LIFE OF SALLUST—HIS INSINCERITY—HIS HISTORICAL WORKS—HE WAS A BITTER
OPPONENT OF THE NEW ARISTOCRACY—PROFLIGACY OF THAT ORDER—HIS STYLE
COMPARED WITH THAT OF THUCYDIDES—HIS VALUE AS AN HISTORIAN—TROGUS
POMPEIUS—HIS HISTORIÆ PHILIPPICÆ.
C. SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS (BORN B. C. 85.)
C. Sallustius Crispus was fifteen years junior to Cæsar: he was born at
Amiternum[941] in the territory of the Sabines, A. U. C. 669, B. C. 85.
He was a member of a plebeian family; but, having served the offices of
tribune and quæstor, attained senatorial rank. In A. U. C. 704, he was
expelled from the senate[942] by the censors Ap. Claudius Pulcher and L.
Calpurnius Piso.[943] It is said that, although he was “a most severe
censurer of the licentiousness of others,”[944] he was a profligate man
himself, and that the scandal of an intrigue with Fausta, the daughter
of Sulla and the wife of Milo, was the cause of his degradation.
Through the influence of Cæsar, whose party he espoused, he was restored
to his rank, and subsequently became prætor. He accompanied his patron
in the African war, and was made governor of Numidia. Whilst in that
capacity, he accumulated by rapacity and extortion enormous wealth,[945]
which he lavished on expensive but tasteful luxury. The gardens on the
Quirinal which bore his name were celebrated for their beauty; and
beneath their alleys, and porticoes, surrounded by the choicest works of
art, he avoided the tumultuous scenes of civil strife which ushered in
the empire, and devoted his retirement to composing the historical
records which survived him. His death took place B. C. 35.
Those who have wished to defend the character of Sallust from the
charges of immorality, to which allusion has been made, have attributed
them to the groundless calumnies of Lenæus, a freedman of Cæsar’s great
rival Pompey. It is not improbable that his faults may have been
exaggerated by the malevolence of party-spirit in those factious times;
but there are no sentiments in his works which can constitute a defence
of him. If an historian is distinguished by a high moral tone of
feeling, this quality cannot but show itself in his writings without
intention or design. But in Sallust there is always an affectation and
pretence of morality without the reality. His philosophical reflections
at the commencement of the Jugurthine and Catilinarian wars are empty,
cold, and heartless. There is a display of commonplace sentiment, and an
expressed admiration of the old Roman virtue of bygone days, but no
appearance of sincerity. The language may be pointed enough to produce
an effect upon the ear, but the sentiments always fail to probe the
recesses of the heart. Sallust lived in an immoral and corrupt age; and
though, perhaps, he was not amongst the worst of his contemporaries, he
had not sufficient strength of principle to resist the force of example
and temptation.
It is almost certain that, as a provincial governor, Sallust was not
more unscrupulous than others of his class; but wealth such as he
possessed could not have been acquired except by extortion and
maladministration. As a politician, he was equally unsatisfactory: he
was a mere partisan of Cæsar, and therefore, a strenuous opponent of the
higher classes as supporters of Pompey; but he was not an honest
champion of popular rights, nor was he capable of understanding the
meaning of patriotism. If, however, we make some allowance for the
political bias of Sallust, which is evident throughout his works, his
histories have not only the charms of the historical romance, but are
also valuable political studies. His characters are vigorously and
naturally drawn, as though he not only personally knew them, but
accurately understood them. The more his histories are read the more
will it be discovered that he always writes with an object. He eschews
the very idea of a mere dry chronicle of facts, and uses his facts as
the means of enforcing a great political lesson.
For this reason, like Thucydides, whom he evidently took as his model,
not only in style but in the use of his materials, his speeches are his
own compositions. Even when he had an opportunity, as in the case of
Cæsar’s and Cato’s speeches in the “_Bellum Catilinarium_,” he contented
himself with giving the substance of them, clothed it in his own
language, and imbodied in them his own sentiments. According to his own
statement, there is one exception to his practice in this respect. He
asserts that the speech of Memmius, the tribune of the people,[946] is
the very one which he delivered. If this be really the case, it is a
most valuable example of the style in which a popular leader addressed
his audience. But it is to be feared that this is not strictly and
literally true: the style is indeed somewhat different from that of the
other speeches, but does not exhibit freedom enough to assure us that he
has actually reported it as delivered. It may be only a specimen of that
consummate skill which constitutes the principal charm of Sallust’s
manner, and made him a complete master of composition. Sallust never
attempted anything more than detached portions of Roman history. “I have
determined,” he says, “to write only select portions of Roman history,”
(carptim perscribere.[947]) He himself gives an explanation of his
motives for so doing,[948] when he complains of the manner in which this
department of literature was neglected. Wherever a satisfactory account
existed, he thought it unnecessary to travel over the same ground a
second time.
