Victories With A Shield: relief from a triumphal monument in Rome (early first century B.C.). This and other reliefs in the same hard
grey stone, all showing trophies and armour, have been attributed to the base of a statue-group of 91 B.C. depicting Sulla's capture
of Jugurtha, the North African king whose conflict with Rome forms the subject of Sallust's Jugurthine War.
Sallust
C. Sallustius Crispus (born 86 B.C.), a partisan of Caesar's who took to history about the time of the latter's murder, was more
innovative stylistically and developed a terse epigrammatic style, which owed much to the short simple sentences and ponderous
vocabulary of the early annalists, in particular Cato, but had greater variety of language and tone. Unfortunately his major work, the
Histories, which dealt with late Republican history down to 67 BC, only survives in fragments, and we have to base our judgement
of him mainly on the monographs Catiline and Jugurtha. In these Sallust makes plain his preoccupation with the portrayal of virtue;
in fact he alludes to the importance of the death-masks of the nobility as inspiration for later generations, thus recalling the influence
of Roman funerals on historical writing. However, to throw virtue into relief he gives as much emphasis to vice, and he does not
limit himself to the character of individuals but portrays the mores of whole sections of society. Patriotically he gives Roman
military glory its due, but contrasts this with the moral corruption which in his view attended the expansion of the Roman Empire. It
was above all the aristocracy itself which through greed and ambition was not only self-destructive, but created injustice for the poor
or encouraged corruption in them also. Rome was only saved by the outstanding virtue of a few of her leaders. Sallust also highlights
conflicts between the nobility and the plebs, which had begun in the early Republic before corruption had set in, but returned in
earnest in the late Republic after a brief period of harmony during Rome's most critical wars. He shows sympathy with plebeian
sufferings (he had himself been tribune of the plebs and taken a popular stance at that time).
Yet when writing of the late Republic, in a passage influenced by Thucydides, he denounces both those who claimed to defend the
status quo of senatorial dominance and those who championed plebeian rights, for seeking in reality their own power. For Sallust
vice and decadence were as important subjects as virtues and victories, and it was vice which gave him the greatest opportunities for
extended portrayal of character, for example those of Catiline and Jugurtha themselves, and minor characters like Sempronia, the