1.1 to 1.9

Sallust's Style Among the more common of Sallust's oddities—at least for the intermediate student—are the following: The accusative plural of third declension adjectives (and some nouns) regularly show -īs rather than ēs . Thus montīs for montēs ,fortīs for fortēs . Because the text has no macrons the form can be confused with the third declension genitive singular. Check the notes. Sallust regularly contracts the -ērunt of the third person plural perfect to -ēre . Thus fuēre in place of fuērunt ,coepēre in place of coepērunt . These also are in the notes. An alternative form of the imperfect subjective of esse is sometimes found in Latin authors: foret in place of esset . This form will also appear in the pluperfect passive subjunctive. Thus, compertum foret instead of the more common compertum esset . Sallust makes wide use of this variant. Although Sallust uses the ut of purpose, he is equally likely to use uti and (very often) quo (which in other authors is normally used to express ut only in conjunction with a comparative). As with all Latin authors, Sallust regularly uses adjectives as substantives. Thus boni for "good men," incerta for "uncertain things," and quieta for "settled condition". This is by no means peculiar to Sallust (though his brevity will make it seem that he makes more use of it than other authors). Sallust's brevity can be challenging at first, but will soon become one of the charms of his style. Among the more common devices to achieve the "breathelssness" of his style are: 1) Ellipsis. Expect verbs to be missing when not required for meaning. In indirect speech the esse of perfect passive and future active infinitives will often disappear. Indicative perfect passives can also lose their conjugated form of esse ,as in: De superiore coniuratione satis dictum (where we would expect dictum est ).