Historiography on the Roman historian Sallust and his accounts

Historiography on Sallust

The concern of all serious historians has been to collect and record facts about the human past and often to discover new facts"

Historiography Introduction section).

Instead of qualifying as an accurate account of what happened in the past, history may more accurately relate what the historian records about the known past; about the past as he/she knows it to be. "Historiography is the written record of what is known of human lives and societies in the past and how historians have attempted to understand them" (Historiography Introduction section). In line with this understanding, along with relating a synopsis of the historian Sallust, this paper also relates perceptions other historians recorded about this Roman historian.

Sallust: The Historian

Sallust reportedly lived from 86-ca. To 34 or 35 B.C. In "Sallust," M.C. Howatson, and Ian Chilvers, authors of "Sallust," report that as Sallust, the son of a plebeian family, orn at Amiternum in the Sabine country, grew to become the Roman historian, he frequently engaged in controversial practices ranging from adultery with Clodius' wife; to participating in fomenting the riots of 52; to enriching himself significantly at the expense of province; to being charged with extortion upon his return to Rome (not convicted) (Howatson, and Chilvers).

A. Influences upon Sallust

Education

2. Historical Events

In "Cicero, Catiline, and Conspiracy: Vying for Control, Lucius Catiline Conspired to Become Rome's Monarch, While Cicero Worked to Expose and Thwart His Plans and Keep Rome's Republic Alive," Steve Bonta notes that Sallust's version of historical events regarding Catiline challenge Cicero's. Historical accounts another historian, Appian, conflict with those Sallust presented.

The primary reason Rome fell, according to the account of Steve Bonta's in "Lessons of Rome: The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic Provides Lessons that Hint at Flaws in Modern Political Policies," may be attributed to moral decline. Each "Roman writer who chronicled the fall of the republic -- Appian, Tacitus, Cassius Dio, Sallust, Cicero, and others - marveled at the evaporation of ancient virtue that preceded the loss of liberty, Bonta (2005 Flaws in Modern Political Policies section ¶ 1) reports. Even though Republican Rome failed to reflect numerous softer virtues of later Christian civilization, Bonta asserts that in comparison with many of the then contemporary pagan societies, Rome served as a model of morality. Bonta notes that for centuries, Rome resisted numerous superstitions and/or debilitating vices the remainder of the pagan world followed.

B. Professional Career, Positions Held

During his life, Sallust:

Was tribune of the plebs during 52 BC;

was expelled from the senate in 50 BC;

joined Julius Caesar, and then commanded a legion in 49;

was elected praetor in 47;

became governor of the province of Numidia during 46;

retired after being unsuccessfully charged with extortion withdrew from public life;

spent the last years of his life writing historical monographs (Howatson, and Chilvers).

After Milo horse-whipped Sallust for engaging in the act of adultery with the wife of Clodius in 50 BC, Sallust became hostile toward Milo and Cicero (Howatson, and Chilvers). Figure 1 portrays likeness of Sallust.

Figure 1: Portrayal of Sallust (Thayer).

Figure 2 portrays comparison of Latin Text to English Translation of the War with Jugurtha.

Figure 2: The War with Jugurtha (Thayer).

Thayer reports that the texts and English translation of Sallust's works are those printed in the volume of the Loeb Classical Library, Sallust, initially published in 1921, later revised in 1931. "The work is thus now in the public domain pursuant to the 1978 revision of the U.S. Copyright Code, since the first copyright has lapsed and the second expired in 1959 without being renewed at the appropriate time."(Thayer). In the "Preface to the First Impression," John C. Rolfo (October, 1920) notes:

In the absence of an entirely satisfactory text of Sallust, the translator has made his own. In some points of orthography, for example in the assimilation of prepositions, he has not followed the manuscripts, but has aimed rather at uniformity.

