, labelled him "Xerxes in a toga". After his great personal foe Pompey heard this, he came up with what he considered a very clever joke of his own, and began to habitually call Lucullus "Xerxes in a toga".
Family and Early career
Member of the prominent gens Licinia, of the Lucullan stirps which was probably ancient nobility of Tusculum. Grandson of Lucius Licinius Lucullus consul 151, and son of L. Licinius Lucullus praetor 104 (who was convicted for embezzlement in 102/1 from his Sicilian command of 103-2).
The family of his mother Caecilia Metella (born ca.137 BC) was one of the most powerful of the plebeian nobilitas, and at the very height of its success and influence in the last quarter of the 2nd century BC. She was youngest child of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Calvus consul 142 and censor 115-14, and half-sister of two of the most important Roman princes of their time, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus cos.109, censor 102-1, and Lucius Caecilius Metellus Delmaticus cos.119 and pontifex maximus (who was the father of Caecilia Metella, Sulla's fourth wife).
Serving under Sulla
Lucullus first began service as a military tribune, serving in the Social War under Sulla, and as a quaestor in 88 BC he was the only officer to support Sulla's march on Rome. He also served under Sulla in the First Mithridatic War, raising a fleet which helped Sulla open up the seas during the siege of Athens and then, after Lucullus had defeated the Mithridatic admiral Neoptolemus in the Battle of Tenedos, he helped Sulla cross the Aegean to Asia. After a peace had been agreed, Lucullus stayed in Asia and collected the financial penalty Sulla imposed upon the province for its revolt. Lucullus, however, tried to lessen the burden that these impositions created.
Lucullus returned in 80 BC and was elected curule aedile for 79, along with his brother Marcus Terentius Varro Lucullus, and gave splendid games.
The most obscure part of Lucullus' public career are the year he spent as praetor in Rome, followed by his command of Roman Africa, which probably lasted the usual two-year span for this province in the post-Sullan period. Plutarch's biography entirely ignores this period, 78 BC to 75 BC, jumping from Sulla's death to Lucullus' consulate. However Cicero briefly mentions his praetorship followed by the African command, while the surviving Latin biography, far briefer but more even as biography than Plutarch, comments that he "ruled Africa with the highest degree of justice." This command is significant in showing Lucullus performing the normal, and less glamorous, peaceful administrative duties of a public career in the customary sequence, and, given his renown as a Philhellene, for the regard he showed for subject peoples who were not Greek.
In these respects his early career demonstrates a generous and just nature, but also his political traditionalism in contrast to contemporaries like Cicero and Pompey, the former of whom was always eager to avoid administrative responsibilities of any sort in the provinces, while the latter rejected every aspect of a normal career, seeking great military commands at every opportunity which suited him, and refusing to assume normal administrative duties in peaceful provinces.
Consulship
Sulla dedicated his memoirs to Lucullus, and upon his death made him guardian of his son Faustus, preferring Lucullus over Pompey.. Shortly after this, in 74, he became consul (along with Marcus Aurelius Cotta, Julius Caesar's uncle), and defended Sulla's constitution from the efforts of Lucius Quinctius.
Initially, he drew Cisalpine Gaul in the lots at the start of his consulship as his proconsular command after his year as consul was done, but he got himself appointed governor of Cilicia after its governor died, so as to also receive the command against Mithridates VI in the Third Mithridatic War.
Eastern Campaigns
On arrival, Lucullus set out from his province to relieve the besieged Cotta in Bithynia. He harried the army of Mithridates and killed many of his soldiers. He then turned to the sea and raised a fleet amongst the Greek cities of Asia. With this fleet he defeated the enemy's fleet off Ilium and then off Lemnos. Turning back to the land, he drove Mithridates back into Pontus. He was wary of drawing into a direct engagement with Mithridates, due to the latter's superior cavalry. But after several small battles, Lucullus finally defeated him at the Battle of Cabira. He did not pursue Mithridates immediately, but instead he finished conquering the kingdom of Pontus and setting the affairs of Asia into order. His attempts to reform the rapacious Roman administration in Asia made him increasingly unpopular among the powerful publicani back in Rome.
