L. Licinius Lucullus. M. Aurelius Cotta. M. Terentius Varro. C. Cassius Varus. L. Gellius Publicola. Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus. P. Cornelius Lentulus Sura. Cn. Pompeius Magnus. M. Licinius Crassus Dives. Q. Cæcilius Metellus, postea Creticus. INTRODUCTION. CAIUS SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS was born at Amiternum, in the country of the Sabines, A.U. 668, B.C. 86, being nine years younger than Cato, fourteen younger than Cæsar, and twenty younger than Cicero. His family was Plebeian. We do not hear that any of the name obtained public distinction before the historian himself, who became Quæstor about the year B.C. 59, and tribune of the Plebs in 52. Little dependence can be placed on the Declamatio in Sallustium, a piece which is founded perhaps on the invective against him by Lenæus, a freedman of Pompeius; but according to the constant tradition of Roman antiquity, Sallust was, as there asserted, a dissipated man and a profligate politician, who attached himself to the popular party, and sought the offices of the state in succession, in order to finish his career with the enjoyment of a lucrative province, and the means of accumulating a large fortune. He was an active promoter of the prosecution of Milo for the murder of Clodius, B.C. 52, and thus perhaps ingratiated himself with the most factious of the parties in the city. The share he took in this business may have been partly owing to the chastisement he is said to have received from Milo, for the seduction of his wife. (Varro, quoted by Gellius, xvii. 18.) In the year 50, at a moment when the spirits of the senatorial party were unusually elated, Censors were appointed, the first after a long interval, and the list of the senate was purged of many of the opposite faction upon the plea of scandalous life, or other personal disqualifications. Among the sufferers was Sallust, and his intrigue with Milo's wife has been alleged as the cause assigned. It is hardly probable however that such a cause could have been put forth at a time when profligacy was so common among the ranks of the nobility, still less that it could have been the real motive for his expulsion. Hereupon, it is affirmed, Sallust repaired to Caesar's quarters in Gaul, and enrolled himself at once among his warmest partizans. Such is the statement of the author of the Declamatio, which however is not in itself of much value. On the contrary, Cicero speaks at a later period of Cæsar pardoning a Sallustius: etiam Sallustio ignovit: (ad Att. xi. 20), as a captured or converted opponent; and we know of no other Sallustius to whom he is likely to refer. But from this event we may, at all events, more confidently date the bitter hostility to the Roman oligarchy which Sallust displays throughout his writings. The disgrace he had undergone did not prevent Sallust from succeeding, under Cæsar's supremacy, to |