Sallust on Catiline and Jugurtha

Of the three greatest Roman historians including Livy and Tacitus, Sallust was considered preeminent in antiquity. He was born in 86 BC in Amiternum, a town northeast of Rome and he died May 13, 36 having lived through bloody turmoil of Rome’s civil wars, taking Caesar’s side against Pompey in that phase of the conflict. He first rose to political prominence when he achieved the office of tribune of the plebs in 56 and became the first member of his family to earn a place in the Senate. He commanded a legion under Caesar, rose to the prominent position of praetor 47, and served as governor of Nova Africa which was new colony established after a successful campaign of Caesar’s army in 45. Having achieved no great military success or notable renown, he retired from politics at the age of 42 after Caesar’s assassination in 44. He states that he wrote because authoring history is another way to achieve fame.

Sallust’s works that have come down to us consist of two monographs, “Catiline’s Conspiracy” describes a dangerous rebellion that threatened Roman peace and governance beginning in February, 65; and “The Jugurthine War” fought by Roman legions against the rebellious Roman-trained commander Jugurtha in Numidia, Africa between 112 and 105. Both works are more philosophical analysis of the character of both powerful men and Rome itself than simple recounting of events, battles, and outcomes. These works and their harsh criticism recall Polybius and his statement of the goal of a true historian: “there is no better corrective of human behavior than knowledge of past events.” Sallust also wrote a general “Histories” from the years 78 to 67, but only fragments survive.

In considering the great Roman historians, it is important to realize that this discipline arose in Rome, written in Latin, about 400 years after the classic work of Herodotus and Thucydides in Greece during the fifth century B.C. The first writer of prose in Latin was Cato the Elder (234-149 BC), who produced a now lost history called Origines and manual called “On Agriculture.” The next prose writers in Latin were Cicero and Julius Caesar in the first century BC. Given this dearth of earlier Latin prose literature, Sallust was a pioneering stylist as well as being one of antiquity’s most highly revered authors.

This chapter relies on the Oxford World Classics edition of Sallust – Catiline’s Conspiracy, The Jugurthine War, Histories published by Oxford University Press, 2010. William W. Batstone, Prof. of Greek and Latin at Ohio State University provides a new translation and an excellent Introduction and extensive Notes. To provide a sense of this educational book, Sallust’s original works are short, comprising about 135 pages in this paperback, while the individual Introductions and Notes comprise about the same number of pages. This treatment gives the reader a much deeper appreciation of Sallust than simply reading the original works.

Mr. Batstone offers a feeling for the original Latin writing style of Sallust, who modelled himself on Thucydides, the greatest historian who is often criticized for the difficulty of his writing, in this sample paragraph in the section on Sallust’s Style in the book’s Introduction quoting Jugurthine War, 101.12. The translator notes that this sample is designed to “emphasize Sallust’s verbal techniques and strangeness of some of his effects” as opposed to the text in the book “which attempt to be more accessible”:

Finally, the enemy was now routed everywhere. Then a horrible sight on the open plains: pursuing, fleeing, falling, being captured; horses and men afflicted, and many, wounded but not able to flee or to stay still, now struggling up and immediately collapsing back; finally, everything, wherever you looked, strewn with weapons, armor, corpses, and between them the ground drenched with blood.

??????????????? This highly visual, breathless style may offer us insights into the high esteem the ancients held for Sallust, even though we have only these short fragments of his work left to us.

??????????????? In the opening of Catiline’s Conspiracy, Sallust offers a wise survey of how history educates us on the evolution of society and governance in 2.1-2 by recalling topics covered by Polybius, and before him Plato and Aristotle, before concluding on a deep insight on the commanding root of power:

And so it was that at the beginning kings – this being the first name for political command on earth – pursued their goals in different ways, some using their intellect, others using physical resources. Besides, at that time humans passed their lives without being covetous; each person was happy enough with what he had. But afterwards, when Cyrus in Asia and the Lacedaemonians and Athenians in Greece began to subjugate cities and nations, when craving for domination began to be considered a justification for war, and the greatest glory was said to consist in the greatest military command, then, finally, it was discovered through danger and trouble that in war the intellect had the most potent power.

