Lucullus

by Lee Fratantuono

  Glabrio, then, was merely a useful expedient, an intervenient commander whose likely incompetence would make it all the more understandable that a man of Pompey’s ability would need to be sent to the front.108 Politically, it was far more advantageous for Pompey to succeed Glabrio and not Lucullus. The Lex Gabinia would give Pompey a pirate command; the Lax Manilia would secure for him his real desired prize – command against the elusive Pontic king. We may note that Pompey’s eventual antagonist Caesar was a supporter of the bill to award Pompey the command against Mithridates, and of the earlier bill for the pirate command. For the time, Caesar was on Pompey’s side, and that was probably the safest and most politically expedient role for him to play. Caesar need not have been a political strategist of any great note to realize that Pompey was in the ascendant. Given his own history in the days of Sullan power, it was no surprise at all that the young patrician would side against Lucullus. Whatever the future held, Lucullus would not be a major player upon his return to Rome. While politically active, it was perhaps no surprise given his temperament that he would shy away from overt action in the manner of a Pompey or, soon enough, a Caesar.

  Replacements and Departures

  Quintus Marcius Rex had received Cilicia in 68 BC, but had not arrived in the East until 67. Manius Acilius Glabrio was assigned to replace Lucullus sometime in 67, it would appear – command of the Mithridatic War would thus definitively pass to another. This was the year of the Triarius disaster at Zela, which may well have been the final bit of bad news that would be tolerated in the matter of Lucullus’ pursuit of Mithridates. The situation was, however, a bit hollow: admittedly, Mithridates had had a very good spring of 67, but he was also a spent and largely exhausted force, and Pompey would soon enough not have to do very much to put him to flight.

  The Fimbrians were the first Romans to depart from Lucullus’ command – and they certainly had the force of law behind them, if not pietas. Neither Rex nor Glabrio was in any hurry to tell Lucullus what to do, but Pompey would be a different matter entirely.109 Lucullus was even to suffer the ignominy of not being able to distribute rewards or punishments among those who had served under his command.110 If he had powerful friends and supporters in Rome, they had not been able to win the day so far against the Pompeians – but there was that increasing sense that Lucullus had been treated poorly. The idea that Lucullus and Pompey should have a joint meeting, a chance to clear the air, as it were, was appealing to some. For the moment, Lucullus had retreated into Galatia, an altogether inconvenient presence for Pompey. The man who would one day lose to Caesar was, for the moment, the man of the hour. He had triumphed in Spain, had won his share of glory for the ending of the slave war and had made short work of the pirates. When he would meet Lucullus, in some sense it would be an eerie foreshadowing of the fate that would one day await him with Caesar.

  Chapter 6

  Early Retirement?

  Ultimately, Lucullus would be replaced by Pompey. Gnaeus Pompeius had been born in 106 BC, and in some sense by the time he took full command in Asia in 66 BC at the age of 40, the situation there was much as it had been in 74 when Lucullus had first arrived. One of our most valuable surviving sources for the takeover of Pompey is the speech that Marcus Tullius Cicero gave in support of the bill that was designed to give the general unlimited time, resources and freedom of place in prosecuting the war against Rome’s eastern enemies. The speech de imperio Gnaei Pompei – better known as the pro lege Manilia – is a masterpiece of Ciceronian oratory.

  Cicero is complimentary to Lucullus, whom he refers to as a summus vir – literally, ‘the highest man’.1 Lucullus’ prosecution of the war against both Mithridates and Tigranes is spoken of in praiseworthy terms; Lucullus is lauded for his virtus, or courage and bravery, rather than his felicitas, or fortune. If Cicero’s speech was intended to placate the nobles as much as to support the side of popular opinion, then Lucullus would need to be treated with reserve and respect. The silent undercurrent of the speech, however, is that Lucullus failed to secure a lasting solution to Rome’s eastern problem, and that Pompey is the new man of the hour, the commander who would be able finally to put to rest the threats to Roman economic life in Asia.

  Cicero begins his appraisal of Lucullus’ résumé by noting that the general entered a situation that was exceedingly challenging.2 Mithridates had enormous forces and was prosecuting the siege of Cyzicus with vigour. Lucullus lifted the siege by his virtus, his assiduitas, or constant perseverance, and his consilium, or plan/skill. The Sertorian rebel fleet was also destroyed, great numbers of the enemy were killed as the Romans advanced into Pontus, and Sinope and Amisus were taken. The king himself was finally forced to go as a suppliant in search of allies. All of this was accomplished without threat, either to Rome’s allies or her revenue stream. Cicero notes that none of the opponents of the Manilian law had ever praised Lucullus to the extent uttered by Cicero; Cicero sets himself up as the greatest celebrant of Lucullus’ enduring reputation and fame.3

