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Gaius Sallustius Crispus was born of a plebeian family, at Amiternum, in the Sabine country, in 86 B. C. At some unknown date he obtained the office of quæstor, and in 52 B. C. he was tribune. In the earlier part of his life he was dissolute, and he is said to have brought his father in sorrow to the grave. In 50 B. C. he was expelled from the senate by the censors Appius Claudius and Lucius Piso. In the following year he was reappointed quæstor by Cæsar and thus regained his place in the senate. In 48 B. C. he was in command of a legion in Illyria, in the year following he was sent by Cæsar to suppress a mutiny among the soldiers in Campania, and in 46 B. C. served as prætor in the African war. At the end of the year he was made proconsul of Numidia, where he enriched himself by plundering the province. He then bought a villa and gardens on the Quirinal, and devoted himself to historical writing until his death in 35 B. C.

Sallust’s works are The Conspiracy of Catiline, The Jugurthine War, and the Histories. The first two are preserved entire, but of the Histories, which treated of the events from 78 to 67 B. C., only fragments are preserved, in addition to four speeches and two letters, which were inserted in the narrative, but were collected and published for use in rhetorical teaching. The two letters to Cæsar and the speech against Cicero, published under the name of Sallust, are spurious.

In his writings Sallust appears as an opponent of the nobility and a champion of the popular party. He depicts in glaring colors the corruption and greed of the senate, and describes in glowing terms the successes and virtues of the popular hero Marius. At times his political bias leads him even to distort the truth, though the distortion is not so great as to deprive his works of historical value. He is not content to state the bare facts of history, but exerts himself to depict the sentiments and motives underlying the actions of the chief persons about whom he writes, and even of mankind in general. He prefaces his narrative with introductions of a philosophical nature, sometimes not strictly relevant to the subject in hand. His style is rhetorical and piquant, and he uses many archaic words, chosen in great part from Cato’s works. He evidently imitates the style of Thucydides, and, like him, he introduces speeches and letters composed to suit the occasion on which they are supposed to have been delivered or written. These peculiarities give his works the interest of individuality, and have caused them to be much admired, and also severely criticised, in ancient and modern times. Some of the qualities of Sallust’s writing may appear in translations of a few brief extracts. The opening words of the Catiline are as follows:

All men, who desire to excel the other animals, ought to strive with all their power not to pass their lives in silence, like the cattle which nature has made prone and obedient to their appetite. But all our power is situated in the spirit and the body; our spirit is more for command, our body for obedience; the one we have in common with the gods, the other with the beasts; wherefore it seems to me more fitting to seek glory by the resources of the mind than by physical strength, and, since the life which we enjoy is itself brief, to make the memory of us as lasting as possible.50

His account of the terror at Rome when the greatness of the danger from the conspiracy of Catiline became known, shows his power of vivid description:

By these things the state was deeply moved and the face of the city was changed. From the greatest gaiety and wantonness, which long peace had brought forth, suddenly utter sadness came in; people hurried, ran trembling about, had no confidence in any place or man, neither waged war, nor were at peace; each one measured the danger by his own fear.51

The beginning of the speech of Marius to the Romans exhibits Sallust’s rhetorical style, his liking for antitheses and for descriptive epithets:

I know, Quirites, that not by the same conduct do most men seek power from you and use it after they have obtained it, that at first they are industrious, humble, and moderate, but afterward pass their lives in sloth and haughtiness. But to me the opposite seems right, for by as much as the entire state is more important than the consulship or the prætorship, with so much greater care ought the former to be administered than these latter to be sought. Nor am I ignorant how much trouble I am taking upon myself at the same time with the greatest honor from you. To make ready for war, and at the same time spare the treasury, to force to military service those whom one does not wish to offend, to care for everything at home and abroad, and to do this among envious, opposing, seditious men, is harder, Quirites, than you think.

Artificial though the style of Sallust is, it is interesting, lively, often concise and vivid. It had no little influence upon the style of subsequent writers, especially upon that of Tacitus, the greatest of Roman historians. We must remember, too, that the Catiline and the Jugurtha were of much less importance than the lost Histories. In this greater and more mature work Sallust may have avoided some of the faults of style that appear in the extant treatises.

50 Catiline, 1.

51 Ibid., 31.