In antiquity Lucullus was indisputably considered a great general, one to be numbered with Sulla and Pompey. This book narrates in detail the great Asiatic campaigns upon which his military reputation rests. But there is a darker side. Another ancient tradition suggests that when the wars were done he became a fatty degenerate, a miserable trifler devoting his time to banquets, baths and follies. Keaveney explodes this myth, arguing that Lucullus' leisure activities were the outward expression of an aesthetic impulse, not simply weak self indulgence. It is demonstrated, too, that Lucullus was active and influential in public life to the end of his days. Sulla, one of the republic's great figures, was a seminal influence on the life and political outlook of Lucullus. Lucullus and his friends aimed to carry the Sullan political ideal and constitutional arrangements into the next generation. This book details Lucullus' fight to do this, and shows how and why he ultimately failed. It is suggested that he may be viewed as a paradigm of the age in which he lived. Inheritor of the Sullan ideal, his failure is also its failure – in one man is embodied a whole class and its melancholy fate.