12 - Sallust

Summary

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 52–45 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).