Lucullus (1.3-1.4)

Lucullus was trained to speak fluently both Latin and Greek, so that Sulla, in writing his own memoirs, dedicated them to him, as a man who would set in order and duly arrange the history of the times better than himself. For the style of Lucullus was not only businesslike and ready; the same was true of many another man’s in the Forum. There,

Like smitten tunny, through the billowy sea it dashed,

Withered, inelegant, and dead.

But Lucullus, from his youth up, was devoted to the genial and so-called liberal culture then in vogue, wherein the Beautiful was sought. And when he came to be well on in years, he suffered his mind to find complete leisure and repose, as it were after many struggles, in philosophy, encouraging the contemplative side of his nature, and giving timely halt and check, after his difference with Pompey, to the play of his ambition.