??????????????? Sallust quickly provides his own justification for writing history in 3.2-3, his own personal history would have been known to his readers, the lackluster performances he delivered in his military and magisterial assignments, the scandal he suffered being expelled from the Senate for purported abuse and self-enrichment as legate in the province in Africa:

As for me, although the glory that comes to the writer is not equal to the glory that comes to the author of deeds, still it seems especially difficult to write history: First of all, deeds must find an equivalence in words. … But in my own case, as a young man I was at first attracted like many others to politics … and I fell victim to the same reputation and invidious attacks as the others. … I decided … to write out the history of the Roman people, selecting the parts that seemed worthy of memory.

??????????????? Guided by Sallust’s self-declared intention to choose to memorialize history based on its worth in building character and virtue, modern readers are quickly immersed in a contemplation of how society and civilization have risen and fallen. As so many ancient historians do, he harks back to Rome’s origins in mythology and brings us into his own times to demonstrate that the same forces and inclinations are always affecting mankind. In Chapter 6 he begins where Virgil begins The Aeneid:

The city of Rome, as I understand it, was founded and controlled at first by Trojans. They had no fixed home and were wandering with Aeneas as their leader.

??????????????? After brief coverage of the wandering Trojans quick assimilation of the native Aborigines, a wild race of men, without law, without political institutions, free and unrestrained, Sallust quickly introduces the basis of Rome’s mixed constitution, which was so highly praised and profoundly explained by Polybius.

Their political power was based on law; its name was monarchy. Men were chosen to give advice to the state, men whose bodies were weak with age, but whose minds were strong in wisdom. … At first this regal power served to preserve freedom and to increase the commonwealth; but, after it turned into arrogance and domination, the Romans changed their custom and created for themselves annual offices and two executive officers: they thought that restricting political license in this way would prevent men’s minds from becoming arrogant.

??????????????? Readers of Aristotle’s Politics or Polybius’ Histories will be immediately familiar with how forms of government naturally evolve, because as Sallust explains above, human beings in power tend to fall prey to human imperfection and abuse their privilege and the people rise to find a new form of governance.

??????????????? The central event in this work is the attempted revolt by the aristocrat Catiline, descended from Rome’s patrician families who comprise the highest rank of Roman society, after he was twice denied the supreme office of Consul in successive elections. He gathered a powerful army and threatened murder of governing officials and even destruction of the City. Cicero, the famous orator, was one of the two winners of this second consular election and after he was almost assassinated, he led the counter-revolutionary effort that overcame Catiline’s military forces. Sallust describes Catiline’s force as brave Romans who stood their ground in battle and died in valiant, unflinching efforts. The reader of Sallust will gain the most from reading his history of this pivotal event, but Cicero demanded quick execution for the leaders, a critical violation of Roman law that led to Cicero’s first exile after Sallust’s story is ended. During the debates, Julius Caesar takes the side of the now-captive rebel leaders, and in a long, amazing speech in Chapter 51 recounts historical events and Roman values. Remember, in the chapter on Julius Caesar, we learned that Rome’s most famous warrior was also a towering orator, second only to Cicero in his skill, as demonstrated in this pleading.

All human beings who debate on matters of uncertainty, conscript fathers, ought to be free from hatred, enmity, anger, and pity. … Whenever you apply your intelligence, it prevails; but, if passion takes over, it becomes master and the mind is powerless. … The Lacedaemonians, after they conquered the Athenians … began to put to death without trial the most wicked and those whom everyone hated. The populace was delighted and said it was the right thing to do. … Afterward, as their license gradually increased, they began to kill at will good and bad men alike … the citizen body was reduced to slavery and paid a heavy penalty for their foolish delight.

