Lucullus

In antiquity Lucullus was indisputably accounted a great general, one to be numbered with Sulla and Pompey. This book narrates in detail the great Asiatic campaigns upon which his military repute chiefly rests. But there is a darker side. Another ancient tradition suggests that when the wars were done he became a fatty degenerate, a miserable trifler devoting his time to banquets, baths and the building of follies. Keaveney explodes this myth, arguing that Lucullus' leisure activities were the outward expression of an aesthetic impulse, not simply weak self-indulgence. It is demonstrated,…