In 69 BC he then led a campaign into Armenia against Tigranes II, Mithridates' son-in-law and ally, to whom Mithridates had fled after Cabeira. He began a siege of the new Armenian imperial capital of Tigranocerta in the Arzenene district. Tigranes returned from mopping up a Seleukid rebellion in Syria with his main host, which Lucullus annihilated despite odds of about ten to one against an army apparently unbeaten for more than twenty years. This was the famous battle of Tigranocerta. It was fought on the same (pre-Julian) calendar date as the Roman disaster at Arausio 36 years earlier, the day before the Nones of October according to the reckoning of the time (or October 6), which is Julian October 16, 69 BC.. Tigranes retired to the northern regions of his kingdom to gather another army and defend his hereditary capital of Artaxata, while Lucullus moved off south-eastwards to the kingdom of the Kurds (Korduene) on the frontiers of the Armenian and Parthian empires. During the winter of 69-68 BC both sides opened negotiations with the Parthian king, Arsakes XVI, who was presently defending himself against a major onslaught from his rival Frahates III coming from Bactria and the far east.
In the summer of 68 BC Lucullus marched against Tigranes and crossed the Anti-Taurus range heading for the old Armenian capital Artaxata. Once again Tigranes was provoked to attack and in a major battle at the Arsanias River Lucullus once again routed the Armenian army. But he had left this campaign too late in the year and when the wintry season came on early in the Armenian Tablelands his troops mutinied, refusing to go further, and he was forced to withdraw southwards back into Arzenene. From there he proceeded back down through Korduene into old Assyria and in the late auutmn and early winter besieged and took Nisibis, the main Armenian fortress city in Northern Mesopotamia.
During the winter of 68-67 BC at Nisibis, his authority over his army was more seriously undermined by the efforts of his young brother-in-law Publius Clodius Pulcher, apparently acting in the interests and pay of Pompey Magnus, who was eager to succeed Lucullus in the eastern command. This allowed Mithridates and Tigranes to retake much of their respective kingdoms.
At the machination of the equites and Pompeian supporters back in Rome, Lucullus was replaced by Pompey in 66 BC and returned to Rome.
Declining years & Extravagance
The opposition to him continued on his return and caused the delay of his triumph until 63 BC. Instead of returning fully to political life (although, as a friend of Cicero, he did act in some issues), he mostly retired to extravagant leisure, or, in Plutarch's words,:
He used the vast treasure he amassed during his wars in the East to live a life of luxury. He had splendid gardens outside the city of Rome, as well as villas around Tusculum and Neapolis. The one near Neapolis included fish ponds and man-made extensions into the sea, and was only one of many elite senators' villas around the Bay of Naples. Pompey is said by Pliny to have referred often to Lucullus as "Xerxes in Roman dress".
Gastronome
So famous did Lucullus become for his banqueting that the word lucullan now means lavish, luxurious and gourmet.
Once, Cicero and Pompey succeeded in inviting themselves to dinner with Lucullus, but, curious to see what sort of meal Lucullus ate when alone, forbade him to send word ahead to his servants to prepare a meal for guests. However, Lucullus outsmarted them. He ordered that his servants serve him in the Apollo Room, and as his servants had been schooled ahead of time as to precisely what to make for each of the different dining rooms, Cicero and Pompey ate the most luxurious of all meals.
Another tale runs that one of his servants, upon hearing that he would have no guests for dinner, served only one course. Lucullus reprimanded his servant saying, "What, did not you know, then, that today Lucullus dines with Lucullus?". He was also responsible for bringing the sweet cherry and the apricot to Rome.
Bibliophile
He was a student of the philosopher Antiochus of Ascalon and one of only a few late Republican senators (Caesar also included) who expressed interest in the idea of building a public library.