  Mithridates as Medea

  Cicero famously compares Mithridates in flight to the mythological Medea, who escaped from her native Colchis with the Greek hero Jason by means of dismembering and scattering the limbs of her brother (she correctly assumed that the pursuing vessels of her father’s ministers would stop to retrieve each and every body part of her poor brother). Mithridates escaped by scattering treasure, as it were, tempting riches and gold, that was promptly seized by pursuing Roman armies. Mithridates successfully arrived at the court of Tigranes in Armenia, and by the time of Lucullus’ arrival, Rome had new and powerful foes – enemies Rome had never expected to have. The impression had been given to the kingdoms of the East that Rome was interested in total conquest and plunder. Even after the armies of Lucullus seized Tigranocerta, there was a general sense among the soldiery that they were far too removed from home for their liking and comfort. Mithridates rallied more and more men to his cause by pity and the arousal of sympathy for his plight; the idea that the Romans were a danger to all was part of his ability to raise increasing numbers of supporters and allies. Before long, Mithridates was able to recoup his losses and achieve more in defeat than he had ever hoped to win in happier times. And Rome suffered startling setbacks and defeats. Allegedly, there was a story that the Romans had come to sack a sacred temple, and before long, Lucullus had embroiled Rome in a far more complicated war than the Mithridatic one. Cicero is cagey throughout. He does not blame Lucullus for these events in so many words, but the portrait – even when complimentary – is designed to point the way to Pompey as the saviour of the hour. The longer Mithridates was on the defensive against Lucullus, Cicero notes, the more sympathetic he appeared to his neighbours, and one by one the king found new allies who were willing to shield and support him in his time of crisis.

  Soon enough, there was disaster. Lucullus heard about Mithridates’ resurgence and attack on Roman forces, not from any messenger from the battlefield, but from the rumours that emanated from the countryside.4 The disaster of which Cicero speaks more or less vaguely is that of Zela; all the emphasis of the oration is on how the king was on the rise, even after the defeat at Tigranocerta.

  Lucullus was forced to hand over his command to Glabrio at precisely this hour of crisis, because precedent and custom demanded that he give up his generalship.5 Multa praetereo consulto, says Cicero – there is much that I leave out on purpose. An effective rhetorical device is thus employed to pass over controversial topics and the real heart of the matter – how exactly was it that Lucullus was removed from his office? But the rest of the speech – its bulk – is taken up with praise of Pompey as the present and ready saviour of Rome in her hour of eastern crisis. As one critic of the speech has noted, ‘The superseding of Lucullus was merely the result of jealousies and intrigues at home.’6 The pro lege Manilia is a rhetorical masterpiece on many levels, but if it has one stunning quality in terms of Lucullan studies, it is the manner in which it scrupulously avoids co
ndemning Lucullus, even while implicitly proposing him as a deterior commander to Pompey. The Lucullus that emerges from the lines of the speech is past his prime, while Pompey is the versatile general whose experience in a wide range of conflicts is what the crisis demands.

  Danala

  We have noted that a meeting was eventually arranged between Lucullus and Pompey, apparently by the friends of both. We can only imagine the awkwardness of the arrangements and the plan. Pompey had made it known that he wanted no one to visit Lucullus, and he had taken steps to countermand his orders by his own decrees and edicts. The two men finally met in a Galatian village, Danala, the exact location of which is not known. Plutarch indicates that the meeting opened in a friendly manner, each man warmly congratulating the other on his victories and achievements.7 Both commanders were honoured with laurel that adorned the so-called fasces (the bundle of rods with axe blade that served as a symbol of Roman magisterial authority); Pompey’s is said to have been dry and waterless because of the desolate tracts of land through which he had travelled. When Lucullus’ lictors saw this, they gave some of Lucullus’ green sprigs to Pompey as a sign of respect. Pompey’s men took this as a good omen, since the victories of Lucullus did arguably adorn those of Pompey and provide an ornament.

  Nothing good was achieved at the meeting, however – or at subsequent ones.8 No agreement was ratified. On the contrary, the two men are said to have left the meeting in a worse state than they had arrived. Lucullus was to be left with 1,600 soldiers, and not a man more; all his orders were nullified. The 1,600 men left with him were there mostly to adorn his triumph, and Plutarch reports that they were not happy with the assignment. Dio offers the note that Lucullus initially told Pompey that there was no need for a new military expedition, since the war was over; when he failed with this argument, he turned to abuse, arguing that Pompey was greedy for war, for public office, and so forth. Pompey essentially ignored Lucullus – he knew, after all, that the page of history was now his. He simply instructed his subordinates to ignore any of Lucullus’ orders – the ‘old man’ was now to be treated as a curious irrelevancy.9

  It is perhaps unsurprising that the first detail Dio preserves about Mithridates in the wake of the Galatia conference was that he continued to flee. He had had great success with leading Romans on chases, and saw no reason not to employ the same strategy against Pompey as he had against his predecessor. Lucullus could not have had any serious trust in the efficacy of the argument that the war was over. If anything, his point must have been that he had done all the real work, and that his replacement was on the scene merely to do something akin to what he had done with Crassus in the closing movements of the Spartacus War. If Pompey was incensed at the argument, he merely had to bide his time until Lucullus was safely on his way back to Rome. The memory of how Pompey had treated him at Galatia would leave Lucullus rankled for some time; he would have his chance to repay the favour, at least in some small sense, when the day came that he would demand that the senate examine and approve each of Pompey’s measures individually and in turn.10 For the present, however, Lucullus and his retinue of would-be triumphal soldiers faced a long journey back to Rome. The days of Lucullus’ foreign adventuring were over at long last. The man who could arguably lay hold to the title of the last of the Sullans – if not the last of the republicans – was coming home to an uncertain future.11

