PREFACE.

THE text of Sallust, notwithstanding the many and excellent editions which have been published, has not yet acquired a form that can be regarded as generally adopted and established; for the number of manuscripts is great, and their differences have led critical editors to form different opinions as to which, in each case, is the correct reading, or at least the one most worthy of acceptation. This difference of opinion manifested itself especially after the edition of Gottleib Corte (Leipzig, 1724, 4to.), who in many passages abandoned the vulgate as constituted by Gruter and Wasse, and on the authority of a few manuscripts, altered the text of Sallust, on the mere supposition that his style was abrupt. Corte's recension was adopted by many, and often reprinted; while others, especially Haverkamp, in his valuable and very complete edition (Hague, 1742, 2 vols. 4to.), returned to the vulgate. The latest critical editors of Sallust-Gerlach (Basel, 1823, &c. 3 vols. 4to., and a revised text, Basel, 1832, 8vo.) and Kritz (Leipzig, 1828, &c. 2 vols. 8vo.)—though declaring against the arbitrary proceedings of Corte, yet very often differ in their texts from each other. Between these two stands the edition of the learned critic, J. C. Orelli (Zürich, 1840), whose text forms the basis of the present edition. But besides abandoning his artificial and antiquated orthography, and restoring that which is adopted in most editions of Latin classics, we have felt obliged in many instances to give up Orelli's reading, and to follow the authority of the best manuscripts, especially the Codex Leidensis (marked L in Haverkamp's edition). For our explanatory notes we are much indebted to the edition of Kritz, though we have often been under the necessity of differing from him.

C. G. ZUMPT.

BERLIN, May, 1848.

(iii)

INTRODUCTION.

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 diffieult 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. 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.

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.

*This strange account is found in Hieronymus's first work against Jovinianus, towards the end; and 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. 31):-Illa (Terentia) interim conjunx egregia, et quae de fonti bus 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.