42.5
although he lost no time in leaving to Crassus and Cato the ambitious struggle for the chief place and the greatest power, since he saw that it involved both peril and ignominy. For those who looked with suspicion upon the power of Pompey, made Crassus and Cato the champions of the senatorial party when Lucullus declined the leadership. But Lucullus would still go to the forum in support of his friends, and also to the Senate, whenever there was need of combating some ambitious scheme of Pompey’s.
42.6
Thus, the dispositions which Pompey made after his conquest of the kings, Lucullus made null and void, and his proposal for a generous distribution of lands to his soldiers, Lucullus, with the co-operation of Cato, prevented from being granted. Pompey therefore took refuge in an alliance, or rather a conspiracy, with Crassus and Caesar, and by filling the city with his armed soldiery and expelling from the forum the partisans of Cato and Lucullus, got his measures ratified.
42.7
As these proceedings were resented by the nobles, the partisans of Pompey produced a certain Vettius, whom, as they declared, they had caught plotting against the life of Pompey. So the man was examined in the Senate, where he accused sundry other persons, but before the people he named Lucullus as the man who had engaged him to kill Pompey.