A complete translation of Sallust was submitted, including all the fragments on the basis of Maurenbrecher's Histories, but the General Editors decided, partly from considerations of space and partly because of the slight interest of the shorter bits, that only the complete Orations and Letters should be printed. To these have been added the Pseudo-Sallustian works mentioned "The_Doubtful_Works

"Sallust_E" on p. xviii of the Introduction. (Thayer)

The Historians Historical Contributions

Historians] have known that the information they have is incomplete, partly incorrect, or biased and requires careful attention"

Historiography Introduction section).

Predecessors

The ancient Greeks began Western historiography. For centuries, the Greek historians' standards and interests dominated historical study (Histography).

In the 5th century BC Herodotus, who has been called the father of history, wrote his famous account of the Persian Wars. Shortly afterward, Thucydides wrote his classic study of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. These men recorded contemporary or near-contemporary events in prose narratives of striking style, depending as much as possible on eyewitness or other reliable testimony for evidence. They concentrated on war, constitutional history, and the character of political leaders to create pictures of human societies in times of crisis or change. The recognition by contemporaries of the extraordinary accomplishment of both historians gave their works an authority that influenced succeeding historians. They too would prefer recent events, consider visual and oral evidence superior to written (used only in ancillary ways), and assume that the most significant human expression was the state and political life. Antiquarian research into religion, customs, names, and art, based on documentary sources, was also part of Greek and Roman culture but was allied chiefly to philosophy, biography, and areas of specialized learning and was excluded from the main traditions of political history. No specialized training was considered necessary for historiography. The historian's education was that of any cultivated man: careful reading of general literature, followed by the study of rhetoric, the art of fluent and persuasive use of language that dominated ancient higher education. The ideal historian would combine rigorous truthfulness and freedom from bias with the gift of developed expression. (Historiography Greek historiography section)

Xenophon, Theopompus of Chios (born approximately 378 BC), and Ephorus, continued practicing the main traditions of Greek historiography in the Hellenistic period, during the 4th century BC and extended its scope. "Polybius, in the 2nd century BC, explained Roman history, political life, and military successes to his fellow Greeks, a subject also taken up by Strabo the geographer and Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the following century" (Ibid). Flavius Josephus, a Jewish aristocrat of Greek culture placed the history of the Jews in its Hellenistic and Roman context. Josephus additionally defended and explained Jewish religion and customs. During this same time, Plutarch recorded biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. In his writing, Plutarch emphasized dramatic, anecdotal materials as he depicted exemplary characters. Individual lives, by Plutarch's account, reflected illustrations of the individual's moral choices, along with the affect the individual's choices had on public life (Historiography Greek historiography section).

The following list denotes other historical periods that historians preserved synopses of historiography that followed the Greek Historiography and then the Roman Historiography:

The Early Christians

The Middle Ages

The Renaissance

The Antiquarians and Enlightenment History

The 19th Century

Current Times (Historiography).

Historical Schools of Thought

One primary point historians agree upon is that as a myriad of ways exist to determine what really happened, historians naturally disagree. Figure 3 portrays a list, that although not a complete list in a rigid order, relates a number of reportedly recognized historians who recorded events that occurred back in time:

Figure 3: Historical Schools of Thought (adapted from Histiography)

Major Contributions

Howatson, and Chilvers report three works of Sallust survive today. These include "the Bellum Catil-nae, Bellum Iugurth-num and the Historiae of the period 78-67 BC (the years following the abdication of Sulla). The first two works Sallust wrote, along with fragments of the third have survived in history.

The Conspiracy of Catiline (De Catilinae coniuratione), Sallust's first historical monograph, thought to have been published in 43 B.C., begins its record, recounting the grave account of the moral decline of the Romans. Sallust narrates the career of Catiline; stressing the conspiracy's detection and suppression. Although Sallust's gained knowledge of the facts from his personal experience and contemporary records, this particular work remains noteworthy for the reportedly brilliant speeches and character sketches he includes in this work (Sallust).

