89.6
It is a custom in Rome for the knights, when they have completed the regular term of service in the army, to lead their horses into the Forum, one at a time, before the two men whom they call censors, and after enumerating their campaigns and the generals under whom they served, to receive such commendation or censure as is fitting. Pompey, who was then consul, with his own hand led his horse before the censors, Gellius and Lentulus, and when they asked him, in conformity with the custom, whether he had served all his campaigns, he replied, Yes, all, and under myself as commander-in-chief. Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Pompey, chap. xxii. (630 A).
89.7
On gaining possession of the papers of Sertorius in Spain, among which were letters from many leading men inviting Sertorius to come to Rome with a view to fomenting a revolution and changing the government, he burned them all, thus offering an opportunity for the miscreants to repent and become better men. Ibid. chap. xx. (p. 629); similar stories are told of others, as, for example, of William III. of England.
89.8
When Phraates, king of the Parthians, sent to him, claiming the right to set his boundary at the river Euphrates, he said that the Romans set justice as their boundary towards the Parthians. Ibid. chap. xxxiii. (637 C).
89.9
Lucius Lucullus, after his campaigns, gave himself up to pleasures and lived very expensively, and strongly disapproved of Pompey’s yearning for the strenuous life as something out of keeping with his years. But Pompey said that for an old man it was more out of keeping with his years to be a voluptuary than to hold office. Ibid. chap. xlviii. (644 E); Life of Lucullus, chap. xxxviii. (518 B); Moralia, 785 E.
