Sallust

“ Thus he idealized these men, and the impression which he had received, lasted his whole life through; even, when an old man himself, he looked up to the men of his youth, and in this spirit he also remembers Scaurus. Sallust is reproached with malignity; but surely he is not sinning against truth, when, filled with indignation, he is branding a guilty man for ever. ”

“ If an historian is distinguished by a high moral tone of feeling, this quality cannot but show itself in his writings without intention or design. But in Sallust there is always an affectation and pretence of morality without the reality. His philosophical reflections at the commencement of the Jugurthine and Catilinarian wars are empty, cold, and heartless. There is a display of commonplace sentiment, and an expressed admiration of the old Roman virtue of bygone days, but no appearance of sincerity. ”

“ This criticism of Sallust, which may be found at length in Ascham’s Schoolmaster, [211] is quite a locus in its kind. |His criticism of Sallust.| It is not of the justest, for the prepossession of the sentence quoted above (which stands in the forefront of it) colours it all through. It has funny little scholastic lapses in logic, such as the attempt to apply the old brocard Orator est vir bonus dicendi peritus to the disadvantage of Sallust, as compared not only with Cicero but with Cæsar, on the score of morality. ”

“ These, the only genuine works of Sallust which have reached us entire, are of great but unequal merit. The quasi-philosophical reflections which are prefixed to them are of no value, but the histories themselves are powerful and animated, and contain effective speeches of his own composition, which he puts into the mouths of his chief characters. ”

“ The worthy merchant began to repent his choice, as amphora after amphora was pierced and emptied. The slaves, all under the age of manhood (the youngest being about ten years old—it was they who filled the wine—the eldest, some five years older, mingled it with water) , seemed to share in the zeal of Sallust; and the face of Diomed began to glow as he watched the provoking complacency with which they seconded the exertions of the king of the feast.
'Pardon me, O senator!' said Sallust ”

“ Dietsch. "Peregrinantes, qui, qua transeunt, nullum sui vestigium relinquunt;" they are as travelers who do nothing to leave any trace of their course. Pappaur.
[27] Of these I hold the life and death in equal estimation—Eorum ego vitam mortemque juxta aestimo. I count them of the same value dead as alive, for they are honored in the one state as much as in the other. "Those who are devoted to the gratification of their appetites," as Sallust says, "let us regard as inferior animals, not as men; and some, indeed, not as living, but as dead animals." ”

“ The loss of the history of Macer is very highly to be regretted. A speech in the fragments of Sallust’s History shows an accurate knowledge of the old constitution, which Sallust cannot be given credit for. He is quoted to the sixteenth book. How many books he has written is undecided: he may have begun from the earliest times, and he probably went on as far as his own.
An historian of the old constitution is Junius Gracchanus, a friend of C. Gracchus, which accounts for his cognomen. Gracchus exercised a marked influence upon many, and especially on younger men. ”

“ The main objects of comparison, throughout the three first sections of this Proemium, or introductory discourse, are not vice and virtue, but body and mind; a listless indolence, and a vigorous, honorable activity. On this account it is pretty evident, that by virtus Sallust could never mean the [Greek aretae] , 'virtue or moral worth,' but that he had in his eye the well-known interpretation of Varro, who considers it ut viri vis (De Ling. Lat. iv.) , as denoting the useful energy which ennobles a man, and should chiefly distinguish him among his fellow-creatures. ”

“ And when one, the most worthless of them, had very gladly accepted and no one of the others consented, he gave me with a bad grace an officer who was indeed excellent, Sallust, who on account of his virtue has at once fallen under his suspicion. And since I was not satisfied with such an arrangement and saw how his manner to them varied, for I observed that he trusted one of them too much and paid no attention at all to the other, [282] I clasped his right hand and his knees and said: "I have no acquaintance with any of these men nor have had in the past. ”

“ Of the circus little remains, but masses of walls that merely indicate its site; while statues and marbles, found occasionally, continue to furnish proofs of its former magnificence188.” Many statues of exquisite workmanship have been found on the same spot; but these may have been placed there by the magnificence of the imperial occupiers, and not of the original proprietor.
In his urban gardens, or villa at Tibur, Sallust passed the close of his life, dividing his time between literary avocations and the society of his friends—among whom he numbered Lucullus, Messala, and Cornelius Nepos. ”

“ Literally, what men plow, sail, etc. Sallust's meaning is, that agriculture, navigation, and architecture, though they may seem to be effected by mere bodily exertion, are as much the result of mental power as the highest of human pursuits.
[26] Like travelers in a strange country—Sicuti peregrinantes. "Vivere nesciunt; igitur in vita quasi hospites sunt:" they know not how to use life, and are therefore, as it were, strangers in it. ”

“ Si injuriæ non sint, haud sæpe auxilii egeas. “Some foolishly interpret auxilium as signifying auxilium tribunicium, the aid of the tribunes; but it is evident to me that Sallust means aid against the injuries of bad men, i.e. revenge or punishment.” Kritzius. “If injuries are repressed, or prevented, there will be less need for the help of good men, and it will be of less consequence if they become inactive.” ”

“ In general, Sallust’s painting of character is so strong, that we almost foresee how each individual will conduct himself in the situation in which he is placed. Tacitus attributes all the actions of men to policy,—to refined, and sometimes imaginary views; but Sallust, more correctly, discovers their chief springs in the passions and dispositions of individuals. “Salluste,” says St Evremond, “donne autant au naturel, que Tacite à la politique. Le plus grand soin du premier est de bien connoitre le génie des hommes ”

