De Bello Catilinario et Jurgthino | Page 4

between them, of which history knows
nothing, and which is contradicted by our author himself, by the praise
he bestows, in his 'Catilinarian War,' upon Cicero.
[2] It has indeed been said that Quinctilian, who wrote about the year
95 after Christ, cites passages from these Declamations; but critical
investigation has shown that these passages are interpolations, and are
found only in the worst manuscripts.
Sallust's character as an historian, and his grammatical style, have been
the subjects of contradictory opinions even among the ancients
themselves--both his own contemporaries, and the men of succeeding
ages. Some condemned his introductions, as having nothing to do with
the works themselves; found fault with the minute details of the
speeches introduced in the narrative; and called him a senseless
imitator, in words and expressions, of the earlier Roman historians,
especially of Cato. Others praised him for his vivid delineations of
character, the precision and vigour of his diction, and for the dignity
which he had given to his style by the use of ancient words and phrases
which were no longer employed in the ordinary language of his own
day. But however different these opinions may appear, there is truth
both in the censure and in the praise, though the praise no doubt
outweighs the censure; and the general opinion among the later
Romans justly declared _primus Romana Crispus in historia_. It is
obvious that it is altogether unjust to say that his introductions are
unsuitable, and that the speeches he introduces are inappropriate: for an
author must be allowed to write a preface to make an avowal of his
own sentiments; and the speeches are inseparably connected with the
forms of public life in antiquity: they are certainly not too long, and
express most accurately, both in sentiment and style, the characters of
the great men to whom the author assigns them. We have no hesitation
in declaring that the speeches in the Catiline and Jugurtha, as well as
those extracted from the Historiae, are the most precious specimens of
the kind that have come down to us from antiquity.

As regards the grammatical style and the imitation of earlier authors,
for which Sallust has been blamed by some, and praised by others, it
must be observed that he is the first among the classical authors extant
in whose works we perceive a difference between the refined language
of public life, such as we have it in Cicero and Caesar, and a new and
artificially-formed language of literature. Cicero and Caesar wrote just
as a well-educated orator of taste spoke: after the death of Caesar,
oratory began to withdraw from the active scenes of public life; and
there remained few authors who, following the practical vocation of an
orator, though at an unfavourable epoch, yet observed the principle
which is generally correct--that a man ought to write in the same
manner in which well-bred people speak. But most men of talent who
devoted themselves to written composition for the satisfaction of their
own minds, or for the instruction of their contemporaries, created for
themselves a new style, such as was naturally developed in them by
reading the earlier authors, and through their own relations to their
readers and not hearers. Livy clung to the language, style, and the
full-sounding period of the oratorical style, though even he in many
points deviated from the natural refinement of a Caesar and a Cicero;
but Sallust gave up the oratorical period, divided the long-spun,
full-sounding, and well-finished oratorical sentence into several short
sentences; and in this manner he seemed to go back to the ancients,
who had not yet invented the period: but still there was a great
difference between his style, in which the ancient simplicity was
artificially restored, and the genuine ancient sentence formed without
any rhetorical art. He wrote without periods, because he would not
write otherwise, and not because he could not; he divided the rhetorical
period into separate sentences, because it appeared to him
advantageous in his animated description of minute details; and he
wrote concisely, because he did not want the things to fill up his
sentences which the orator requires to give roundness and fulness to his
periods. He states in isolated independent sentences those ideas and
thoughts which the orator distributes among leading and subordinate
sentences; but he did all this consciously, as an artist, and with the
conviction that it was conducive to historical animation. Tacitus was
his imitator in this artificial historical style; and notwithstanding all his
well-deserved praise, it must he admitted that the blame cast upon

Sallust attaches in a still higher degree to Tacitus. It is a fact beyond all
doubt, that Sallust introduced into the language of literature antiquated
forms, words, and expressions; and this arose from a desire to recall
with the