1.10 to 1.11

Sallust's influence pervades later Roman historiography, whether men reacted against him, as Livy (59 BC-AD 17) did, or exploited and refined his manner and views, as Tacitus (c. 56-c. 120) did. Sallust's narratives were enlivened with speeches, character sketches, and digressions, and, by skillfully blending archaism and innovation, he created a style of classic status. And to the delight of moralists he revealed that Roman politics were not all that official rhetoric depicted them to be. Sallust is not an entirely admirable historian; his work shows many instances of anachronisms, inaccuracies, and prejudice; the geography of the Bellum Jugurthinum scarcely reveals personal acquaintance with North Africa; he treats the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC as the beginning of the Roman crisis, whereas symptoms were clearly visible before that date. Nor is he a deep thinker, being content to operate with philosophical commonplaces. He makes no attack on the structure of the Roman state; his moral and political values are traditional; they commemorate the past to castigate the present. But his own experiences in politics imbued his analysis and his idiom with an energy and passion that compel the attention of readers. There are English translations by S. A. Handford of The Jugurthine War and The Catiline Conspiracy in the "Penguin Classics Series" (1964) and in the "Loeb Classical Library Series." (Encyclopaedia Britannica Article)