Sallust's personal knowledge of Africa and literary sources, which included translations of Punic documents, compliments the Jugurthine War (Bellum Iugurthinum). This document, published in approximately 41 B.C., evolved after a philosophical introduction and an account of Jugurtha's career. "Sallust narrates the war of the Romans against the Numidian king (111-106 B.C.) (Sallust ¶ 4). He does, albeit, falter on chronology and topograph in this publication. Sallust likely composed his Histories (Historiae) most likely after 39 B.C, in five books. These works focused on the he critical period from the death of Sulla in 78 B.C. To Pompey's rise to power in 67 B.C. Only fragments of these works, which include two letters and four speeches, survive (Sallust).

In the Preface to the Second Impression, John C. Rolfe (May 15, 1928) purports:

The part of the Introduction dealing with the manuscripts has been re-written in the light of the new classification of Axel W. Ahlberg (Prolegomena in Sallustium, Gteborg, 1911), which was followed by him in his Teubner text (Leipzig, 1919) and, except in some minor details, by B. Ornstein in the Bude Salluste (Paris, 1924); and the critical notes have been made to conform to that classification. Some changes have been made also in the section on the "pseudo-Sallustian" works, to which a good deal of attention has been devoted during the past decade. Finally, some errors have been corrected and a few additions made to the bibliography. (Thayer)

The story of Catiline's revolt, Thayer reports, proves interesting to students of Roman history previewing Caesar's revolution. It also serves as a warning, Thayer contends, to modern man in "dealing as it does with terrorism, the infiltration of republican government, and pre-mptive strikes at them to preserve liberty. In a similar sense, the war with Jugurtha deals with conducting a foreign war with a polarized citizenry, amidst a number of other concerns. The defeatist half may have been bribed by the enemy to call off the war, the story suggests.

Barbara Weiden Boyd reviews the book, Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History, written by Victoria Emma Pagen. Boyd recounts that by Pagan focuses on five conspiracies, reportedly familiar to the majority of serious students of Roman history, relating to the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BCE, as narrated by Sallust. Boyd reports the other four Pagen conspiracies to include:

the Bacchanalian affair of 186 BCE, as narrated by Livy;

the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 CE, as narrated by Tacitus;

the assassination of Caligula in 41 CE, as narrated by Josephus; and the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, as narrated by Appian. (Boyd)

Pagan's primary focuses on Sallust's monograph in her account of the Catilinarian conspiracy, along with the fact she reportedly merely scans the Ciceronian tradition attributes value to work by Sallust (Boyd).

Theme(s) and reason(s) for writing

Steve Bonta records that in "Cicero, Catiline, and Conspiracy: Vying for Control, Lucius Catiline Conspired to Become Rome's Monarch, While Cicero Worked to Expose and Thwart His Plans and Keep Rome's Republic Alive," Sallust relates the story of Lucius Catiline, a dissolute patrician and senator. Catiline, graced with attractive features, intelligence, boundless endless energy, and remarkable personal magnetism, Sallust recounts, could endure not only hunger, freezing temperatures, and lack of sleep to an incredible extent, possessed a crafty, daring, and resourceful mind; capable of dissimulation, and pretense. Bonta reports Sallust wrote that Catiline was:

man of flaming passions, he was as covetous of other men's possessions as he was prodigal of his own.... His monstrous ambition hankered continually after things extravagant, impossible, beyond his reach."

Disaffected with republican government and determined to replace it with a monarchy, Catiline formed a secret society to prepare for a revolution. In morally decrepit Rome, he had no trouble attracting a following. Sallust informs us: "Amid the corruption of the great city Catiline could easily surround himself, as with a bodyguard, with gangs of profligates and criminals. Debauchees, adulterers, and gamblers, who had squandered their inheritances in gaming-dens, pot-houses, and brothels; anyone who had bankrupted himself to buy impunity for his infamous or criminal acts; men convicted anywhere of murder or sacrilege, or living in fear of conviction; cut-throats and perjurers, too, who made a trade of bearing false witness or shedding the blood of fellow citizens; in short, all who were in disgrace or afflicted by poverty or consciousness of guilt, were Catiline's intimate associates." (Bonta Master of Deceit section ¶ 2)

Its purpose and scope

Howatson, and Chilvers note that Sallust's work expounds on the causes of political events, along with relating the motives for men's actions. "His weaknesses lie in his vagueness and inaccuracy in chronological and geographical matters, and in his biased attitude to the popular-s and his hostility to the nobil-s, natural perhaps for a novus homo" (Howatson, and Chilvers). Sallust, albeit recognized merit in political adversaries, as well as identified faults in his own side.

