second time. It would appear, that at this time Cæsar gave him a military command, for the name of Sallust occurs among the commanders of the Cæsarian troops which were defeated in Illyria by Octavius and Libo". In 705 he was one of the prætors, and he hardly escaped with his life from the mutinous troops to whom Cæsar sent him in Campania. When Cæsar passed over to Africa (706), Sallust commanded a division of the fleet, with orders to take possession of the isle of Cercina, in which the enemy had collected a large quantity of corn. In this he met with no opposition, and he laded the merchantmen which he found there with corn, and sent it to Cæsar's camp 8.

When Cæsar was quitting Africa, after the conclusion of the war, he committed the government of the province into which he had formed Numidia, to Sallust as pro-consul9; his seat of government would appear to have been Zama, the residence of the late king, Juba. Sallust could not well have been much more than a year in Numidia1, but during that period he is accused of plundering the province in the most merciless manner. On his return to Rome he was prosecuted for extortion (rerum repetundarum), but he was acquitted through the influence of Cæsar 2. After the death of his patron, the dictator, Sallust withdrew totally from public life, and devoted himself to literary composition. He laid out a park or gardens (horti) at the Quirinal hill, in which he would appear to have resided, and he is also said to have purchased a villa at Tibur, which had belonged to Cæsar 3. It is further stated, but on slight authority, that he married Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero 4. Having no children of his own, he adopted the son or grandson of his sister, to whom he left his property 5. He died on the III. Id.

6 Orosius vi. 15.

8 Auct. Bell. Afric. 8 and 34.

7 Dion. xlii. 52; Hist. of Rome, p. 438. 9 Id. 97.

1 Cæsar left Africa on the Ides of June 706 (Id. 98), and he was slain on the Ides of March 708. It is probable, then, that the prosecution of Sallust

took place in the latter half of 707.

2 Dion. xliii. 9; Pseud.-Cic. c. vii.

4 Hieron, adv. Jovin. i. 48.

3 Pseud.-Cic. ib.

5 Tac. Ann. iii. 30.

Mai, 718, four years before the battle of Actium 6, in the fiftysecond year of his age.

Sallust is entitled to the praise of being the founder of Roman history. We have the express testimony of Cicero and Atticus 7, that as yet the Romans did not possess a historian, Sisenna, the very best of their annalists, being only on a par with Clitarchus, one of the historians of Alexander the Great, a writer of a low grade. As we have seen, he had early formed the design of becoming a writer of Roman history; but among the ancients this was never the occupation of very young men, and Sallust, as soon as he was old enough for office, engaged in public affairs which occupied him till the death of Cæsar caused him to withdraw from public life, and to resume his literary pursuits. To these he devoted the remaining ten years of his life, selecting as his subjects some interesting portions of the events of the last century of the republic.

The first subject on which he exercised his pen was the conspiracy of Catilina, which had occurred when he was a young man of three-and-twenty. As he was then probably living at Rome, and was acquainted with, or at least had the opportunity of seeing and hearing, the leading men of the time, and of learning the actual and real course of events, he may be supposed to have been well qualified for that undertaking. It may be here observed, that as the suppression of this nefarious plot was the most glorious act of Cicero's life, Sallust's selection of this subject, and his treating it so impartially as he has done, proves either that the account of the enmity between him and Cicero is untrue, or grossly exaggerated; or that Sallust's generosity of temper, or regard for truth, was such as to prevent him from warring with the dead, which is also true of him with respect to Cato. We regard this as his earliest work, because as compared with the Jugurtha, it shows the hand of a less experienced writer, and because in it he mentions his early intention of writing history and the plan which he had adopted, makes an apology for 7 See Cic. De Legg. i. 2.

6 See Clinton, Fasti, a. 34 B. C.

the excesses of his younger days, and notices the inferiority of the Romans to the Greeks in historic composition. It further bears evidence that it was not written till after the death of the dictator, for Sallust would never have spoken of him in the past tense, and in the manner he does, if he were still living. There can be little doubt, also, that it was not published until after the death of Cicero. Probably none of the persons mentioned in it was then alive.

The Catilina was followed by the Jugurtha, which, partly from the subject, partly from Sallust's greater experience in composition, is far more agreeable and interesting. He collected the materials for this narrative, as it would appear, from the annalists, from the information which he obtained from books in the Punic language, and from personal inquiry and observation while he was in Africa. It is the only account remaining of the Jugurthine war.

