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The Luxury of Lucullus
Lucullus' life, like the Old comedy, presents us at the
commencement with acts of policy and of war, and at the end offers
nothing but good eating and drinking, feastings, and revelings,
and mere play. For I give no higher name to his sumptuous
buildings, porticos and baths, still less to his paintings and
sculptures, and all his industry about these curiosities, which he
collected with vast expense, lavishly bestowing all the wealth and
treasure which he got in the war upon them, insomuch that even
now, with all the advance of luxury, the Lucullean gardens are
counted the noblest the emperor has. Tubero, the stoic, when he
saw his buildings at Naples, where he suspended the hills upon
vast tunnels, brought in the sea for moats and fish-ponds round
his house, and pleasure-houses in the waters, called him Xerxes in
a gown. He had also fine seats in Tusculum, belvederes, and large
open balconies for men's apartments, and porticos to walk in,
where Pompey coming to see him, blamed him for making a house
which would be pleasant in summer, but uninhabitable in winter;
whom he answered with a smile, "You think me, then, less provident
than cranes and storks, not to change my home with the season."
When a praetor, with great expense and pains, was preparing a
spectacle for the people, and asked him to lend him some purple
robes for the performers in a chorus, he told him he would go home
and see, and if he had any, would let him take them; and the next
day asking how many he wanted, and being told that a hundred would
suffice, bade him take twice as many: on which the poet Horace
observes, that a house is indeed a poor one, where the valuables
unseen and unthought of do not exceed all those that meet the eye.
Lucullus' daily entertainments were ostentatiously extravagant,
not only in purple coverlets, and plate adorned with precious
stones, and dancings, and interludes, but with the greatest
diversity of dishes and the most elaborate cookery, for the vulgar
to admire and envy. It was a happy thought of Pompey in his
sickness, when his physician prescribed a thrush for his dinner,
and his servants told him that in summer time thrushes were not to
be found anywhere but in Lucullus' fattening coops, that he would
not suffer them to fetch one thence, but observed to his
physician, "So if Lucullus had not been an epicure, Pompey had not
lived," and ordered something else that could easily be got to be
prepared for him. Cato was his friend and connection, but,
nevertheless, so hated his life and habits, that when a young man
in the senate made a long and tedious speech in praise of
frugality and temperance, Cato got up and said, "How long do you
mean to go making money like Crassus, living like Lucullus, and
talking like Cato?"
It is plain from the anecdotes on record of him, that Lucullus was
not only pleased with, but even gloried in his way of living. For
he is said to have feasted several Greeks upon their coming to
Rome day after day, who, out of a true Grecian principle, being
ashamed, and declining the invitation, where so great an expense
was every day incurred for them, he with a smile said to them,
"Some of this, indeed, my Grecian friends, is for your sakes, but
more for that of Lucullus." Once when he supped alone, there being
only one course, and that but moderately furnished, he called his
steward and reproved him, who, professing to have supposed that
there would be no need of any great entertainment, when nobody was
invited, was answered, "What, did you not know, then, that today
Lucullus was to dine with Lucullus?" This being much spoken of
about the city, Cicero and Pompey one day met him loitering in the
forum, the former his intimate friend and familiar, and, though
there had been some ill-will between Pompey and him about the
command in the war, still they used to see each other and converse
on easy terms together. Cicero accordingly saluted him, and asked
him whether today was a good time for asking a favor of him, and
on his answering, "Very much so," and begging to hear what it was,
Cicero said, "then we should like to dine with you today, just on
the dinner that is prepared for yourself." Lucullus being
surprised, and requesting a day's time, they refused to grant it,
and would not allow him to talk with his servants, for fear he
should give orders for more than was appointed before. But this
they consented to, that before their faces he might tell his
servant, that today he would sup in "the Apollo" (for so one of
his best dining-rooms was called), and by this evasion he
outwitted his guests. For every room, as it seems, had its own
assessment of expenditure, dinner at such a price, and all else in
accordance; so that the servants, on knowing where he would dine,
knew also how much was to be expended, and in what style and form
dinner was to be served. The expense for the Apollo was fifty
thousand drachmas, and such a sum being that day laid out, the
greatness of the cost did not so much amaze Pompey and Cicero, as
the rapidity of the outlay. One might believe that Lucullus
thought his money really captive and barbarian, so wantonly and
contumeliously did he treat it.
His furnishing of a library, however, deserves praise and record,
for he collected very many choice manuscripts; and the use they
were put to was even more magnificent than the purchase, the
library being always open, and the walks and reading rooms about
it free to all Greeks, whose delight it was to leave their other
occupations and hasten thither as to the habitation of the Muses,
there walking about, and diverting one another. He himself often
passed his hours there, disputing with the learned in the walks,
and giving his advice to statesmen who required it, insomuch that
his house was altogether a home, and in a manner, a Greek
prytaneum for those that visited Rome.
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