Caius Sallustius Crispus, according to the statement of the ancient
chronologer Hieronymus, was born in B. C. 86, at Amiternum, in the
country of the Sabines (to the north-east of Rome), and died four years
before the battle of Actium--that is, in B.C. 34 or 35. After having no
doubt gone through a complete course of law and the art of oratory, he
devoted himself to the service of the Roman republic at a time when Rome
was internally divided by the struggle of the opposite factions of
the _optimates_, or the aristocracy, and the _populares_, or the
democratical party. The optimates supported the power of the senate, and
of the nobility who prevailed in the senate; while the populares were
exerting themselves to bring all public questions of importance before
the popular assembly for decision, and resisted the influence of
illustrious and powerful families, whose privileges, arising from birth
and wealth, they attempted to destroy. Sallust belonged to the latter of
these parties. In B.C. 52 he was tribune of the people, and took an
active part in the disturbances which were caused at Rome in that year by
the open struggles between Annius Milo, one of the optimates, who was
canvassing for the consulship, and P. Clodius, who was trying to obtain
the praetorship. Milo slew Clodius on a public road: he was accused by
the populares, and defended by the optimates; but the judges, who could
not allow such an act of open violence to escape unpunished, condemned,
and sentenced him to exile. Pompey alone, who was then consul for the
third time, was capable of restoring order and tranquillity. The position
of a tribune of the people was a difficult one for Sallust: he was to
some extent opposed to Milo, and consequently also to Cicero, who pleaded
for Milo; but there exists a statement that he gave up his opposition;
and he himself, in the introduction to his 'Catiline,' intimates that his
honest endeavours for the good of the state drew upon him only ill-will
and hatred. Two years later (B.C. 50), he was ejected from the senate by
the censor Appius Claudius, one of the most zealous among the optimates.
The other censor, L. Piso, did not protect either Sallust, or any of the
others who shared the same fate with him, against this act of partiality.
Rome was at that time governed by the most oppressive oligarchy, which
was then mainly directed against Julius Caesar, who, as a reward for
his brilliant achievements in extending the Roman dominion in Gaul,
desired to be allowed to offer himself in his absence as a candidate for
his second consulship--a desire which the people were willing to comply
with, as it was based upon a law which had been passed some years before
in favour of Caesar; but the optimates endeavoured in every way to oppose
him, and drawing Pompey over to their side, they brought about a rupture
between him and Caesar. Sallust was looked upon in the senate as a
partisan of the latter, and this was the principal reason why he was
deprived of his seat in the great council of the republic; and L. Piso,
the father-in-law of Caesar, is said not to have opposed the partiality
of his colleague in the censorship, in order to increase the number of
Caesar's partisans. When, in B. C. 49, Caesar established his right by
force of arms, Sallust went over to him, and was restored not only to his
seat in the senate, but was advanced to the praetorship in the year B. C.
47. Sallust served, both before and during his year of office, in the
capacity of a lieutenant in Caesar's armies. He also accompanied him
to Africa in the war against the Pompeian party there, and after its
successful termination, was left behind as proconsul of Numidia, which
was made a Roman province. In the discharge of his duties, he is said to
have indulged in extorting money from the new subjects of Rome. He was
accused, but acquitted. This is the historical statement of Dion Cassius;
but a hostile writer of doubtful authority mentions that, by paying
12,000 pieces of gold to Caesar (perhaps as damages for the injury done),
he purchased his acquittal.
Hereupon Sallust withdrew from public life, to devote his leisure to
literature, and the composition of works on the history of his native
country; for, as after the murder of Caesar, in B. C. 44, the republic
was again delivered over to a state of military despotism, peaceful
advice was deprived of its influence. It need hardly be mentioned that
Sallust, as he had qualified himself for the highest political career,
and the great offices of the republic, must have been possessed of an
independent property; but the statement, that he afterwards gave himself
up to a life of luxury--that he purchased a villa at Tibur, which had
formerly belonged to Caesar--and that he possessed a splendid mansion,
with a garden laid out with elegant plantations and appropriate
buildings, at Rome, near the Colline gate--is founded on the equivocal
authority of a writer of a late period, who was hostile to him. It is
indeed certain that there existed at Rome _horti Sallustiani_, in
which Augustus frequently resided, and which were afterwards in the
possession of the Roman emperors; but it is doubtful as to whether they
had been acquired and laid out by our historian, or by his nephew, a
Roman eques, and particular favourite of Augustus. The statement that
Sallust married Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero, is still more
doubtful, and probably altogether fictitious.[1] There is, however, a
statement of a contemporary, the learned friend of Cicero, M. Varro,
which cannot be doubted--that in his earlier years Sallust, in the midst
of the party-strife at Rome, kept up an illicit intercourse with the
wife of Milo; but how much the hostility of party may have had to do with
such a report, cannot be decided. In his writings, Sallust expresses
a strong disgust of the luxurious mode of life, and the avarice and
prodigality, of his contemporaries; and there can be no doubt that these
repeated expressions of a stern morality excited both his contemporaries
and subsequent writers to hunt up and divulge any moral foibles in his
life and character, especially as in his compositions he struck into a
new path, by abandoning the ordinary style, and artificially reviving the
ancient style of composition.