??????????????? One reason Sallust and Catiline’s Conspiracy are so highly regarded is the stunning cast of characters who live in these words, because after hearing from Cicero and Caesar, we readers are now treated to Cato the Younger’s response to Caesar’s plea for law-based treatment of the conquered rebels. After Cato’s motion for quick execution is carried by vote in the Senate, we read in paragraphs reminiscent of the Plutarch’s comparison of great historic figures in his Parallel Lives, Sallust’s comparison of Caesar and Cato in Chapter 54.

They were nearly equal in birth, age, and eloquence; their greatness of soul was similar, likewise their glory … Caesar was considered great for his benevolence and generosity; Cato for integrity of life. The former was made famous by his compassion and mercy; intolerance added to the latter’s stature. … Finally, Caesar’s heartfelt purpose was to work hard, to be vigilant, to neglect his own interests while being devoted to his friends’, and to deny nothing that was proper to give; for himself he longed for a great command, an army, a new war in which his excellence could shine. But Cato’s drive was for self-restraint, propriety, moral absolutism.

??????????????? This very benevolent description of Julius Caesar may ring oddly for modern readers, we tend to think of him as the great conqueror, the bloody subjugator of Gaul and victor of the civil wars with Pompey and the Senate. But when we read Caesar’s own words, especially in the Civil Wars, he frequently expressed his love for Rome, her armies, and her people. We remember after routing Pompey’s forces at Pharsalus he exhorted his troops to focus only on the enemy allies, not their fellow Roman soldiers. Then again, Sallust himself had sided with Caesar in these civil wars.

??????????????? The Jugurthine War opens with Sallust reflecting philosophically upon Life.

It is wrong for humans to complain about human nature, speaking of frailty and saying that their short life is ruled rather by chance than by merit. For, after careful thought … it is more often the case that human nature is lacking more in determined effort than in strength or time. But the leader and ruler of mortal life is the rational soul. And when it proceeds toward glory down a path of manly virtue, it has more than enough power and potential to win fame and it does not need the help of chance, which cannot grant or steal from anyone honesty, diligence, and other excellent qualities.

??????????????? By Chapter 8, Sallust is schooling us on the failures that were besetting the Roman Republic, already blatantly evident in the late second century BC.

At that time there were many in our army, both ‘new men’ and old aristocracy, who thought wealth preferable to virtue and honor; they were politically factious at home, powerful among the allies, more famous than honorable. Jugurtha’s mind was no ordinary mind, and these men kept firing it up with promises … they said that he was superior in military valor, that at Rome everything was for sale.

??????????????? Jugurtha was the strong and intelligent military leader who served with distinctions in Rome’s legions in Spain, and as the adoptive grandson in Massinissa’s family who allied with Rome to defeat Carthage in the last of the Punic Wars 40 years earlier, he returned to Africa where he killed his two brothers (his “crime” below) to take over the kingdom of Numidia. We are treated to a quick review of the ancient history of this part of the world, with visits by Medes, Persians, Armenians and finally the Phoenicians who founded Carthage before Sallust brings us back to the character of Jugurtha and the decline of Roman virtue in Chapter 20.

After the realm was divided and the legates left Africa, and after Jugurtha saw that contrary to the fears of his heart he had been rewarded for his crime, he concluded that what he had heard from his friends in Numantia (Spain) was true: at Rome everything was for sale.

??????????????? Different historians place the beginning of the decline of the Roman Republic at different times, Sallust puts the fatal turn of history at the destruction of Carthage by the Romans in 146 BC.

It was the result of peace and an abundance of those things that mortals consider most important. I say this because, before the destruction of Carthage, mutual consideration and restraint between the people and the Roman Senate characterized the government. Among the citizens, there was no struggle for glory or domination. Fear of a foreign enemy preserved good political practices. But when that fear was no longer on their minds, self-indulgence and arrogance, attitudes that prosperity loves, took over.

