"As the blessings of health and fortune have a beginning, so they must also find an end. Everything rises but to fall, and increases but to decay." -- Sallust
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known simply as Sallust, (86-34 BC), a Roman historian, belonged to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines. Throughout his career Sallust always stood by his principle as a popularis, an opposer of Pompey's party and the old aristocracy of Rome.
"A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.""All those who offer an opinion on any doubtful point should first clear their minds of every sentiment of dislike, friendship, anger or pity.""All who consult on doubtful matters, should be void of hatred, friendship, anger, and pity.""Ambition breaks the ties of blood, and forgets the obligations of gratitude.""Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.""Before you act, consider; when you have considered, tis fully time to act.""By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed.""Distinguished ancestors shed a powerful light on their descendants, and forbid the concealment either of their merits or of their demerits.""Do as much as possible, and talk of yourself as little as possible.""Every bad precedent originated as a justifiable measure.""Every man is the architect of his own fortune.""Everything that rises sets, and everything that grows, grows old.""Few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.""Harmony makes small things grow, lack of it makes great things decay.""He only seems to me to live, and to make proper use of life, who sets himself some serious work to do, and seeks the credit of a task well and skillfully performed.""He that will be angry for anything will be angry for nothing.""In battle it is the cowards who run the most risk; bravery is a rampart of defense.""In my opinion it is less shameful for a king to be overcome by force of arms than by bribery.""In my opinion, he only may be truly said to live and enjoy his being who is engaged in some laudable pursuit, and acquires a name by some illustrious action, or useful art.""In my own case, who have spent my whole life in the practice of virtue, right conduct from habitual has become natural.""It is a law of human nature that in victory even the coward may boast of his prowess, while defeat injures the reputation even of the brave.""It is better to use fair means and fail, than foul and conquer.""Just to stir things up seemed a great reward in itself.""Kings are more prone to mistrust the good than the bad; and they are always afraid of the virtues of others.""Most honorable are services rendered to the State; even if they do not go beyond words, they are not to be despised.""Necessity makes even the timid brave.""Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty.""No man underestimates the wrongs he suffers; many take them more seriously than is right.""No mortal man has ever served at the same time his passions and his best interests.""Small communities grow great through harmony, great ones fall to pieces through discord.""The fame that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile; intellectual superiority is a possession glorious and eternal.""The firmest friendship is based on an identity of likes and dislikes.""The glory that goes with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.""The higher your station, the less your liberty.""They envy the distinction I have won; let them therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it.""Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.""Those most moved to tears by every word of a preacher are generally weak and a rascal when the feelings evaporate.""To like and dislike the same things, this is what makes a solid friendship.""We employ the mind to rule, the body to serve."
After an ill-spent youth, Sallust entered public life and won election as Quaestor in 55 and one of the tribunes of the people in 52, the year in which the followers of Milo killed Clodius in a street brawl. Sallust then supported the following prosecution of Milo. He also had hostilities with the famous orator Cicero.
From the beginning of his public career, Sallust operated as a decided partisan of Caesar, to whom he owed such political advancement as he attained. In 50 the censor Appius Claudius Pulcher removed him from the Senate on the grounds of gross immorality (probably really because of his friendship with Caesar). In the following year, no doubt through Caesar's influence, he was reinstated.
In 46 he served as a praetor and accompanied Caesar in his African campaign, which ended in the decisive defeat of the remains of the Pompeian war party at Thapsus. As a reward for his services, Sallust gained appointment as governor of the province of Africa Nova. In this capacity he committed such oppression and extortion that only the influence of Caesar enabled him to escape condemnation. On his return to Rome he purchased and began laying out in great splendour the famous gardens on the Quirinal known as the Horti Sallustiani or Gardens of Sallust. These gardens would later belong to the emperors.
Sallust then retired from public life and devoted himself to historical literature, and further developing his Gardens of Sallust, upon which he spent much of his accumulated wealth.
