Sallust Gaius Sallustius Crispus 86-34 Bc

SALLUST [GAIUS SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS] (86-34 B.C.), Roman historian, belonging to a well-known plebeian family, was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines. After an ill spent youth he entered public life, and was elected tribune of the people in 52. From the first he was a decided partisan of Caesar, to whom he owed such political advancement as he attained. In 5o he was removed from the senate by the censor Appius Claudius Pulcher, restored in 49 and became quaestor. In 46 he was praetor, and accompanied Caesar in his African campaign, which ended in the decisive defeat of the remains of the Pompeian party at Thapsus. He was then made governor of Numidia, where he was oppressive and extortionate. On his return to Rome he purchased and laid out in great splendour the famous gardens on the Quirinal known as the Horti Sallustiani. He now retired from public life.

His account of the Catiline conspiracy (De coniuratione Cati linae or Bellum Catilinarium) and of the Jugurthine War (Bellum Jugurthinum) have come down to us complete, together with fragments of his larger and most important work (Historiae), a history of Rome from 78-67, intended as a continuation of L. Cornelius Sisenna's work. In the Catiline Conspiracy Sallust adopts the usually accepted view of Catiline, and describes him as the deliberate foe of law, order and morality, without attempt ing to give any adequate explanation of his views and intentions. Catiline, it must be remembered, had supported the party of Sulla, to which Sallust was opposed. He is careful to clear Caesar of complicity and on the whole he is not unfair towards Cicero.

His

Jugurthine War, again, though a valuable and interesting monograph, is not a satisfactory performance. Here, as in the Catiline, he dwells upon the feebleness of the senate and aris tocracy, too often in a tiresome, moralizing vein, but as a military history the work is unsatisfactory in the matter of geographical and chronological details, though vivid in its depiction of character and scenery. The extant fragments of the Histories (some dis covered in 1886) are enough to show the political partisan, who took a keen pleasure in describing the reaction against the dicta tor's policy and legislation after his death. Two letters (Duae epistolae de republica ordinanda), and an attack upon Cicero (Invectiva or Declamatio in Ciceronem), frequently attributed to Sallust, are probably the work of a rhetorician of the first cen tury A.D., also the author of a counter-invective' by Cicero.

Editions and translations in various languages are numerous. Editio princeps (147o) ; (text and notes) F. Jacobs, H. Wirz (1894) ; G. Long, revised by J. G. Frazer, with chief fragments of Histories (1884) ; English translation by A. W. Pollard (1882) ; (text and tr.) J. C. Rolfe (Loeb library, 1921). There are many separate editions of the Catilina and Jugurtha, chiefly for school use. The fragments have been edited by F. Kritz (1853) and B. Maurenbrecher (1891-93) and there is an Italian translation (with notes) of the supposititious letters by G. Vittori (1897).