Death
Lucullus is reported by Plutarch to have lost his mind at the end and went intermittently crazy towards his elderly life. Lucullus' brother Marcus oversaw his funeral.
Marriages
- Clodia, or Claudia Pulchra Tertia; whom he married as her first husband, but divorced c.66 on his return to Rome after friction in Asia with her brother. Claudia became notorious for her love affairs, and also became a plebeian for unknown reasons, thus taking the name of Clodia.
- Servilia Caepionis Minor, the younger sister of Servilia Caepionis, also notorious for her loose morals, but mother of Lucullus's only son.
Plutarch writes:
Ancient sources
- Plutarch,
- Plutarch, Konrat Ziegler (ed.4) Plutarchi Vitae Parallelae, Vol.I, Fasc.1 (B. G. Teubner Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig, 1969), I: T?S??S ??? ?O????S, II: S??O? ??? ?????????S, III: T???S?????S ??? ???????S, IV: ???S?????S ??? ???O?, V: ???O? ??? ????????S.
- Plutarch Kimon, Sulla, Pompeius, Cicero, Cato
- Liber de viris illustribus, no.74
- Cassius Dio Roman History, book XXXVI
- Appian Roman History, book XII: Mithridateios
- Photius' summary of Memnon's history of Herakleia Pontike, ed.Felix Jacoby FGrH 434
- Cicero Lucullus, also known as Academica Prior, book II
- Cicero pro Archia poeta 5-6, 11, 21, 26, 31
- Cicero de imperio Cn. Pompei 5, 10, 20-26
- Cicero pro L. Murena 20, 33-34, 37, 69
- Cicero pro A. Cluentio Habito 137
- Cicero ad Atticum, I 1.3, 14.5, 16.15, XIII 6
- Julius Frontinus Stratagems II 1.14, 2.4, 5.30, 7.8, III 13.6
- Latin elogium of Lucullus from Arretium, ILS 60 (ed. H. Dessau)
- Greek inscriptions when quaestor (88), SIG 743, AE 1974, 603 (both Hypata)
- Greek inscriprions when pro quaestore (87-80), SIG 745 (Rhodes)
- Latin inscriptions when pro quaestore (87-80), Ins.Délos 1620
Modern works
Major studies.
- Eckhardt, Kurt: "Die armenischen Feldzüge des Lukullus",
pt.I Introduction. Klio, 9 (1909), 400-412
pt.II Das Kriegsjahr 69. Klio, 10 (1910), 72-115
pt.III Das Kriegsjahr 68. Klio, 10 (1910), 192-231
- Gelzer, Matthias: "L. Licinius Lucullus cos.74", in Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol.13 (1926), s. v. Licinius (104), colls.376-414.
- Baker, George Philip: Sulla the Fortunate: Roman General and Dictator (J Murray, London, 1927; reprint by Cooper Square Press, 2001) reprint ISBN 0-8154-1147-2
- Van Ooteghem, J: Lucius Licinius Lucullus, (Brussels, 1959)
- Keaveney, Arthur: Lucullus. A Life. (London/New York: Routledge, 1992). ISBN 0-415-03219-9.
Shorter articles.
- Badian, Ernst: s. v. Lucullus (2), p.624 in The Oxford Classical Dictionary (ed.2, 1970)
- Bennett, W H: "The date of the death of Lucullus", Classical Review, 22 (1972), 314
- Jones, C P: "Plutarch Lucullus 42, 3-4", Hermes, 110 (1982), 254-56
- Tatum, W J: "Lucullus and Clodius at Nisibis (Plutarch, Lucullus 33-34)", Athenaeum, 79 (1991)
- Hillman, Thomas P: "When did Lucullus retire?", Historia, 42 (1993), 211-228
- Dix, T. Keith: "The Library of Lucullus", Athenaeum, 88 (2000), 441-464
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