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SALLUST
Of Sallust's early life, education, and allegiances we know nothing, except that
he embarked on a political career. Limited information becomes available for
the years 521—45 B.C., when he was in the thick of the tumults of the period. He
appears first in 52 B.C. as a tribune bent on trouble-making. He may already
have been an adherent of Caesar. Certainly, when he was expelled from the
Senate in 50 B.C. on moral grounds (a convenient pretext for settling political
scores), it was to Caesar he turned and whom he served, with little success
until 46 B.C., when he distinguished himself in organizing supplies for the
African campaign. He was appointed the first governor of Caesar's new
African province. There, it is alleged, he speedily acquired a vast fortune, and,
on his return to Rome, faced charges of extortion, but, thanks to bribery or
connivance, was never brought to trial. In 45 B.C. or not much later he withdrew
from public life, and, desiring to occupy his leisure in a befitting way, set
about writing history. In his first work he claims that he abandoned politics
in disgust at the wholesale corruption in which he had been enmeshed (Cat.
3.3—4.2). In all his three works he passes stern and lofty judgements upon
standards of conduct. His detractors were not slow to remark on the apparent
hypocrisy of an adulterer and peculator transmuted into a custodian of public
and private morality (e.g. Varro apud Gell. 17.18, Invect. in Sail, passim, Suet.
Gramm. p. 112 R). The discrepancy still troubles a few modern critics. Others,
the majority, dismiss the matter one way or another. The stories about Sallust,
some say, are wholly unreliable, nothing more than echoes of the virulent
personal abuse conventionally exchanged between politicians of his time. Again,
we are told, even if the stories are true, they are immaterial: a man whose own
behaviour is deplorable may yet make an excellent observer and moralist.
Witness Francis Bacon. These arguments have their force, but do not expunge
all doubts. Can -we brush aside the allegations against Sallust, insecure though
they are, when we enquire into his honesty as a historian?
Sallust's first two works, which survive entire, are monographs concerned
with limited themes of special interest. His own statements {Cat. 4.2-3) suggest
that he had written nothing of moment before the Bellum Catilinae (commonly
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