Catiline's Conspiracy by Sallust

Author:Sallust [Sallust]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780192823458
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

HISTORIES

INTRODUCTION

Sallust’s third historiographical project deals with the period between

the Jugurthine War and Catiline’s conspiracy. Sallust does not, however, begin with Marius’ second consulship, the event with which

The Jugurthine War ends, nor does he make it as far as Catiline. He

skips over the Social Wars, during which time Sulla grew in strength

and prestige; he passes over Sulla’s consulship and his first march

on Rome, the first time any Roman general had decided to defeat

political opposition with an army; and he overlooks both Cinna’s

brutal return to Rome with Marius and Sulla’s return from Asia, his

dictatorship and proscriptions. In other words, he chose not to write

of Sulla and Cinna. He had already passed his verdict on Sulla in

The Jugurthine War: ‘Before his victory in the civil war he was the

most fortunate of all men, but his good fortune did not exceed his

efforts. As for what he did afterwards, I do not know whether one

should feel more shame or disgust in talking of it’ ( J 95.4). And so

Sallust does not talk of it. Sulla had set aside his dictatorship in 79

and retired from public life. He died early in 78. Sallust’s Histories

begin in 78; he got as far as 67 before he died.

The Histories exist today only as fragments: four speeches (Macer,

Philippus, Cotta, and Macer), two letters (Pompey and Mithridates),

and numerous bits that come from other authors, commentators, and

grammarians, each of whom has his own reason for quoting or referring to what Sallust said. I have included the longer fragments here

and a few shorter fragments whose content and relevance to Sallust’s

thought seems clear. The sources for the shorter fragments frequently

do not tell us where the word or sentence comes from. As a result,

reference or relevance is often uncertain and the sequence of the

fragments is itself often the construct of scholars based on probabil—

ity and guesswork. The notes occasionally refer to short fragments

(e.g. at 1.55.14) that did not themselves seem worth translating. Even

in dealing with the longer passages, we do not have the full context in

which speeches or events are set. As a result, we cannot draw any firm

conclusions about the most important aspects of the work: Sallust’s

130

Histories

understanding either of the broader political relationships between

factions or of the inner workings of particular disputes. And without

his preface we cannot relate his moral, political, and philosophical

view of this history to the trajectory of the events.

The Histories begin with the year 78, when Q. Lutatius Catulus

and M. Aemilius Lepidus entered upon the consulship. Catulus had

been a supporter of Sulla; Lepidus was both a friend of Marius and

a man who had benefited from Sulla’s brutal proscriptions. The first

major fragment is Lepidus’ speech to the Roman people, an attack on

Sulla and an appeal to the people to reclaim their freedom. Later that

year Lepidus would be sent with a consular army to Etruria to deal

with men who had been evicted from their land by Sulla’s colonists.

When Lepidus seemed to be taking their side, he was summoned

to Rome; he marched on the city instead. The Senate responded by

empowering Catulus and Pompey with their ‘final decree’; Sallust

records the speech of L.

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