[1] This strange account is found in Hieronymus's first work against
Jovinianus, towards the end; and it becomes still more strange by the
addition, that Terentia was married a third time to the orator
Messalla Corvinus (who was consul with Augustus, B. C. 91):--_Illa_
(Terentia) _interim conjunx egregia, et quae de fontibus Tullianis
hauserat sapientiam, nupsit Sallustio, inimico ejus, et tertio
Messallae Corvino: et quasi per quosdam gradus eloquentiae devoluta
est._ It almost appears as if in this tradition it had been
intended to mark three phases in the style of Roman oratory, for
Sallust was twenty years younger than Cicero, and Messalla nearly
as many years younger than Sallust.
The historical works of Sallust are, _De Bello Catilinae_, _De Bello
Jugurthino_ (or the two _Bella_, as the ancients call them), and
five books of _Historiae_--that is, a history of the Roman republic
during the period of twelve years, from the death of Sulla in B. C. 78,
down to the appointment of Pompey to the supreme command in the war
against Mithridates in B. C. 66. This history was regarded by the
ancients as the principal work of our author; but is now lost, with the
exception of four speeches and two political letters, which some admirer
of oratory copied separately from the context of the history, and which
have thus been preserved to our times. The two _Bella_, which are
preserved entire, form the contents of the present volume.
The work _De Bella Catilinae_ formed the beginning of his historical
compositions, as is clear from the author's own introduction; but it
was not written till after the murder of Caesar in B. C. 44. In it he
describes the conspiracy of L. Sergius Catilina, a man of noble birth and
high rank, but ruined circumstances; its discovery, and the punishment
of the conspirators at Rome in B. C. 63; and its final and complete
suppression in a pitched battle at the beginning of the year B. C. 62.
The _Bellum Jugurthinum_ treats of the life of Jugurtha, who in
B. C. 118, together with his cousins, Adherbal and Hiempsal, governed
Numidia. Having crushed his two cousins by fraud and violence, Jugurtha
afterwards maintained himself in his usurped kingdom for several years
against the Roman armies and generals that were sent out against him,
until in the end, after several defeats sustained at the hands of the
Roman consuls, L. Metullus and C. Marius, his own ally, Bocchus, king of
Mauretania, delivered him up into the hands of the Roman quaestor,
L. Sulla.
In the work on the war of Catiline, Sallust reveals especially the
corruption of what was called the Roman nobility, by tracing the criminal
designs of the conspirators to their sources--avarice, and the love of
pleasure. In the history of the Jugurthine war, he particularly exposes
and condemns the system of bribery in which the leading men of that
age indulged; but on the other hand, he draws a pleasing contrast in
describing the restoration of military discipline by Metullus and Marius.
The difficult campaigns in the extensive and desert country of Numidia,
and the wonderful events of this war, also deserve the attention of the
reader; the more so, as the author has bestowed the greatest care on
giving vivid descriptions of them.
Among the writings of Sallust, which have been transmitted to us in
manuscripts, and are printed in the larger editions of his works, there
are two epistles addressed to Caesar, containing the author's opinions
and advice regarding the new constitution to be given to the republic,
after the defeat of the optimates and their faction by the dictator. They
are written in his own peculiar style: the first contains excellent ideas
and energetic exposures of the general defects and evils in the state,
as well as plans for remedying them; the second adds some proposals
regarding the courts of justice, and the composition of the senate,
the utility and practicability of which appear somewhat doubtful.
The authenticity of these epistles, therefore, is still a matter of
uncertainty. Lastly, there are two Declamations (_declamationes_), the
one purporting to be by M. Cicero against Sallust, and the other by
Sallust against Cicero; but both are evidently unworthy of the character
and style of the men whose names they bear, and are justly considered to
be the production of some wretched rhetorician of the third or fourth
century of the Christian era.[2] Such declaimers made use of all possible
reports that were current respecting the moral weaknesses of the two men,
and respecting an enmity between them, of which history knows nothing,
and which is contradicted by our author himself, by the praise he
bestows, in his 'Catilinarian War,' upon Cicero.
[2] It has indeed been said that Quinctilian, who wrote about the year 95
after Christ, cites passages from these Declamations; but critical
investigation has shown that these passages are interpolations, and
are found only in the worst manuscripts.
Sallust's character as an historian, and his grammatical style, have
been the subjects of contradictory opinions even among the ancients
themselves--both his own contemporaries, and the men of succeeding ages.