??????????????? As modern readers we look back and remember the fall of the western Roman Empire to the German chieftain Odaecer in 476 AD, but to the idealistic ancient wise men like Sallust, the loss of the Roman Republic 500 years earlier was the catastrophic disaster that they dreaded. And it seems astonishing that after centuries of constant warfare to expand dominion from the city of Rome to all of Italy, and then fighting a 120-year series of wars against Carthage, that Sallust would see the final success in that war as the fatal cause of the loss of the Republic.

??????????????? The story of the war against Jugurtha continues, introducing new historic characters who would contribute devastatingly to the Roman decline and destruction. The Senate appointed Metullus as legate to control the province of Numidia, and under him a “new man” named Marius rose through the ranks, first as military tribune then earning the other magistracies, until finally achieving the highest office of Consul. The Consuls were elected as a pair to hold office jointly for a one year term, Marius violated this crucial restraint and served as Consul for five years, as the laws upholding the Republic crumbled. Another tremendously gifted military leader, Sulla, served under Metullus and gave himself credit for the final victory over Jugurtha. While Sallust refused to write about the horrors Rome endured under Sulla’s dictatorship and proscriptions, he does offer his insights on this destructive conflict between the aristocrats and the plebs in Chapter 85, in a speech by Marius, the “new man” who rose to Consul.

I even know, citizens, of men who, after they were made consuls, began to read about deeds of our ancestors and to peruse Greek military treatises. … Compare, now, citizens, those men, their arrogance, with me, a “new man.” The things that they heard or read about, some of them were things I saw, the rest were things I did. What they learned from books, I learned being a soldier.

??????????????? While Polybius had described the Roman Constitution as a fair and just government that led to a disciplined society with defined offices and roles for leaders and citizens, there had always been division in society between the rich patricians known as optimates and the poor who worked the fields and herds and manned the armies known as populares. In the massive civil war between Pompey the Great who took the side of the Senate and optimates, and Julius Caesar who said he represented the side of the populares, Sallust himself sided with Caesar. By the time he had retired from public life in 42 and began writing, the ideal world of the free Republic was already history. In the one sentence that has come down to us of Chapter 7 of his Histories, Sallust ominously states his judgement of the fate of the Republic of Rome.

Among us the first disputes arose from a vice of human nature which, restless and indomitable, is always engaging in contests over liberty or glory or domination.

??????????????? William Batstone’s book concludes with 20 pages of the fragments that are all we have of Sallust’s Histories. In a scrap of the ancient Chapter 11, Sallust states that Rome’s two peaks, one of dominion, and one of social virtue.

?In is exercise of power the Roman state was at its height in the consulship of Servius Sulpicius and Marcus Marcellus: all Gaul this side of the Rhine and between the Mediterranean and the Ocean … had been subjugate. On the other hand, the highest moral standards and the greatest harmony were displayed between the second and last Punic war.

The peak of military of military power up to that time was 51 BC, after Julius Caesar defeated the Gallic rebellion under Vercingetorix at Alesia. The peak of Roman social order ?was the time after Hannibal was defeated by the Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC, and Scipio Aemilianus’ destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.

??????????????? In Chapter 12, Sallust restates again what happened after Rome’s historic enemy Carthage was finally defeated. In The Jugurthine War in Chapter 42 he had briefly described the rise of the Gracchi, descendants of rich families who had taken the office of Tribune of the Plebs, and while claiming the good of the people caused social disruption by demanding land reforms. The aristocrats were threatened, and in a foreshadowing of the bloodshed to come, the elder brother Tiberius Gracchus was murdered in 133 BC and his younger brother, reprising the revolution a decade later was murdered in 121 BC. In the fragment of Chapter 12, Sallust describes the start of the fall with reference to Carthage.

After fear of Carthage had been removed, and there was space to exercise enmity, many mob actions, acts of sedition, and in the end civil wars arose, while the few who had power, and to whose influence most had yielded, aspired to the honorable pretexts of ‘the Senate’ or ‘the people’, and men were called good and bad citizens not for their services to the Republic – all had been equally corrupted – but, as each was wealthiest or more powerful from injustices, so he was regarded as good because he defended the status quo.

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