[Footnote 441:  Kaltwasser translates it “he put himself to death:”  perhaps the words may have either meaning.]

[Footnote 442:  See the Life of Cicero, c. 31, and Life of Cato, c. 34.

Cicero was banished B.C. 58, and Cato was sent to Cyprus in the same year.  Lucullus probably did not survive beyond the year B.C. 56.  He was older than Cn.  Pompeius Magnus, who was born B.C. 106.

The character of Lucullus may be collected from Plutarch.  He was a man of talent and of taste, a brave soldier, a skilful general and a man of letters.  Cicero in the first chapter of the second book of the Academica Priora has passed a high eulogium on him.  He was fond of wealth and luxury, but humane and of a mild temper.  He was no match for the cunning of Pompeius, or the daring temper of Caesar; and he was not cruel enough to have acted with the decision which the troublesome times required that he just lived to see.  The loss of his History of the Marsic War is much to be lamented.  It is singular that Sulla’s Memoirs which he revised, and his own work, have not been preserved, for we must suppose that copies of them were abundant; and they were extant in Plutarch’s time.

The history of the campaigns of Lucullus in Asia would have been interesting.  It is worth recording that we are indebted to him for the cherry, which he brought from Cerasus (Plin. Hist.  Nat. xv. 30) into Europe; the name of the fruit still records the place from which it was brought.  As a collector of books, a lover of ornamental gardening and parks stocked with animals, and a friend to all the arts and sciences, Lucullus was of all the luxurious Romans the most magnificent and the most refined.  He left a son by Servilia, whose name was probably Lucius.  This son joined the party of Cato and M. Brutus.  After the battle of Philippi B.C. 42, he was overtaken in the pursuit, and put to death at the command of M. Antonius.  No children of this son are mentioned.

Marcus, the brother of Plutarch’s Lucius Licinius, was consul B.C. 73.  It is not known how long he survived his brother, but he died before the commencement of the second Civil War (Vell.  Paterc. ii. 49), that which broke out between Caesar and Pompeius B.C. 50.]

COMPARISON OF KIMON AND LUCULLUS.

Lucullus may be accounted especially fortunate in having died when he did, so that he did not witness the ruin of his country by the civil wars, but departed this life while Rome, though corrupt, was yet a free state.  And in this he resembles Kimon more than in any other point; for Kimon also died while the Greeks were at the height of their prosperity, and before they had begun to fight against one another.  Indeed, Kimon died in his camp, while acting as commander-in-chief of his country’s forces, at the siege of Kitium in Cyprus; not retired home, as if worn out with hard service, nor yet indulging in feasting and wine-drinking, as though that were the end and reward of his military achievements; like that life of eternal drunkenness which Plato sneers at the Orphic school for promising to their disciples as their reward hereafter.