Sallust next undertook a work of greater magnitude and importance, namely, a History, in five books, of the foreign and domestic affairs of Rome during the twelve years that elapsed between the death of Sulla (M. Lepido Q. Catulo coss. A. U. 674) and the commencement of Pompeius' operations against Mithridates (M. Lepido L. Tullo coss. A. U. 786) 9. To this he prefixed an introduction, treating of the government and state of morals in Rome at the time, with a brief view of the war between Sulla and the Marian party. He would seem to have intended it to be a continuation of the work of Sisenna, of whom he appears to have thought more highly than Cicero and his

friend Atticus. It would also seem that he imitated the manner of Thucydides rather closely in this the most valuable of his works, the loss of which is greatly to be lamented. Four speeches and two letters, with some fragments of small magnitude, preserved by the quotation of grammarians, are all that remain of this work, which is said to have existed perfect in the Hebrides so late as the year 1526.

There are also remaining two orations, or more properly

8 See Hist. of Rome, pp. 355-375.

epistles, De re publica ordinanda, addressed to Julius Cæsar, and a Declamatio in Ciceronem, ascribed to Sallust. The former, however, are evidently the work of a rhetorician, who followed the usual practice of composing, probably merely by way of exercise, pieces in the name and manner of some eminent writer of former times, and it is really interesting to observe how accurately on this occasion he has noticed and employed even the minute peculiarities of Sallust's style, but to any one of critical discernment it is quite clear that the pieces are not from the pen of Sallust himself. The Declamation, on the other hand, has not the slightest colouring of the true Sallustian modes of expression, and we might reject it at once, were it not that Quintilian appears to have regarded it as genuine. He quotes two passages from a speech of Sallust against Cicero, which occur in the present Declamation 1, and from which it is evident he took them, and as it is, we may almost say, demonstrative that this piece is not genuine, it is only one proof among many of the deficiency of the ancients in critical tact and sagacity. This piece is accompanied by another Declamation of Cicero against Sallust, whose spuriousness is equally strong and evident.

Sallust was the first of the Romans, as far as we can learn, who wrote what is termed pragmatic history, that is, history in which the causes and consequences of events are traced, and the narrative presents the appearance of an organised body, all whose parts are connected-the only kind of history that possesses real utility. His model, it is evident, was Thucydides, the founder of this species of writing. From him he adopted the practice of interrupting the progress of the narration by digressions and reflections, of composing speeches for the leading personages instead of merely giving the substance of what they said, or were supposed to have said (and those which he gives

9 Another close imitator of the style of Sallust was the author of the work De Bello Trojano, which goes under the name of Dictys Cretensis.

1 Ut apud Sallustium in Ciceronem: O Romule Arpinas! ix. 3. Quid? Non Sallustius directo ad Ciceronem, in quem ipsum dicebat, usus est principio et quidem protinus? Graviter et iniquo animo maledicta tua paterer, M. Tulli.

are admirable), and unfortunately, too, an extreme brevity of expression, often, as in the work of his prototype, productive of obscurity. This we cannot avoid regarding as a fault in both these great writers, and to a certain extent in their follower, Tacitus, for the example of the profound Macchiavelli proves that the greatest depth may be combined with the utmost lucidity.

This obscure brevity was objected to Sallust by his contemporaries, as also was his fondness for employing words and phrases which had become antiquated, and for coining new words, and using Greek forms and expressions. It was also objected, and we think with reason, that the introductions to his two extant pieces are inartificial, and without necessary connexion with the pieces to which they are prefixed. His style on the whole is, we think, too artificial, and is wanting in the dignified simplicity which is becoming to history. In many of his descriptions and narratives, we see the evident labour to produce effect. His moral reflections, too, are often introduced, not in the most appropriate manner; they do not, like those of Tacitus, arise naturally, and appear, as it were, germane to the subject-matter. But this is owing probably to the different characters of the men; the one, after a life of public and private irregularity, having assumed the office of a censor; the other having had virtuous inclinations implanted in him by nature, and having improved them by sedulous culture. Among the innovations of Sallust in style, we may finally notice his introduction into historic composition, of what is termed the historic infinitive, and of forms of speech which appear to have been hitherto in use only among the poets; in all which he has been imitated, but with more moderation, by Livy and Tacitus. On these, and other peculiarities of his style, we have treated elsewhere 2.

It seems to have been a general opinion in antiquity that Sallust's moral character was not in complete accordance with the high tone of virtue assumed in his writings. In modern times,

2 See Excursus I., on the style of Sallust.