In
his pupil, if we can trust in the smallest degree the picture drawn of
him by Cicero, we may see a specimen of the young men of the age whose
talents might have made them useful in the world, but for the strength
of the current that drew them into self-indulgence.
Not only the pursuit of pleasure, but its correlative, the avoidance
of work and duty, can be abundantly illustrated in this age; and this
too may have had a subtle connexion with Epicurean teaching, which had
always discouraged the individual from distraction in the service of
the State, as disturbing to the free development of his own virtue.
Sulla did much hard work, but made the serious blunder of retiring to
enjoy himself just when his new constitutional machinery needed the
most careful watching and tending. Lucullus, after showing a wonderful
capacity for work and a greater genius for war than perhaps any man of
his time, retired from public life as a millionaire and a quietist,
to enjoy the wealth that has become proverbial, and a luxury that is
astonishing, even if we make due allowance for the exaggeration of our
accounts of it.
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