To celebrate that — and, not coincidentally, his 65th birthday — early this month, the designer flew in scores of journalists from around the world (among them the editors of Esquire, Departures, Town & Country and GQ) for days of sightseeing, Lucullan feasting and speeches by the self-styled humanist, who has a penchant for citing Homer, Hadrian and Cicero.
|
|
Lucullan describes things related to or created by people named Lucullus, most notably Lucullus (Lucius Licinius Lucullus, 118 BC–57/56 BC), Optimate politician of the late Roman Republic, consul (74 BC) and a general in the Third Mithridatic War. Due to the amount of treasure he returned to Rome, "Lucullan" is sometimes used as an adjective to signify lavishness.
|
|
The hapless ex-emperor, Romulus Augustus, was still present in Ravenna, and Odoacer rid himself of the boy by exiling him. The fate of this final Western Roman emperor is somewhat uncertain, but it is believed that he retired to the Lucullan Villa in CampaniaGibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 3, Pg 640.
|
|
Not all President's Choice products were hits, though. Lucullan Delights, a vanilla crème sandwich cookie designed to compete with Oreos, was introduced a year before The Decadent. Nichol had come across a food critic's reference to Lucullus, a 1st Century B.C. Roman senator famous for his lavish banquets, and decided he had to use the name. But sales proved slow as shoppers apparently struggled to make sense of the name, even with an explanatory note on the packaging.
|
|
One of his early works, undertaken at age 34 in 1979, was the restoration of a Greenwich Village apartment building. The extensive renovation was commissioned by a couple who selected Montoya to undertake the renovation of the Queen Anne Style apartment, despite his reputation as a modernist designer. His material sample submissions consisted of white, bright red, gray flannel and green velvet as well as exposed brick and modern furnishings. More recent projects include the Lucullan office at the Medallion Financial Corporation and Caribbean style residences in the Dominican Republic and New York.
|
|
The sources do agree that Romulus took up residence in the Castel dell'Ovo (Lucullan Villa) in Naples, now a castle but originally built as a grand sea-side house by Lucullus in the 1st century BC, fortified by Valentinian III in the mid-5th century. From here, contemporary histories fall silent. In the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon notes that the disciples of Saint Severinus of Noricum were invited by a "Neapolitan lady" to bring his body to the villa in 488; Gibbon conjectures from this that Augustulus "was probably no more."Gibbon, p.
|
|
Plutarch, like most of Lucullus' Roman contemporaries, thought these occupations of Lucullus' 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 - the statue of the 'Scythian knife sharpener' (now thought to depict the executioner getting ready to flay Marsyas) which the Medici removed to Florence, for example, was found in this garden. Lucullus is memorialized with a strain of Swiss chard.
|
|
So famous did Lucullus become for his banqueting that the word lucullan now means lavish, luxurious and gourmet. Once, Cicero and Pompey succeeded in inviting themselves to dinner with Lucullus, but, curious to see what sort of meal Lucullus ate when alone, forbade him to communicate with his slaves regarding any preparation of the meal for his guests. However, Lucullus outsmarted them, and succeeded in getting Pompey and Cicero to allow that he specify which room he would be dining in. He ordered that his slaves serve him in the Apollo Room, knowing that his service staff was schooled ahead of time as to the specific details of service he expected for each of his particular dining rooms: as the standard amount specified to be outlaid for any given dinner in the Apollo room was the large sum of 50,000 drachmae,According to Plutarch's Life of Lucullus.
|
|