Sallust. CAIUS SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS, a Roman historian, was born of plebeian family at Amiternum in the Sabine country, 86 B.C. He had risen to be tribune of the people in 52, when he helped to avenge the murder of Clodius upon Milo and his party. His own intrigue with Milo's wife may have given a spur to his love of justice, for his morality was far from high; indeed such was the scandal of his licentious life that he was expelled in 50 from the senate. It is true, however, that his attachment to Cæsar's party may well suggest a plausible reason for his expulsion. In 47, when Cæsar's fortune was in the ascendant, he was made pretor, and was consequently restored to his forfeited senatorial rank. Soon after this he nearly lost his life in Campania, in a mutiny of some of Cæsar's troops about to be shipped to Africa. Next year he carried off the enemy's stores from the island of Cercina, and at the close of the African campaign he was left as governor of the annexed kingdom of Numidia, formed into the province of Nova Africa. His administration was sullied by oppression and extortion, but the charges brought against him by the provincials failed before the partial tribunal of Cæsar. With the fruit of his extortion he laid out those famous gardens on the Quirinal which bore his name for centuries, and the splendid mansion in which became an imperial residence of Nerva, Vespasian, and Aurelian. Here he lived apart from public cares, devoted to literary labours, and here he died, 34 B.C. In this retirement he wrote his famous histories, the Catilina, or Bellum Catilinarium, a brief account of Catiline's conspiracy in 63, during the consulship of Cicero; the Jugurtha, or Bellum Jugurthinum, a history just twice as long of the five years' war between the Romans and Jugurtha, the king of Numidia; and the Historiarum Libri Quinque, commencing with the year of Sulla's death (78 B.C.) and coming down to 67 B.C., of which, unhappily, but a few fragments have come down to us. The two letters Ad Cæsarem senem de Republica and the Invectiva Sallusti in Cicéronem are not authentic.
As a historian Sallust is not accurate in details of fact and chronological sequence—a defect caused, no doubt, by his love for broad effects and unity of treatment. He was one of the first Roman writers to treat a subject rather than a period of time, and to look directly for a model to Greek literature. He brought to his task strong prepossessions and a fatal readiness to sacrifice anything to his antithesis or epigram; but we need not suppose with Mommsen that his main object was to discredit the old regime and vindicate the memory of Cæsar. He loves to explore in philosophic fashion into the tone of the age and the hidden motives of men, and he falls a victim to his own subtlety and confidently presents his inferences as facts. The high morality which he inculcates harmonises but ill with the facts of his past life, although it may be it was a legitimate enough fruit of after reflection and repentance which supplied its characteristic tinge of pessimism to his tone. In his labour to be brief and concise like his great model Thucydides he is not seldom merely obscure and involved, and his historical style is overlaid too thickly with rhetorical ornament, the narrative overloaded with general reflections that are often little better than pretensions commonplaces. The speeches are dramatically effective though not authentic, the structure of the sentences simple, the repetition of favourite words and rapid changes of construction to secure vivacity being characteristic marks. The Grecisms are mostly close echoes of Thucydides, and even his favourite arrangement of short contrasted phrases is imitated from the same master. Moreover, he makes use of many words and phrases in an archaic sense, and is supposed especially to have drawn much from the elder Cato; while in other ancient critics, again, we read of the innovations of his style. The influence of Sallust is plainly marked on the greater Tacitus, who styles him (Ann. iii. 30) 'remm Romanarum florentissimus auctor.' Martial also places him first in Roman history, and Quintilian does not fear to match him with Thucydides and sets him above Livy, although admitting that the latter is a safer model for boys. His diction and rhetorical colour found him many imitators from the time of Fronto down to the Christian writers of the 5th century.
Editions are by Gerlach (Basel, 1832), Kritz (3 vols. 1828, 1856), R. Dietsch (2 vols. 1859, 1864), and H. Jordan (new ed. 1887). Excellent annotated editions of the two complete works are those by C. Merivale (1852), G. Long (1860; new ed. by J. G. Frazer, 1890), and W. W. Capes (1884); and there is a good translation by A. W. Pollard (1882). See L. Constans, De Sermone Sallustiano (Paris, 1880), the special Wörterbuch by O. Eichert (Han. 1864; 3d ed. 1885), and Mollweide, Glosse Sall. (Strasb. 1887); also the studies by Th. Vogel (Mayence, 1857), M. Jaeger (Salzb. 1879, 1884), and Th. Rambeau (Burg, 1879).