It is almost certain that, as a provincial governor, Sallust was not more unscrupulous than others of his class; but wealth such as he possessed could not have been acquired except by extortion and maladministration. As a politician, he was equally unsatisfactory: he was a mere partisan of Cæsar, and therefore, a strenuous opponent of the higher classes as supporters of Pompey; but he was not an honest champion of popular rights, nor was he capable of understanding the meaning of patriotism. If, however, we make some allowance for the political bias of Sallust, which is evident throughout his works, his histories have not only the charms of the historical romance, but are also valuable political studies. His characters are vigorously and naturally drawn, as though he not only personally knew them, but accurately understood them. The more his histories are read the more will it be discovered that he always writes with an object. He eschews the very idea of a mere dry chronicle of facts, and uses his facts as the means of enforcing a great political lesson.
For this reason, like Thucydides, whom he evidently took as his model, not only in style but in the use of his materials, his speeches are his own compositions. Even when he had an opportunity, as in the case of Cæsar’s and Cato’s speeches in the “Bellum Catilinarium,” he contented himself with giving the substance of them, clothed it in his own language, and imbodied in them his own sentiments. According to his own statement, there is one exception to his practice in this respect. He asserts that the speech of Memmius, the tribune of the people,[[946]] is the very one which he delivered. If this be really the case, it is a most valuable example of the style in which a popular leader addressed his audience. But it is to be feared that this is not strictly and literally true: the style is indeed somewhat different from that of the other speeches, but does not exhibit freedom enough to assure us that he has actually reported it as delivered. It may be only a specimen of that consummate skill which constitutes the principal charm of Sallust’s manner, and made him a complete master of composition. Sallust never attempted anything more than detached portions of Roman history. “I have determined,” he says, “to write only select portions of Roman history,” (carptim perscribere.[[947]]) He himself gives an explanation of his motives for so doing,[[948]] when he complains of the manner in which this department of literature was neglected. Wherever a satisfactory account existed, he thought it unnecessary to travel over the same ground a second time.
His first work, reckoning according to the chronological order of events, is the Jugurthine war, which commenced B. C. 111, and ended B. C. 106. The next period, comprehending the social war and the war of Sulla, extending as far as the consulship of M. Æmilius Lepidus, B. C. 78, had already been related by Sisenna, a friend of Cicero.[[949]] Where Sisenna left off, the Histories of Sallust (Historiarum Libri V.) began, and continued the narrative without interruption until the prætorship of Cicero.[[950]] This work is unfortunately lost, with the exception of some letters and speeches, and a few fragments relating to the war of Spartacus. Niebuhr[[951]] considers this one of the most deplorable losses in Roman literature; less, however, on account of its historical importance, than as a perfect model of historical composition. A break of two years ensues, and then follows the “Bellum Catilinarium,” or history of the Catilinarian conspiracy in the year of Cicero’s consulship.[[952]]
This completes the list of those works which are undoubtedly genuine. No satisfactory opinion has been arrived at respecting the authorship of the two letters to Cæsar, “De Republicâ Ordinandâ;” and it is now unhesitatingly admitted, that the declamation against Cicero, must have been, as well as its counterpart, the declamation against Sallust, the work of some rhetorical writer of a later period. The subject of this imaginary disputation was naturally suggested by the known fact that Sallust was no friend to Cicero.
It has already been stated that Sallust was a bitter opponent of the principles and policy of the aristocratic party; but it must be carefully explained what is meant by that assertion. The object of his hatred was not the old patrician blood of Rome, but the new aristocracy, which had of late years been rapidly rising up and displacing it.
This new nobility was utterly corrupt; and their corruption was encouraged by the venality of the masses, whose poverty and destitution tempted them to be the tools of unscrupulous ambition. Everything at Rome, as Juvenal said in later times, had its price. Sallust adds to the severity of his strictures upon his countrymen by the force of contrast; he represents even Jugurtha as asserting that the republic itself might be bought, if a purchaser could be found; and paints the barbarian as more honest and upright than his conquerors. The ruined and abandoned associates of Catiline represented a numerous class among the younger members of the upper classes, who, by lives devoted to lawless pleasures, had become ruined, reckless, and demoralized. They were ripe for revolution, because they had nothing to lose: they could not gratify their vicious propensities without wealth; they had no principles or scruples as to the means of acquiring it; their best prospects were in anarchy, proscription, and confiscation. The debauched and ruined nobleman, and the vulgar profligate of the lowest class, forgot their mutual differences, and thus a combination was formed, the members of which were the sink and outscourings of society.