“ Kritzius. Dietsch agrees with Kritzius; and there will, I hope, be no further doubt that quae is the accusative and ira the nominative; the sense being, "which anger loves or desires to be done." Another mode of explanation has been suggested, namely, to understand multitudo as the nominative case to amat, making ira the ablative; but this method is far more cumbersome, and less in accordance with the style of Sallust. The words quoted by Quintilian do not refer, as Cortius erroneously supposes, to this passage, but to some part of Sallust's works that is now lost. ”

“ There is some good in them after all,' said Sallust. 'They produce an oyster.'
'I wish they would produce us a gladiator,' said the aedile, whose provident mind was musing over the wants of the amphitheatre.
'By Pallas!' cried Glaucus, as his favorite slave crowned his streaming locks with a new chaplet, 'I love these wild spectacles well enough when beast fights beast; but when a man, one with bones and blood like ours, is coldly put on the arena, and torn limb from limb, the interest is too horrid: I sicken—I gasp for breath—I long to rush and defend him. ”

“ De Catilinae Coniuratione (or Bellum Catilinae) , a monograph on the famous conspiracy, in which Sallust writes very largely from direct personal knowledge of men and events.
(2) Bellum Iugurthinum (111-106 B.C.) The writing of this monograph involved wide inquiry and much preparation.
(3) Historiae, in five books, dealing with the events from 78 B.C. (death of Sulla) to 67 B.C., of which only a few fragments are extant.
3. Style.
‘Sallust aimed at making historical writing a branch of literature. He felt that nothing had yet been done by any Roman writer which would stand beside Thucydides. ”

“ We are told that a government, which knew all this, suffered the conspirator, whose rank, talents, and courage rendered him most dangerous, to quit Rome without molestation. We are told that bondmen and gladiators were to be armed against the citizens. Yet we find that Catiline rejected the slaves who crowded to enlist in his army, lest, as Sallust himself expresses it, "he should seem to identify their cause with that of the citizens." ”

“ Like a youth, he was caught with soft looks and languishing airs, things that are wont to excite the lowest of passions.” Others have thought that Sallust refers to Sylla’s conduct on the death of his wife Metella, above mentioned, to whom, as she happened to fall sick when he was giving an entertainment to the people, and as the priest forbade him to have his house defiled with death on the occasion, he unfeelingly sent a bill of divorce, ordering her to be carried out of the house while the breath was in her. ”

“ Its inhabitants are a healthy race, swift of foot and enduring of toil. Most die of old age, except such as fall in war or are killed by wild beasts; for death from disease is very rare, while dangerous animals abound.
Sallust then turns to the inhabitants, basing his account on the writings of Hiempsal II, a later king of Numidia. The original inhabitants were the Gaetulians and Libyans, wild and lawless savages, without fixed habitations. On the death of Hercules in Spain his army broke up, and contingents of Persians, Medes, and Armenians crossed into Africa. ”

“ The first is, that the Sallust of Suidas is said to have asserted, “that it was not easy, but rather impossible, for men to philosophize;” an assertion, as Damascius well observes, which is neither true, nor worthy to be uttered, and which is certainly very inconsistent with what the author of the present treatise asserts: for (in Chap. XIII.) he informs us, that his book was composed for that class of mankind whose souls may be considered as neither incurable, nor yet capable of being elevated by philosophy ”

“ But that Cortius is in the wrong, and that there were common soldiers with the centurions, appears from the following considerations: 1. Marius would hardly have sent, or Sallust have spoken of, four men as a guard to six. 2. Why should centurions only have been selected, and not common soldiers as well as their officers? 3. An expression in the following chapter, laqueis—quibus allevati milites facilius escenderent, seems to prove that there were others present besides the centurions and the trumpeters. ”

“ But however I am certain that he seeks something beyond what I am now, and never expects to enjoy your friendship and my kingdom together; which of the two he considers the more important is a secret to no man. For at first he murdered Hiempsal my brother, and then drove me from my father’s kingdom. Which injuries let them be ours only, and having nothing to do with you. But now he holds your kingdom by force of arms; me, whom ye made king of the Numidians, he besieges shut up, and how much he values the words of your ambassadors, my dangers show. ”

“ Sallust also affects the moralist, and throughout his works is as loud in the praises of virtue as in his life he was careless of her interests. From “the Jugurthine War” we take an interesting account of the
CAPTURE OF A NUMIDIAN FORT.
“Not far from the river Mulucha, which separated the kingdoms of Jugurtha and Bocchus, there stood, in the midst of a plain, a small fort, on a rock of considerable breadth, and of prodigious height, naturally as steep on every side as art or labor could render it ”

“ I received you, Jugurtha, into my kingdom, when a little one, having lost your father, without hope and without fortune, thinking that I should not be less dear to you for these benefits than if I had begotten you. Nor did this thing deceive me, for to pass by other great and noble deeds of yours, having just returned from Numantia you did me and my kingdom honour by your glory, and by your valour hast made the Romans from mere friends most friendly to us. In Spain the name of our family is renewed. Lastly, what is most difficult amongst mortals, you have overcome envy by your glory. ”

“ I am taunted with my lot in life, they with their infamies. For my part, I believe that all men have one and the same nature, but that the bravest is the best born; and if the fathers of Albinus and Bestia could now be asked whether they would prefer to have me or those men for their descendents, what do you suppose they would reply, if not that they desired to have the best possible children?
“But if they rightly look down on me, let them also look down on their own forefathers, whose nobility began, as did my own, in manly deeds. They begrudge me my office ”

“ It is no fault of mine, Fathers of the Senate, that I often address an appeal to you; on the contrary, I am constrained by the violence of Jugurtha, who is possessed with such a desire for my destruction that he regards neither you nor the immortal Gods, but above everything thirsts for my blood. Hence it is that I, though an ally and friend of the Roman people, have now for more than four months been held in a state of siege, and that neither the services of my father Micipsa nor your decrees avail me; whether sword or famine press harder one I know not. ”