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By Sallust’s time Greek history had seen its two greatest historians, Herodotus and Thucydides. History writing, according to some, had degenerated due to a desire to be dramatic as opposed to accurate. Some authors concentrated on scandals of royalty rather than wider political events. Sometimes these histories included merely interesting stories, digressions on geography, ethnography or ‘marvels’. There was also the tendency to write history to make a moral point. As the power of Rome grew, writers like Timaeus and especially Polybius wrote on Rome, its origin and rise.
From the earliest period (approx. 500 B.C.) Romans had kept records of the consuls for every year and a record of their deeds and major events, often a pretty sparse account. Also the great families of Rome kept alive records of the deeds of their ancestors, which would be recalled at funerals, although these were obviously slanted accounts.
The first two Roman Historians were Fabius Pictor and Cincinius Alimentus, who lived during the second war with Carthage. They wrote their histories in Greek, not Latin. Roman history from the beginning was not simply a chronicle. It was patriotic in orientation, glorifying Rome’s rapid rise to power. Also it tended to be moralizing, that is, used to assign praise or blame, to glorify Roman virtues. What is often lacking is an in-depth political analysis of events; Roman historians have a tendency to preach about the decay of morals due to wealth as the cause of all evils, but, while this is to some extant true, the problems were more complex than that. As I noted in class, scientific history considers economic, environmental, ideological, etc. causes for historical events and changes.
Cato the Censor wrote in Latin an Origins, in which he describes legends and history of the various towns of early Italy, and then the Punic wars of his own time. He made accounts of speeches part of his narrative. He preferred to stress the collective accomplishment of Romans, not individuals, who tend to go unnamed; Cato simply says ‘the consul’ etc.
By the time of Julius Caesar generals and politicians were writing commentaries on their own deeds, to set the record straight or to create propaganda. Caesar’s histories of the Gallic War and the Civil War technically fall into this category. They explain, for example, how Caesar was forced into fighting the civil war or to expand the Gallic war. In style Caesar’s Latin tended to have a limited vocabulary, to be tightly, but not simply, written.
Sallust had been a follower of Caesar, and, forced out of politics, had taken to writing history, as he explains in his prologue to his monograph on Cataline, so that he would have something useful to do. Sallust was a follower of the populares, and thus in his history of the Jugurthine War there are speeches which Memmius attacks the oppression of the lower classes by the aristocracy, their murders of the Gracchi, their greed and corruption. He praises Marius, the ‘New Man’ who successfully opposed the sentatorial class. In his history of the conspiracy of Cataline note how (see 93-5) Sallust lovingly details the supposed purity and love of glory and hard work of the early Romans, and how they were corrupted by lust for money and power and the lack of enemies. Again, this analysis is superficial. Note too how he sees the time of Sulla as the real turning point, when gain through violence in politics became an acceptable tool. This mindset gives birth to Cataline, who wants to be another Sulla. At the same time, the chaos of the period had alienated and impoverished many, who would listen to Cataline’s plots and hope for a share of the spoils of victory. Note the descriptions of Cato and Caesar; Sallust subscribed to the ‘great man’ theory of history, which emphasizes the role individuals play in history. In terms of his Latin style, he was something a follower of Thucydides, in that his Latin has a harshness and abruptness in its construction, to keep you thinking, unlike the Latin of Livy, which had what was described as a ‘milky smoothness’. For Sallust history should make you work. It has been suspected that some of his work was suppressed.