Such degenerate profligacy is an ample justification of Sallust’s hatred towards the new aristocracy; and the object of all his works evidently was to place that party in the unfavourable light which it deserved. In the Jugurthine war he describes the unworthiness of the foreign policy of Rome under its maladministration. His “Histories,” according to the statement of Niebuhr, describe the popular resistance to the revolutionary policy of Sulla, the profligate leader of the same party; and in the “Catilinarian war” he paints in vivid colours the depravity of that order of society, who, bankrupt in fortune and dead to all honourable feelings, still plumed themselves on their rank and exclusiveness. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the truthfulness of the picture which Sallust draws, selfishness and not patriotism was the mainspring of his politics; and it is scarcely possible to avoid seeing that he is anxious to set himself off to the best advantage. His hollowness is that of a vain and conceited man, who measures himself by too high a standard, and appears chagrined and disappointed that others do not estimate him as highly as he does himself.
These are the blots in his character as a man and a citizen; but we must not forget his real merits as an historian. To him must be conceded the praise of having first conceived the notion of a history in the true sense of the term. He saw the lamentable defects in the abortive attempts made by his predecessors;[[953]] and the model was a good one which he left for his successors to follow. It is scarcely too much to suppose, that if it had not been for Sallust, Livy might not have been led to conceive his vast and comprehensive plan. He was the first Roman historian, and the guide to future historians. Again, his style, although almost ostentatiously elaborate and artificial, and not without affectation, is, upon the whole, pleasing, and almost always transparently clear. The caution of Quintilian respecting his well-known brevity (“vitanda est illa Sallustiana brevitas”[[954]]) is well-timed in his work, as being addressed to orators, for public speaking necessarily requires a more diffuse style; and it is probable that Quintilian would not appreciate its merits, because he himself was a rhetorician, and his taste was formed in a rhetorical age. Seneca, for the same reasons, finds similar faults, not only with Sallust, but with the favourite literature of his day. “When Sallust flourished, abrupt sentences, unexpected cadences, obscure expressions, were considered signs of a cultivated taste.”[[955]] But the brevity of Sallust does not produce the effect of harsh or disagreeable abruptness, whilst it keeps the attention awake, and impresses the facts upon the memory. How powerful and suggestive, for example, how abundant in material for thought, are those few words in which he describes Pompey as “oris probi, animo inverecundo!” There is, however, this difference between the brevity of Sallust and that of his supposed model, Thucydides. That of the Greek historian was natural and involuntary; that of the Roman intentional and the result of imitation. Thucydides thought more quickly than he could write: his closely-packed ideas and condensed constructions, therefore, constitute a species of shorthand, by which alone he could keep pace with the rapidity of his intellect. He is, therefore, always vigorous and suggestive; and the necessities of the case make the reader readily pardon the difficulties of his style.
The brevity of Thucydides is the result of condensation; that of Sallust is elliptical expression. He gives a hint and the reader must supply the rest; whilst Thucydides only expects his readers to unfold and develop ideas which already existed in a concentrated form. Sallust requires addition; Thucydides dilution and expansion. Neither does the brevity of Sallust resemble that of Cæsar or of Tacitus: the former was straight-forward and business-like, requiring neither addition nor expansion, because he wished to make his statements as clear as they were capable of being expressed, without ornament or exaggeration. He was brief, because he never wished to say more than was absolutely necessary, and therefore his brevity is the very cause of perspicuity. The mind of Tacitus was, from its thoughtfulness and philosophical character, the very counterpart of that of Thucydides: his brevity was therefore natural and the result of the same causes.
There is one point of view in which Sallust is invaluable as an historian. He had always an object to which he wished all his facts to converge: he brought forward his facts as illustrations and developments of principles. He analyzed and exposed the motives of parties, and the secret springs which actuated the conduct of individuals, and laid bare the inner life of those great actors on the public stage, in the interesting historical scenes which he undertakes to describe.