PREFACE.

LIFE OF SALLUST.

C. SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS was born at Amiternum (San Vittorino, north of Aquila), an old Sabine town on the river Aternus, amidst the highest Apennines. C. Marius, consul for the seventh time, died in в.c. 86, the year of Sallust's birth.

Sallust's family was plebeian. He passed his youth in troublesome times. The death of Marius was followed by the overthrow of the Marian faction, the tyranny of Sulla, and after Sulla's death in B.o. 78 by the war with Sertorius in Spain, and a servile war in Italy, which ended in B.C. 71. Sallust was twenty-three years of age in B.C. 63, when Cicero was consul, and Catilina formed the conspiracy which Sallust afterwards made the subject of one of his Histories. In B.c. 63 also was born C. Octavius, who afterwards settled the civil disorders of Rome by the establishment of the imperial power.

In his Preface to the conspiracy of Catilina Sallust tells us that history had been his early study, but he left it for a time to engage in political life, like most young men. He admits that he was ambitious; and he experienced all the trouble which attended a public career in Rome. The dishonesty and the vices of the age thwarted him in his attempts to rise, and offended his purer morals. He belonged to what may be called the popular party, which was opposed to the arrogant claims

and exclusive pretensions of the nobility, a term which comprehended those families whose ancestors had filled. the high offices of the state, and their descendants wished to keep these offices with their emoluments to themselves.

We may assume that Sallust filled the office of quaestor and so got admission into the Senate; but his election to the tribunate in B.C. 53 is the first notice that we have of his public life. He obtained this office soon after Cato had once failed in getting the praetorship, because he refused to do the dirty work of canvassing; and it is probable that Sallust alludes to his own success in his election, when he asks those who may condemn him for retiring from public life, to consider under what circumstances he was elected and what kind of men were unable to get what he did (Jug. c. 4). In the beginning of B.C. 52, Sallust's year of office, P. Clodius lost his life in a brawl with T. Milo on the high road, and Sallust joined his fellow-tribunes Q. Pompeius and T. Munatius Plancus in opposing Cicero, who made himself a partizan of Milo and defended him on his trial. The three tribunes called meetings of the people and inflamed them against Milo with the view of doing him as much harm as they could in public opinion before his trial came on; and they did not spare Cicero. Sallust and Pompeius were suspected of coming to terms with Cicero and Milo, but Plancus persisted in his hostility.

Sallust was a partizan of C. Caesar and of his faction, though we do not know what service he did for his great patron while he was absent from Rome in the Gallic war. However, Sallust suffered from the hostility of the party of Cn. Pompeius in the year B.C. 50, at the same time as other friends of Caesar. The censors Appius Claudius and L. Calpurnius Piso removed several friends of Caesar from the Senate on various grounds, and Sallust among