several of whom were decreed triumphs by the senate on account of
their success in war. Her husband was surnamed _Dives_ on account of
his enormous wealth. He is said to have possessed a fortune equal to a
million and a half pounds sterling; and to have given an
entertainment to the whole Roman people in a time of scarcity, besides
distributing to each family a quantity of corn sufficient to last
three months. Along with Julius Cæsar and Pompey, he formed the famous
first Triumvirate. While the richest, he seems, notwithstanding the
above-mentioned act of munificence, to have been one of the meanest of
the Romans. He had no steady political principle; he was actuated by
bitter jealousy towards his colleagues and rivals; and that
unsuccessful expedition which he undertook against the Parthians, in
flagrant violation of a treaty made with them by Sulla and renewed by
Pompey, and which has stamped his memory with incapacity and shame,
was prompted by an insatiable greed for the riches of the East. On the
field he occupied himself entirely in amassing fresh treasures, while
his troops were neglected. The manner of his death, after the defeat
and loss of the greater part of his army, was characteristic of his
ruling passion. Tempted to seek an interview with the Parthian general
by the offer of the present of a horse with splendid trappings, he was
cut down when in the act of mounting into the saddle. His body was
contemptuously buried in some obscure spot by the enemy, and his hands
and head were sent to the king, who received the ghastly trophies
while seated at the nuptial feast of his daughter, and ordered in
savage irony molten gold to be poured down the severed throat,
exclaiming, "Sate thyself now with the metal of which in life thou
wert so fond."

There is one incident connected with this most disastrous campaign
upon which the imagination loves to dwell. Publius, the younger son of