INTRODUCTION.

LIFE OF SALLUST.

GAIUS SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS was born in the year B.C. 86, at Amiternum, an ancient Sabine town, situated in the heart of the Apennines, about sixty miles northeast of Rome. Of his early youth we have no definite information. From his writings, however, it is evident that he was a diligent student of both Greek and Latin literature. Indeed, as he tells us in his introduction to the Bellum Catilinae, he was at first inclined to devote his life to historical studies. But at that time there was very little encouragement to enter the field of literature; and Sallust, like most young Romans of ability, was drawn into the whirl of politics. As he was a plebeian by birth, he naturally identified himself with the people's party, and always remained a consistent democrat.

We first hear of Sallust as tribune of the plebs in 52. For some time trouble had been brewing between two notorious demagogues, Clodius and Milo. Clodius had hired a band of gladiators as a body guard, and Milo had not been slow to follow his example. In consequence of this, the streets of Rome were disturbed by almost daily conflicts between these desperadoes. At last, on the 20th of January, 52, the two gangs met, this time apparently by accident, and, in the struggle which followed, Clodius, being wounded, was dragged off and slain by the ruffians of Milo. Sallust, it is said, had once been severely beaten by Milo for being too attentive to

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his dissolute wife. Whether he bore him a grudge for this thrashing, or merely seized this opportunity of attacking him as a political opponent, we do not know; but at any rate it is certain that Sallust made several impassioned speeches against Milo, and did everything in his power to increase the fury of the mob at the murder of Clodius. Milo was soon forced into exile. But, two years later, the senatorial party had its revenge through Appius Claudius, the censor, who expelled Sallust and several other members of the popular party from the Senate. Sallust was removed on the ground that he was leading a shamefully immoral life. In all probability he was no worse than many who were allowed to remain; but it was a convenient excuse for paying off old scores.

He

When the civil war broke out in 49, Sallust promptly went to Caesar's camp, and soon afterward took part in the disastrous campaign against Pompey in Illyricum. In 47, as praetor-elect, he was reinstated in the Senate. seems to have won the entire confidence of Caesar, who sent him on several important missions. For instance, when, on the eve of starting for Africa, Caesar's veterans had mutinied and had slain the senators who ventured to address them, Caesar finally deputed Sallust to confer with them. He undertook this dangerous task, but failed to conciliate the angry soldiers, and barely escaped with his life. However, he was more successful in the campaign in Africa, during which he rendered valuable assistance to Caesar by capturing the island of Cercina and supplying him. with the grain which the Pompeians had deposited there. After the war, Sallust received the proconsulship of the reorganized province of Africa. Here, like most Roman provincial governors, he amassed an immense fortune. On returning to Rome he was tried before Caesar for extortion, but was acquitted. He used his wealth in laying out the

celebrated gardens (horti Sallustiānī) near the porta Salaria on the Quirinal hill, where he also built a palatial residence for himself.

After the death of Caesar in B.C. 44, Sallust retired from public life, and, returning to the ambition of his younger days, devoted his leisure to Roman history. He died in B.C. 35, leaving his house and gardens to his sister's grandson. These afterward became the favorite resort of Nero, Nerva, and other Roman emperors.

SALLUST'S WRITINGS.

Sallust undertook to write on special periods of Roman history. As these are closely related to each other in time, it may have been his plan ultimately to weld them together so as to make a connected account of the century in which Rome gradually changed from a republic into an empire.

His first effort was the Bellum Catilinae, a subject with which he must have been thoroughly familiar, because as a young man, twenty-three years old, he was an eye-witness of the exciting events which took place in в.c. 63, and because he was personally acquainted with many who were concerned in the conspiracy. The work is especially valuable for the light it throws on the politics and morals of the time. In Sallust's view the plot may be regarded as the natural outgrowth of widespread debt and great corruption among the Romans.

The Bellum Catilinae was followed by the Bellum Iugurthinum, a picturesque account of the wily Numidian prince, who bribed Roman senators and generals alike, but who was at last captured by Sulla, and put to death in the Mamertine prison. In this narrative, Sallust's main object seems to have been to depict the baseness of the senatorial order in the most striking colors.

Sallust's last work was a history in five books, Historiārum Libri Quinque, embracing the important period between Sulla's death, B.c. 78, and Cicero's praetorship, в.c. 67. Of this, unfortunately, we cannot judge, as only four speeches and two letters remain.

SALLUST AS A HISTORIAN.

The early Roman historians were mere annalists. The best of them, writing in Greek, simply recorded events in their order, without giving their causes or results. Cato the Censor, B.C. 184, was the first annalist to write in Latin, but he possessed no literary style, nor did any of the historians who closely followed him. More than a century later, Cicero declared that Sisenna (Sallust's immediate predecessor) easily excelled all the Roman historians before his time; but he significantly added that even Sisenna's history was to a certain extent puerile.

It was precisely at this period, when cultured Romans were displaying undisguised contempt for the efforts of their countrymen to write history, that Sallust's ambition was aroused. He proposed to do for Roman history what Thucydides had done for the Greek, — viz. to treat the subject philosophically, and at the same time to maintain a high standard of literary style. For this he was unusually well qualified. In the first place, he was no mere student, but a practical man of affairs, who had gained wide experience in Roman politics, and had been intimately associated with many of the ablest men of his time. This gave him a breadth of view and a grasp of the true significance of events, such as we look for in vain even in so versatile a man as Cicero.

Again, Sallust was unusually painstaking in his search after the truth. For example, before writing the Bellum

Iugurthinum, he took care to have many Carthaginian documents translated for him. To insure greater accuracy he is said to have commissioned a Greek secretary to prepare a complete synopsis of Roman history for use in his daily work. Finally, he was master of a clear, incisive, picturesque style, peculiarly adapted to the interesting presentation of historical facts.

With such qualifications, it is no wonder that he at once established a high reputation as a historian, and succeeded to some degree in rivalling his Greek model.

It would be idle to claim that Sallust as a historian had no faults. But in considering these, it is only fair to remember that our conception of history differs widely from that of the ancients. In Sallust's time, and for several centuries afterward, history was regarded as merely a branch of rhetoric, i.e. greater emphasis was to be laid on the language and style of the history than on the facts. We must not be surprised, therefore, that Sallust, in common with other Greek and Roman historians who regarded history from this point of view, wrote elaborate introductions, put imaginary speeches into the mouths of his principal characters, and dared to portray their secret motives and thoughts as minutely as any realistic novelist of our own day would do. We may even understand how the stress laid on the rhetorical side of history would tend to produce that occasional neglect of geography and chronology, which we find, but cannot excuse, in Sallust's writings.

There are, besides, several inaccuracies in his version of Catiline's conspiracy, for which he has been severely criticised. But in this connection it should be remembered that although it was, in one sense, an advantage to treat of a period which came under his personal observation, on the other hand it was a distinct disadvantage to write before sufficient time had elapsed to enable obscure details