Whereas Crassus, though he was all the while eager for military command, did not succeed in getting it except in the servile war, and then of necessity, because Pompey and Metellus and both the Luculli were away. And yet by that time he had acquired the greatest honour and influence in the city. But it would seem that even his best friends thought him, in the words of the comic poet, The bravest warrior everywhere but in the field. An iambic trimeter of unknown authorship (Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 493).