Sallust's account of the Catiline conspiracy (De coniuratione Catilinae or Bellum Catilinae) and of the Jugurthine War (Bellum Iugurthinum) have come down to us complete, together with fragments of his larger and most important work (Historiae), a history of Rome from 78-67 BC, intended as a continuation of Cornelius Sisenna's work.
The Conspiracy of Catiline
The Conspiracy of Catiline (Sallust's first published work) contains the history of the memorable year 63. Sallust adopts the usually accepted view of Catiline, and describes him as the deliberate foe of law, order and morality, and does not give a comprehensive explanation of his views and intentions. (Note that Catiline had supported the party of Sulla, which Sallust had opposed.) Mommsen's suggestion...that Sallust particularly wished to clear his patron (Caesar) of all complicity in the conspiracy...may have contained some truth.
In writing about the conspiracy of Catiline, Sallust's tone, style, and descriptions of aristocratic behavior show him as deeply troubled by the moral decline of Rome. While he inveighs against Catiline's depraved character and vicious actions, he does not fail to state that the man had many noble traits, indeed all that a Roman man needed to succeed. In particular, Sallust shows Catiline as deeply courageous in his final battle.
This subject gave Sallust the opportunity of showing off his rhetoric at the expense of the old Roman aristocracy, whose degeneracy he delighted to paint in the blackest colours.
Jugurthine War
Sallust's Jugurthine War is a brief monograph recording the war in Numidia c.112 B.C. Its true value lies in the introduction of Marius and Sulla to the Roman political scene and the beginning of their rivalry. Sallust's time as governor of Africa Nova ought to have let the author develop a solid geographical and ethnographical background to the war, however, this is not evident in the monograph despite a diversion on the subject because Sallust's priority in the "Jugurthine War", as with the "Catiline Conspiracy", is to use history as a vehicle for his judgement on the slow destruction of Roman morality and politics.
Other works
The extant fragments of the Histories (some discovered in 1886) show sufficiently well the political partisan, who took a keen pleasure in describing the reaction against Sulla's policy and legislation after the dictator's death. Historians regret the loss of the work, as it must have thrown much light on a very eventful period, embracing the war against Sertorius (died 72 BC), the campaigns of Lucullus against Mithradates VI of Pontus (75 - 66 BC), and the victories of Pompey in the East (66 - 62 BC).
Two letters (Duae epistolae de republica ordinanda), letters of political counsel and advice addressed to Caesar, and an attack upon Cicero (Invectiva or Declamatio in Ciceronem), frequently attributed to Sallust, are thought by modern scholars to have probably come from the pen of the rhetorician Marcus Porcius Latro, also the supposed author of a counter-invective attributed to Cicero.
On the whole, antiquity looked favourably on Sallust as an historian. Tacitus speaks highly of him (Annals, iii. 30); and Quintilian does not hesitate to put him on a level with Thucydides ( x.1),and declares that he is a greater historian than Livy ( ii.5).
Sallust struck out for himself practically a new line in literature, his predecessors having functioned as little better than mere dry-as-dust chroniclers, whereas he endeavoured to explain the connection and meaning of events and successfully delineated character. The contrast between his early life and the high moral tone adopted by him in his writings has frequently made him a subject of reproach, but history gives no reason why he should not have reformed.
In any case, his knowledge of his own former weaknesses may have led him to take a pessimistic view of the morality of his fellow-men, and to judge them severely. He took as his model Thucydides, whom he imitated in his truthfulness and impartiality, in the introduction of philosophizing reflections and speeches, and in the brevity of his style, sometimes bordering upon obscurity. Some readers have ridiculed his fondness for old words and phrases (in which he imitated his contemporary Cato the younger) as an affectation, but this very affectation and his rhetorical exaggerations made Sallust a favourite author in the 2nd century and later.
Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols (Section 13.1) credits Sallust for his epigrammatic style: "My sense of style, for the epigram as a style, was awakened almost instantly when I came into contact with Sallust." and praises him for being "compact, severe, with as much substance as possible, a cold sarcasm against 'beautiful words' and 'beautiful sentiments'."