Volume 19, 2007 - Brown University

88 Curtis Steyers
Few historians of Rome are fonder of moralizing than Sallust. That he
lived through some of the darkest years of the republic (86–ca. 35 B.C.E.) suggests
that Sallust was acutely aware of the general sentiment among the Roman
cultural elite that the republic was failing due to a decline in morality. These
views permeate his two surviving histories. In Cataline, he describes Cataline’s
character: “He was incited also by the corruption of a society plagued by two
opposite but equally disastrous vices—love of luxury and love of money”
(Sallust, 1963: 178). Cataline, says Sallust, was a product of a society which
cultivated corrupt values. This comment is directed towards Sallust’s
contemporary Rome, as he proceeds to recount the early history of Rome,
starting with the story of Aeneas, detailing the transformation of cultural values
at each step along the way. The vices which plagued Rome in the late republic
are manifest in the figure of Cataline—the disaffected noble, hungry for power
and notoriety, impeded by no common sense of morality.
Sallust does not confine his admonishment of Roman morality to corrupt
men. He provides a colorful and disapproving evaluation of Sempronia’s character,
a woman alleged to have been involved with Cataline:
There was nothing that she set a smaller value on than seemliness and chastity,
and she was as careless of her reputation as she was of her money. Her
passions were so ardent that she more often made advances to men than they
did to her. Many times already she had broken solemn promise, repudiated a
debt by perjury, and been an accessory to murder. At once self-indulgent and
impecunious, she had gone headlong from bad to worse. (Sallust, 1963: 193)
Sempronia, like Cataline, is a vehicle for Sallust’s moralizing efforts. She
embodies all that is corrupted in the current state of the republic. Sallust lists her
sexual liberation, susceptibility to passions, and lack of modesty among her
character flaws. More importantly, however, is her lack of integrity, demonstrated
by breaking promises, perjury, and murder. These faults undermine the
fabric of Roman society, representing the same loss of fides as corrupt
provincial governors who plunder their provinces for financial gain. For Sallust,
Sempronia is a case study for the decline of Roman morality: she, like the late
republic, has fallen from her prior moral pedestal.
Augustus’ religious reform represents an attempt to solve the social problems
of the late republic from a different angle. Cicero, who witnessed the rise
and fall of Caesar, provides a view from the senatorial aristocracy at a time
when the senate had lost its power. In De Officiis, Cicero’s prevailing conviction
that the republic was on the verge of destruction is clear, and he makes
numerous references to contemporary examples of immorality. Cicero is
particularly hostile towards the recently assassinated Caesar: “in the
unscrupulous behavior of Caius Caesar, who has ridden roughshod over all laws
both human and divine to attain that dominion which he had dreamed of in the
depraved perversion of his own mind” (Cicero, 1967: 48). Cicero is explicit in
his assertion that Caesar’s behavior was strictly in opposition to established