Page:The Children's Plutarch, Romans.djvu/117

 Lucullus had rooms fitted up for books, and scholars (or learned men) might come in and read, or sit under the portico and discuss. He had galleries full of pictures and statues, which cost vast sums of money.

Round his villas he had great gardens laid out, where you could sit under the shade of cedars; where the palm rose high over myrtles and fig-trees; where flowers formed lovely beds; where fountains glittered; where people could walk along winding paths, under archways of green. And in his gardens at Naples, Lucullus built big ponds, the water coming from the neighboring sea, and in the ponds large numbers of fish were kept.

Such were the villas and gardens of Lucullus.

Was it right of him to spend so much wealth on such pleasures ?

Perhaps you say the money was his own. He had won it in the wars.

He had certainly fought hard in the wars; but so had his armv, and they went home from the battle-fields to hard toil in the fields, and to mean houses. And, besides this, masses of people in Italy were poor and needy. Was it right to feast so grandly while these people were in such different circumstances?

Again, the villas and gardens could not be kept up without slave labor. Behind the splendor of