His first work, reckoning according to the chronological order of
events, is the Jugurthine war, which commenced B. C. 111, and ended
B. C. 106. The next period, comprehending the social war and the war of
Sulla, extending as far as the consulship of M. Æmilius Lepidus, B. C.
78, had already been related by Sisenna, a friend of Cicero.[949] Where
Sisenna left off, the Histories of Sallust (Historiarum Libri V.) began,
and continued the narrative without interruption until the prætorship of
Cicero.[950] This work is unfortunately lost, with the exception of some
letters and speeches, and a few fragments relating to the war of
Spartacus. Niebuhr[951] considers this one of the most deplorable losses
in Roman literature; less, however, on account of its historical
importance, than as a perfect model of historical composition. A break
of two years ensues, and then follows the “_Bellum Catilinarium_,” or
history of the Catilinarian conspiracy in the year of Cicero’s
consulship.[952]
This completes the list of those works which are undoubtedly genuine. No
satisfactory opinion has been arrived at respecting the authorship of
the two letters to Cæsar, “_De Republicâ Ordinandâ_;” and it is now
unhesitatingly admitted, that the declamation against Cicero, must have
been, as well as its counterpart, the declamation against Sallust, the
work of some rhetorical writer of a later period. The subject of this
imaginary disputation was naturally suggested by the known fact that
Sallust was no friend to Cicero.
It has already been stated that Sallust was a bitter opponent of the
principles and policy of the aristocratic party; but it must be
carefully explained what is meant by that assertion. The object of his
hatred was not the old patrician blood of Rome, but the new aristocracy,
which had of late years been rapidly rising up and displacing it.
This new nobility was utterly corrupt; and their corruption was
encouraged by the venality of the masses, whose poverty and destitution
tempted them to be the tools of unscrupulous ambition. Everything at
Rome, as Juvenal said in later times, had its price. Sallust adds to the
severity of his strictures upon his countrymen by the force of contrast;
he represents even Jugurtha as asserting that the republic itself might
be bought, if a purchaser could be found; and paints the barbarian as
more honest and upright than his conquerors. The ruined and abandoned
associates of Catiline represented a numerous class among the younger
members of the upper classes, who, by lives devoted to lawless
pleasures, had become ruined, reckless, and demoralized. They were ripe
for revolution, because they had nothing to lose: they could not gratify
their vicious propensities without wealth; they had no principles or
scruples as to the means of acquiring it; their best prospects were in
anarchy, proscription, and confiscation. The debauched and ruined
nobleman, and the vulgar profligate of the lowest class, forgot their
mutual differences, and thus a combination was formed, the members of
which were the sink and outscourings of society.
Such degenerate profligacy is an ample justification of Sallust’s hatred
towards the new aristocracy; and the object of all his works evidently
was to place that party in the unfavourable light which it deserved. In
the Jugurthine war he describes the unworthiness of the foreign policy
of Rome under its maladministration. His “Histories,” according to the
statement of Niebuhr, describe the popular resistance to the
revolutionary policy of Sulla, the profligate leader of the same party;
and in the “Catilinarian war” he paints in vivid colours the depravity
of that order of society, who, bankrupt in fortune and dead to all
honourable feelings, still plumed themselves on their rank and
exclusiveness. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the truthfulness of the
picture which Sallust draws, selfishness and not patriotism was the
mainspring of his politics; and it is scarcely possible to avoid seeing
that he is anxious to set himself off to the best advantage. His
hollowness is that of a vain and conceited man, who measures himself by
too high a standard, and appears chagrined and disappointed that others
do not estimate him as highly as he does himself.