  At this point in his narrative, Plutarch makes another general assessment of Lucullus the military leader. Lucullus’ main problem was that he could not retain the affection of his men. If he had, Plutarch is certain that the Romans would not have marked the border of their empire at the Euphrates, but by the very limits of Asia and the Hyrcanian (i.e., the Caspian) Sea. Tigranes had already conquered so much, and the Parthians were not that powerful, and so by defeating the Armenian king, Lucullus would have truly been the Roman Alexander. In implicit contrast to Lucullus’ failure to win over the hearts and minds of his soldiers is the popularity for which both Pompey and Caesar would be celebrated (especially the latter). The verdict of many modern scholars on Lucullus is that his excellence and ability in the field were not remotely matched by the warmth and affection that his rivals and peers enjoyed from their men. It is all too easy to label Lucullus more or less crudely as ‘old-fashioned’, even something of a martinet. The truth, however, may be that Lucullus was quite effectively stereotyped, especially in his absence, and that any commander would have had significant problems in keeping his men from mutiny in identical circumstances.

  Plutarch has another comment on Lucullus, specifically on the Parthian problem. For Plutarch, Lucullus did great harm to Rome, greater indeed than the good he did for Rome, for by his very achievements in distant Asia, he tempted Crassus to seek his own fortune against Parthia. Crassus would suffer defeat and death in 53 BC; Plutarch notes that Crassus would learn that Lucullus’ enemies had been defeated not because they were cowards, but because of how competent and bold Lucullus really was. Lucullus had known better than to stir the Parthian bear, but his successors in the East would not all share such wisdom.

  Were Lucullus’ men simply fickle? Did they have legitimate grievances against their commander of so many years? Did many of them, indeed a majority, harbour a strong desire to return to Italy, trading in the life of a military adventurer for that of a gentleman (at best) farmer? Certainly many of Lucullus’ men stayed with Pompey. When the time came for decisions and debate, it may well have been that many of the army’s men had attachments in Asia – women and the prospect of immediate reward in the form of plunder – and the idea of returning to an Italy that held little for them personally may have been a factor in persuading many soldiers to remain under arms in Asia. They were professional soldiers now, and not some militia that was ready to return to civilian life. Claims that one desired to return ‘home’ to Italy and Rome, of course, were always poignant laments for soldiers who had spent so long in the field. Perhaps the prospect of a new commander filled some with the hope of increased rewards, donatives and special favours as a general’s insurance for the challenges that lay ahead.12

  Home Again

  Lucullus did not have a pleasant homecoming to Italy. He may not have recognized some aspects of its daily governmental processes and senatorial order, for much had changed in the years since he had embarked on his Asian mission. He learned soon after his arrival that his brother Marcus was under investigation and prosecution by Gaius Memmius for the conduct of his quaestorship under Sulla.13 And Lucius himself was soon under the microscope, with the usual accusations that he had appropriated the property and plunder of the state for his own use and had needlessly stretched out the war in Asia to further his own financial and military/political ambitions. There was even the denial of the triumph that many would have felt had been justly earned – though of course Mithridates was still on the loose.

  It may well have seemed that life was coming full circle. The brothers had needed to defend their family honour in their youth, and now one after the other the brothers were being attacked by a man who could arguably claim no accomplishment that came anywhere near matching what the Luculli had achieved. For Lucullus to have a triumph would only encourage credence to the view that he had done all the ‘real’ work, and that Pompey was merely putting the finishing touches on a project that was mostly to the credit of Lucullus. One may well wonder if the Memmian prosecution and attacks on the brothers was the decisive factor in Lucullus’ decision not to be the standard bearer of the optimates against the power of Pompey – again, in some sense he may well not have recognized the Rome he had re-entered. Marcus had enjoyed a triumph for his part in the resolution of the Spartacus mess; it was not nearly enough, however, to free him from the threat of an ambitious prosecutor – and his brother would fare no better. If someone was inclined to conclude that the prosecutions were political in nature, they would not be unreasonable in the analysis.

  Lucullus defended himself. He did have friends, after all,
and those who no doubt continued to feel sorry for the treatment of the man in the wake of his manifold victories and deeds of valour. Eventually, the decision about the triumph was rescinded; 66 BC would be the year of his hour in the spotlight, his chance to be honoured for his Asian achievements. Plutarch notes that the triumph was not quite of the ostentatious magnitude of some; Mithridates, of course, would have been the only trophy that mattered in the procession. There were many captured arms and royal siege engines, with tokens aplenty to commemorate the most impressive of Lucullus’ achievements. One might well imagine, however, that it was a triumph with a certain forlorn, hollow quality. For no one knew better than Lucullus how abortive the whole enterprise had been. The general had been cheated, some might say, of the ultimate prize.