If great men are those whose action brings about great changes, Lucius Licinius Lucullus was one of the greatest men of his time. His campaign in Asia Minor started an altogether new policy. Hitherto Rome had acquired provinces in an accidental way; there had been no purpose of conquest. In Spain and Africa the influence of Carthage had to be wiped out; in Greece Rome was nominally a protector only, called in to help against outside dangers. In Asia Minor it was more or less the same. As regards Asia Minor no one in Rome was satisfied with the treaty Sulla had made with Mithridates. It was felt to be a disgrace to Rome that the man who had caused the murder of hundreds of thousands of Italians in cold blood was recognized as the ‘friend and ally’ of Rome and left in undisturbed possession. Mithridates had got to be punished. When Lucullus went to the East it was for this purpose. But he did far more. He discovered that these great Asiatic monarchies, with their myriad armies, looked strong but were really weak; they could not maintain themselves, if attacked. He did not merely make Rome safe against their attack; he marched through kingdom after kingdom, conquering and subduing them to Rome. Thus, in fact, if not yet in name, he made Rome an empire. The work he thus began Lucullus did not complete. The idea was his; it was his hard fighting, the courage with which he overrode instructions and disregarded the Senate’s order to return, which paved the way for conquest. Pompeius, whose slow mind and cautious temper could never have started such a policy, saw from Rome what Lucullus’s fighting was leading up to. He saw the golden prize at the end of his efforts and determined to snatch it from him. In this he succeeded. But the credit or blame of making Rome an imperial power, a power that rules by force over alien races, belongs not to him but to Lucullus. This was not understood at the time. Lucullus, disappointed and embittered, came back to Rome and was known to his contemporaries not as the man who laid the foundations of the empire, but as the giver of the most luxurious and extraordinary banquets ever eaten. The proverb associated with his name--‘Dining with Lucullus’--shows this. His feasts were famous; the rarest foods from every part of the known world were on his table. His gardens too were wonderful, and his house glowed with all the treasures of the distant East. Among the treasures he brought back was one little noticed in his day--the cherry-tree. This soon grew all over Italy, but that Lucullus had brought it was forgotten. Like everything else that he did, it failed to bring him fame.