Along with recording and informing readers then and now of historical events during the time of Rome's demise, Sallust, a friend and unabashed supporter of Caesar, wrote his mind (Bonta Debate in the Senate ¶ 2). At times, he would defend Caesar; other times he would expose someone he considered needing to be exposed, for example, Cicero. Due to the magnitude of the prestige of the Greek language in the arenas of art and learning, even the Romans wrote the first Roman historiography in Greek. After Cato the Elder first wrote Roman history in Latin, others followed his exampled. "Sallust, impressed by the work of Thucydides, developed a brilliant Latin style that combined ethical reflections with acute psychological insight" (Historiography Roman Historiography section). Sallust's political analysis, which was based on human motivation, had a long, pervasive influence on historical writing. During the same time that Sallust wrote, although he was not an historian, Cicero defined "the prevailing ideals of historiography in terms of stylistic elegance and traditional moral standards applied to the events of public life" (Ibid). Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius continued Latin historical writing in this style.

C. Sallust's Influence

Sallust, Joe Wolverton, purports in "The Founding Fathers & the Classics: The Stream of Classical History Was Oneof the Primary Tributaries of American Political Thought at the Time of the Founding," frequently cited warnings regarding the consequences of government corruption and intrigue. During some of the 15 hours a day Thomas Jefferson studied when younger, his classmates recall, he studied Sallust, along with a number of other historians.

In "By the Sword and the Plow: Theodore Chasseriau's Cour Des Comptes Murals and Algeria," Peter Benson Miller purports that Sallust's text served as more than a mere instrument to endorse French designs. "Ii prescribed a plan of action guaranteeing the success of the mission" (Miller Classisicm and the Roman Paradigm section ¶ 4). Savants, sponsored by the Armee d'Afrique, and Chasseriau's project, conducted Research from Sallust's Jugurthine War. In Chasseriau's preliminary notes among the drawings documented the evolution of his design for War, he referenced Sallust's Jugurthine War; written at some point in Sallust's term as Caesar's consul in Constantine (ancient Cirta). "An essential tool for historical analyses of Roman North Africa, it was also one of the primary ancient narratives cited to justify French intervention in Algeria" (Miller Classisicm and the Roman Paradigm section ¶ 4).

Conseqeuntly, the French required their French officers to read Sallust. The French military perceived its narrative of Roman conquest of North Africa to serve as a model for their own colonial ambitions. Chasseriau wrote on one sheet: "for my series of heroic compositions of War represent the assault upon a town troops that climb up the walls -- think of the taking of the city of Capsa that Sallust describes in his Jugurthine War..." (Classisicm and the Roman Paradigm section ¶ 4). Chasseriau, along with his detailed study of Sallust, paid particular attention to the archaeological investigations his contemporaries conducted.

CONCLUSION

Perhaps words Caesar related to his Senate colleagues help one better understand why the information historians recount for future generations is incomplete and partly incorrect. "It is not easy to discern the truth when one's view is obstructed by emotions...," (Bonta) as Caesar, the researcher notes reflect the message Bonta stressed. Emotions, although a vital part of history, may cloud historical accounts of events.

The concern of all serious historians has been to collect and record facts about the human past and often to discover new facts.

They have known that the information they have is incomplete, partly incorrect, or biased and requires careful attention.

All have tried to discover in the facts patterns of meaning addressed to the enduring questions of human life"

Historiography Introduction section).