Antiochus of Askalon, whom Lucullus eagerly sought for his friend and companion, and opposed to the followers of Philo, of whom Cicero also was one.  Cicero wrote an excellent treatise upon the doctrines of this sect, in which he made Lucullus[437] the speaker in favour of the doctrine of comprehension[438] and himself the speaker on the opposite side.  The book is entitled ‘Lucullus.’  Lucullus and Cicero were, as I have said, great friends, and associated in their political views, for Lucullus had not entirely withdrawn from public affairs, though he had immediately on his return to Rome surrendered to Crassus and Cato the ambition and the struggle to be the first man in the state and have the greatest power, considering that the struggle was not free from danger and great mortification; for those who looked with jealousy on the power of Pompeius put Crassus and Cato at the head of their party in the Senate, when Lucullus declined to take the lead, but Lucullus used to go to the Forum to support his friends, and to the Senate whenever it was necessary to put a check on any attempt or ambitious design of Pompeius.  The arrangements which Pompeius made after his conquest of the kings, Lucullus contrived to nullify, and when Pompeius proposed a distribution of lands[439] Lucullus with the assistance of Cato prevented it from being made, which drew Pompeius to seek the friendship of Crassus and Caesar, or rather to enter into a combination with them, and by filling the city with arms and soldiers he got his measures ratified after driving out of the Forum the partisans of Cato and Lucullus.  The nobles being indignant at these proceedings, the party of Pompeius produced one Vettius,[440] whom, as they said, they had detected in a design on the life of Pompeius.  When Vettius was examined before the Senate, he accused others, and before the popular assembly he named Lucullus as the person by whom he had been suborned to murder Pompeius.  But nobody believed him, and it soon became clear that the man had been brought forward by the partisans of Pompeius to fabricate a false charge, and to criminate others, and the fraud was made still more apparent, when a few days after the dead body of Vettius was thrown out of the prison; for, though it was given out that he died a natural death[441] there were marks of strangulation and violence on the body, and it was the opinion that he had been put to death by those who suborned him.

XLIII.  This induced Lucullus still more to withdraw from public affairs; and when Cicero was banished from Rome, and Cato[442] was sent to Cyprus, he retired altogether.  Before he died, it is said that his understanding was disordered and gradually failed.  Cornelius Nepos says that Lucullus did not die of old age nor of disease, but that his health was destroyed by potions given him by Callisthenes, one of his freedmen, and that the potions were given him by Callisthenes with the view of increasing his master’s affection