De Bello Catilinario et Jurgthino | Page 3

his contemporaries and
subsequent writers to hunt up and divulge any moral foibles in his life
and character, especially as in his compositions he struck into a new
path, by abandoning the ordinary style, and artificially reviving the
ancient style of composition.
[1] This strange account is found in Hieronymus's first work against
Jovinianus, towards the end; and it becomes still more strange by the
addition, that Terentia was married a third time to the orator Messalla
Corvinus (who was consul with Augustus, B. C. 91):--Illa (Terentia)
_interim conjunx egregia, et quae de fontibus Tullianis hauserat
sapientiam, nupsit Sallustio, inimico ejus, et tertio Messallae Corvino:
et quasi per quosdam gradus eloquentiae devoluta est._ It almost
appears as if in this tradition it had been intended to mark three phases
in the style of Roman oratory, for Sallust was twenty years younger
than Cicero, and Messalla nearly as many years younger than Sallust.
The historical works of Sallust are, De Bello Catilinae, _De Bello
Jugurthino (or the two Bella_, as the ancients call them), and five books
of Historiae--that is, a history of the Roman republic during the period
of twelve years, from the death of Sulla in B. C. 78, down to the
appointment of Pompey to the supreme command in the war against
Mithridates in B. C. 66. This history was regarded by the ancients as
the principal work of our author; but is now lost, with the exception of
four speeches and two political letters, which some admirer of oratory
copied separately from the context of the history, and which have thus
been preserved to our times. The two Bella, which are preserved entire,
form the contents of the present volume.
The work De Bella Catilinae formed the beginning of his historical
compositions, as is clear from the author's own introduction; but it was
not written till after the murder of Caesar in B. C. 44. In it he describes
the conspiracy of L. Sergius Catilina, a man of noble birth and high
rank, but ruined circumstances; its discovery, and the punishment of the
conspirators at Rome in B. C. 63; and its final and complete
suppression in a pitched battle at the beginning of the year B. C. 62.
The Bellum Jugurthinum treats of the life of Jugurtha, who in B. C. 118,

together with his cousins, Adherbal and Hiempsal, governed Numidia.
Having crushed his two cousins by fraud and violence, Jugurtha
afterwards maintained himself in his usurped kingdom for several years
against the Roman armies and generals that were sent out against him,
until in the end, after several defeats sustained at the hands of the
Roman consuls, L. Metullus and C. Marius, his own ally, Bocchus,
king of Mauretania, delivered him up into the hands of the Roman
quaestor, L. Sulla.
In the work on the war of Catiline, Sallust reveals especially the
corruption of what was called the Roman nobility, by tracing the
criminal designs of the conspirators to their sources--avarice, and the
love of pleasure. In the history of the Jugurthine war, he particularly
exposes and condemns the system of bribery in which the leading men
of that age indulged; but on the other hand, he draws a pleasing contrast
in describing the restoration of military discipline by Metullus and
Marius. The difficult campaigns in the extensive and desert country of
Numidia, and the wonderful events of this war, also deserve the
attention of the reader; the more so, as the author has bestowed the
greatest care on giving vivid descriptions of them.
Among the writings of Sallust, which have been transmitted to us in
manuscripts, and are printed in the larger editions of his works, there
are two epistles addressed to Caesar, containing the author's opinions
and advice regarding the new constitution to be given to the republic,
after the defeat of the optimates and their faction by the dictator. They
are written in his own peculiar style: the first contains excellent ideas
and energetic exposures of the general defects and evils in the state, as
well as plans for remedying them; the second adds some proposals
regarding the courts of justice, and the composition of the senate, the
utility and practicability of which appear somewhat doubtful. The
authenticity of these epistles, therefore, is still a matter of uncertainty.
Lastly, there are two Declamations (declamationes), the one purporting
to be by M. Cicero against Sallust, and the other by Sallust against
Cicero; but both are evidently unworthy of the character and style of
the men whose names they bear, and are justly considered to be the
production of some wretched rhetorician of the third or fourth century

of the Christian era.[2] Such declaimers made use of all possible
reports that were current respecting the moral weaknesses of the two
men, and respecting an enmity