De Bello Catilinario et Jurgthino | Page 4

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 ancient language also the ancient vigour and simplicity. But even this revival of what was ancient is visible only here and there, and all such words and phrases might be exchanged