These are the blots in his character as a man and a citizen; but we must
not forget his real merits as an historian. To him must be conceded the
praise of having first conceived the notion of a history in the true
sense of the term. He saw the lamentable defects in the abortive
attempts made by his predecessors;[953] and the model was a good one
which he left for his successors to follow. It is scarcely too much to
suppose, that if it had not been for Sallust, Livy might not have been
led to conceive his vast and comprehensive plan. He was the first Roman
historian, and the guide to future historians. Again, his style,
although almost ostentatiously elaborate and artificial, and not without
affectation, is, upon the whole, pleasing, and almost always
transparently clear. The caution of Quintilian respecting his well-known
brevity (“vitanda est illa Sallustiana brevitas”[954]) is well-timed in
his work, as being addressed to orators, for public speaking necessarily
requires a more diffuse style; and it is probable that Quintilian would
not appreciate its merits, because he himself was a rhetorician, and his
taste was formed in a rhetorical age. Seneca, for the same reasons,
finds similar faults, not only with Sallust, but with the favourite
literature of his day. “When Sallust flourished, abrupt sentences,
unexpected cadences, obscure expressions, were considered signs of a
cultivated taste.”[955] But the brevity of Sallust does not produce the
effect of harsh or disagreeable abruptness, whilst it keeps the
attention awake, and impresses the facts upon the memory. How powerful
and suggestive, for example, how abundant in material for thought, are
those few words in which he describes Pompey as “oris probi, animo
inverecundo!” There is, however, this difference between the brevity of
Sallust and that of his supposed model, Thucydides. That of the Greek
historian was natural and involuntary; that of the Roman intentional and
the result of imitation. Thucydides thought more quickly than he could
write: his closely-packed ideas and condensed constructions, therefore,
constitute a species of shorthand, by which alone he could keep pace
with the rapidity of his intellect. He is, therefore, always vigorous
and suggestive; and the necessities of the case make the reader readily
pardon the difficulties of his style.
The brevity of Thucydides is the result of condensation; that of Sallust
is elliptical expression. He gives a hint and the reader must supply the
rest; whilst Thucydides only expects his readers to unfold and develop
ideas which already existed in a concentrated form. Sallust requires
addition; Thucydides dilution and expansion. Neither does the brevity of
Sallust resemble that of Cæsar or of Tacitus: the former was
straight-forward and business-like, requiring neither addition nor
expansion, because he wished to make his statements as clear as they
were capable of being expressed, without ornament or exaggeration. He
was brief, because he never wished to say more than was absolutely
necessary, and therefore his brevity is the very cause of perspicuity.
The mind of Tacitus was, from its thoughtfulness and philosophical
character, the very counterpart of that of Thucydides: his brevity was
therefore natural and the result of the same causes.
There is one point of view in which Sallust is invaluable as an
historian. He had always an object to which he wished all his facts to
converge: he brought forward his facts as illustrations and developments
of principles. He analyzed and exposed the motives of parties, and the
secret springs which actuated the conduct of individuals, and laid bare
the inner life of those great actors on the public stage, in the
interesting historical scenes which he undertakes to describe.
TROGUS POMPEIUS.
Trogus Pompeius was a voluminous historian of the Augustan age, whose
father was private secretary to Julius Cæsar.[956] His work was of such
vast extent, and embraced so great a variety of subjects, that it has
even been termed by Justin, who published a large collection of extracts
from it, _an Universal History_. Its title, however, “_Historiæ
Philippicæ_,” proves the writer’s primary object was the history of the
Macedonian monarchy, together with the kingdoms which arose out of it at
the death of Alexander; and that all the rest of the information
contained in it were digressions into which he was naturally led, and
episodes incidentally introduced into the main stream of the history.
For the materials contained in his work, which consisted of forty-four
books, he was indebted to the Greek historians, but especially to
Theopompus of Chios,[957] from whose principal work he derived the
title, “_Philippica_,” as well as the practice of branching out into
long and frequent digressions. It is easy to imagine over how vast an
area a history of the Macedonian empire was capable of extending. The
subjugation of the East by the conquests of Alexander naturally made a
rapid sketch of the Assyrian, Median, and Persian empires, an
appropriate introduction to the work: the connexion of Persia with
Greece and Egypt furnished an opportunity of imbodying the records of
Greek history, and a description of Egypt and its inhabitants. Once
embarked in Greek history, the writer pursued it until it became
interwoven, through the interference of Philip, with the affairs of
Macedon. Alexander and his successors succeed: the campaigns of Pyrrhus
bring the Romans upon the stage; Carthage and Sicily for awhile occupy
the scene; and the main body of the work is completed by a sketch of the
gradual consolidation of that vast empire, of which subjugated Macedonia
became a province. Nor is this all—other less important nations, states,
and cities are ever and anon introduced, according as they act their
part in the great drama of history.