De Bello Catilinario et Jurgthino | Page 2

could not allow such an act of open violence to escape unpunished,
condemned, and sentenced him to exile. Pompey alone, who was then
consul for the third time, was capable of restoring order and tranquillity.
The position of a tribune of the people was a difficult one for Sallust:
he was to some extent opposed to Milo, and consequently also to
Cicero, who pleaded for Milo; but there exists a statement that he gave
up his opposition; and he himself, in the introduction to his 'Catiline,'
intimates that his honest endeavours for the good of the state drew upon
him only ill-will and hatred. Two years later (B.C. 50), he was ejected
from the senate by the censor Appius Claudius, one of the most zealous
among the optimates. The other censor, L. Piso, did not protect either
Sallust, or any of the others who shared the same fate with him, against
this act of partiality. Rome was at that time governed by the most
oppressive oligarchy, which was then mainly directed against Julius
Caesar, who, as a reward for his brilliant achievements in extending the
Roman dominion in Gaul, desired to be allowed to offer himself in his
absence as a candidate for his second consulship--a desire which the
people were willing to comply with, as it was based upon a law which
had been passed some years before in favour of Caesar; but the
optimates endeavoured in every way to oppose him, and drawing
Pompey over to their side, they brought about a rupture between him
and Caesar. Sallust was looked upon in the senate as a partisan of the
latter, and this was the principal reason why he was deprived of his seat
in the great council of the republic; and L. Piso, the father-in-law of
Caesar, is said not to have opposed the partiality of his colleague in the
censorship, in order to increase the number of Caesar's partisans. When,
in B. C. 49, Caesar established his right by force of arms, Sallust went
over to him, and was restored not only to his seat in the senate, but was
advanced to the praetorship in the year B. C. 47. Sallust served, both
before and during his year of office, in the capacity of a lieutenant in

Caesar's armies. He also accompanied him to Africa in the war against
the Pompeian party there, and after its successful termination, was left
behind as proconsul of Numidia, which was made a Roman province.
In the discharge of his duties, he is said to have indulged in extorting
money from the new subjects of Rome. He was accused, but acquitted.
This is the historical statement of Dion Cassius; but a hostile writer of
doubtful authority mentions that, by paying 12,000 pieces of gold to
Caesar (perhaps as damages for the injury done), he purchased his
acquittal.
Hereupon Sallust withdrew from public life, to devote his leisure to
literature, and the composition of works on the history of his native
country; for, as after the murder of Caesar, in B. C. 44, the republic was
again delivered over to a state of military despotism, peaceful advice
was deprived of its influence. It need hardly be mentioned that Sallust,
as he had qualified himself for the highest political career, and the great
offices of the republic, must have been possessed of an independent
property; but the statement, that he afterwards gave himself up to a life
of luxury--that he purchased a villa at Tibur, which had formerly
belonged to Caesar--and that he possessed a splendid mansion, with a
garden laid out with elegant plantations and appropriate buildings, at
Rome, near the Colline gate--is founded on the equivocal authority of a
writer of a late period, who was hostile to him. It is indeed certain that
there existed at Rome horti Sallustiani, in which Augustus frequently
resided, and which were afterwards in the possession of the Roman
emperors; but it is doubtful as to whether they had been acquired and
laid out by our historian, or by his nephew, a Roman eques, and
particular favourite of Augustus. The statement that Sallust married
Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero, is still more doubtful, and
probably altogether fictitious.[1] There is, however, a statement of a
contemporary, the learned friend of Cicero, M. Varro, which cannot be
doubted--that in his earlier years Sallust, in the midst of the party-strife
at Rome, kept up an illicit intercourse with the wife of Milo; but how
much the hostility of party may have had to do with such a report,
cannot be decided. In his writings, Sallust expresses a strong disgust of
the luxurious mode of life, and the avarice and prodigality, of his
contemporaries; and there can be no doubt that these repeated

expressions of a stern morality excited both