The fabled gardens of Lucullus were among the most influential in the
history of gardening. Lucullus had first-hand experience of the Persian gardening style, in the
satraps' gardens of
Anatolia (
"Asia" to the Romans) and in Mesopotamia and Persia itself. As Plutarch pointed out, "Lucullus [was] the first Roman who carried an army over Taurus, passed the Tigris, took and burnt the royal palaces of Asia in the sight of the kings,
Tigranocerta, Cabira, Sinope, and Nisibis, seizing and overwhelming the northern parts as far as the Phasis, the east as far as
Media, and making the South and Red Sea his own through the kings of the Arabians." These comments indicate that it was well understood in Rome that this new luxury of gardening originated in Persia. Lucullus's rural villas in the hills at
Tusculum, near modern
Frascati, and at
Naples were also set in lavish garden settings. Plutarch, in 'Lucullus' ch. 37, mentions "the chambers and galleries, with their sea-views, built at Naples by Lucullus, out of the spoils of the barbarians.", and Pliny writes of Lucullus cutting a channel through a mountain on his Naples estate to allow seawater to circulate in his fishpond, which recalled the channel that had been cut through the isthmus at
Mount Athos by the Persian king. Because of the massive piles which he built in the sea at his villa in Naples,
Pompey mockingly
nicknamed
Lucullus "the Roman
Xerxes", and
Tubero called him "Xerxes in a
toga". Plutarch, like most of Lucullus's Roman contemporaries, thought these occupations of Lucullus's retirement unbecoming to a Roman, and mere play: Though a
Lucullan feast has passed into proverb, Lucullus was not a mere
conspicuous consumer. He formed a fine library and kept it open to scholars, wrote himself and supported writers. His garden was filled with works of art, particularly Greek sculpture, both originals and copies of “old masters”, and has thus been a rich archaeological source of ancient sculpture: for example, the statue of the
Scythian knife sharpener (now thought to depict the executioner getting ready to flay
Marsyas) which the Medici removed to Florence was found in this garden. ==Later history==