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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Sallust Biography SALLUST (Gaius Sallustius Crispus) (86-34 B.C.). A Roman historian, born at Amiternum in the Sabine country. Though a plebeian he rose to distinction, as quæstor, about 59 B.C., and as tribune of the people in 52, when he joined the popular party against Milo (q.v.), who in that rear had killed Clodius (q.v.). His reputation for morality was never high, and his intrigue with Milo's wife is assigned as the cause of his expulsion in 50 from the Senate, although his attachment to Cæsar's party is a more plausible reason. In the Civil War he joined Cæsar; in 47, when Cæsar's fortune was in the ascendant, he was made prætor elect, and was consequently restored to his former rank as Senator. In Campania, at the head of some of Cæsar's troops, who were about to be transported to Africa, he nearly lost his life in a mutiny. In 46, however, we find him engaged in Cæsar's African campaign, at the close of which he was left as Governor of Numidia. His administration was sullied by acts of oppression, particularly by his enriching himself at the expense of the people. His immense fortune, so accumulated, enabled him to retire from the prevailing civil commotion into private life and devote his remaining years to the writing of history. His histories which seem to have been begun only after his return from Numidia, are the Catalina, or Bellum Catilinarium descriptive of the conspiracy of Catiline (q.v.), and the Jugurtha, or Bellum Jugurthinum, describing the war between the Romans and Jugurtha (q.v.). 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, in which he discusses the causes of Roman degeneracy (the growth of immorality and the feebleness of the aristocracy and the Senate), are of no great 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. Its literary excellence is the main value of the Jugurtha, as in military, geographical, and even chronological details it is very inexact. Of Sallust's lost work, Historiarum Libri Quinque, only fragments exist. Sallust has the merit of having been the first Roman who wrote what we now understand by history; his works are in sharp contrast to those of the Annalists. (See ANNALS.) Good editions of the complete text of Sallust's works are by Eussner (Leipzig. 1893), Jordan (Berlin, 1887), and Dietsch (Leipzig, 1884 ; and of the Cataline and the Jugurtha by Capes (Oxford, 1884). The most accessible translations are those of Watson (New York 1859), Mongan (1864), and Pollard (1882). Consult Henry Nettleship, Lectures and Essays (2d series, 1895), and Martin Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Litteratur, vol. i, part ii (3d ed., Munich, 1909). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XX (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) |