Some condemned his introductions, as having nothing to do with the
works themselves; found fault with the minute details of the speeches
introduced in the narrative; and called him a senseless imitator, in
words and expressions, of the earlier Roman historians, especially of
Cato. Others praised him for his vivid delineations of character, the
precision and vigour of his diction, and for the dignity which he had
given to his style by the use of ancient words and phrases which were no
longer employed in the ordinary language of his own day. But however
different these opinions may appear, there is truth both in the censure
and in the praise, though the praise no doubt outweighs the censure;
and the general opinion among the later Romans justly declared _primus
Romana Crispus in historia_. It is obvious that it is altogether unjust
to say that his introductions are unsuitable, and that the speeches he
introduces are inappropriate: for an author must be allowed to write a
preface to make an avowal of his own sentiments; and the speeches are
inseparably connected with the forms of public life in antiquity: they
are certainly not too long, and express most accurately, both in
sentiment and style, the characters of the great men to whom the author
assigns them. We have no hesitation in declaring that the speeches in the
Catiline and Jugurtha, as well as those extracted from the _Historiae_,
are the most precious specimens of the kind that have come down to us
from antiquity.
As regards the grammatical style and the imitation of earlier authors,
for which Sallust has been blamed by some, and praised by others, it must
be observed that he is the first among the classical authors extant in
whose works we perceive a difference between the refined language of
public life, such as we have it in Cicero and Caesar, and a new and
artificially-formed language of literature. Cicero and Caesar wrote just
as a well-educated orator of taste spoke: after the death of Caesar,
oratory began to withdraw from the active scenes of public life; and
there remained few authors who, following the practical vocation of an
orator, though at an unfavourable epoch, yet observed the principle
which is generally correct--that a man ought to write in the same manner
in which well-bred people speak. But most men of talent who devoted
themselves to written composition for the satisfaction of their own
minds, or for the instruction of their contemporaries, created for
themselves a new style, such as was naturally developed in them by
reading the earlier authors, and through their own relations to their
readers and not hearers. Livy clung to the language, style, and the
full-sounding period of the oratorical style, though even he in many
points deviated from the natural refinement of a Caesar and a Cicero;
but Sallust gave up the oratorical period, divided the long-spun,
full-sounding, and well-finished oratorical sentence into several short
sentences; and in this manner he seemed to go back to the ancients, who
had not yet invented the period: but still there was a great difference
between his style, in which the ancient simplicity was artificially
restored, and the genuine ancient sentence formed without any rhetorical
art. He wrote without periods, because he would not write otherwise, and
not because he could not; he divided the rhetorical period into separate
sentences, because it appeared to him advantageous in his animated
description of minute details; and he wrote concisely, because he did
not want the things to fill up his sentences which the orator requires
to give roundness and fulness to his periods. He states in isolated
independent sentences those ideas and thoughts which the orator
distributes among leading and subordinate sentences; but he did all this
consciously, as an artist, and with the conviction that it was conducive
to historical animation. Tacitus was his imitator in this artificial
historical style; and notwithstanding all his well-deserved praise, it
must he admitted that the blame cast upon Sallust attaches in a still
higher degree to Tacitus. It is a fact beyond all doubt, that Sallust
introduced into the language of literature antiquated forms, words, and
expressions; and this arose from a desire to recall with the ancient
language also the ancient vigour and simplicity. But even this revival of
what was ancient is visible only here and there, and all such words and
phrases might be exchanged for others and more customary ones, without
depriving Sallust of his essential characteristics; for these consist in
a vivid perception of the important moments of an action, in placing them
in strong contrasts, to excite his readers, and in the effect produced by
isolated sentences simply put in juxtaposition without the artifice of a
polished and intricate period.
To give our young readers some preparatory information about certain
frequently-recurring peculiarities of Sallust's style, we may remark that
the omission of the personal pronoun in the construction of the
accusative with the infinitive, as well as the omission of the auxiliary
verb _est_, and the frequent use of the infinitive instead of a
dependent clause--for example, _hortatur dicere, res postulat exponere,
conjuravere patriam incendere_, and many similar expressions--arise
from his desire to be brief and concise. Among his antiquated forms of
words, we may mention _die_ for _diei_, the singular _plerusque_, _quis_
for _quibus_, _senati_ for _senatus_; _dicundi, legundi_, &c. for
_dicendi, legendi_; _intellego_ for _intelligo_, _forem_ for _essem_,
_fuere_ for _fuerunt_; the use of the past participles of deponent verbs
in a passive sense--as _adeptus, interpretatus_. Antiquated words, or
words used in an antiquated sense, are--_supplicium_ for _preces_,
_scilicet_ for _scire licet_; antiquated expressions are--_fugam facere_
for _fugere_, _habere vitam_ for _agere vitam_, and other phrases with
_habere_. The frequent use of _mortales_ for _homines_, _aevum_ for
_aetas_, and _subigere_ for _cogere_, gives to his style somewhat of a
poetical colouring. As far as grammatical construction is concerned,
there is a tendency to archaisms in the use of _quippe qui_ with the
indicative; in the frequent application of the indicative in subordinate
sentences in the oratio obliqua; and in some other points which we shall
explain in short notes to the passages where they occur. An intentional
disturbance of rhetorical symmetry is perceptible in the change of
corresponding particles;--for example, instead of _alii_ in the
expression _alii-alii_, we find _pars_ or _partim_; instead of _modo_ in
the expression _modo-modo_, we find _interdum_, and similar variations.
But all these differences from the ordinary language contain in
themselves sufficient grounds of explanation and excuse, and are by no
means so frequent as to render the language of Sallust unworthy of the
merited reputation of being classical.
* * * * *