In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

SELECTIONS FROM SALLUST c.rranslated by Paul MacKendrick INTRODUCTION C. SALLUSTIUS CRISPUS (86-ca. 34 B.C.), is one of the few ancient authors to show any sympathy for the common man; opponent of Cicero, partisan of Caesar, tribune of the people, quaestor, praetor, and proconsul of Numidia, he has not gained in reputation by having the courage to oppose the senatorial class. According to the aristocratic tradition, he was once horsewhipped for an intrigue with another man's wife, was expelled from the Senate on a morals charge, and enjoyed his magnificent gardens on the Pincian Hill at the expense of the provincials he had robbed as governor_ However real these sins may be-and they can be matched from the life story of many an optimate-the allegation of them was sufficient to drive Sallust from public life; he devoted the years of acute civil war to writing about party strife instead of participating actively in it. Sallust invented the historical monograph: he selected episodes in Roman history to illustrate the successive stages in the struggle of democratic power against the insolence of the nobles. His one work of connected history , an account of the years 78-67 B.C., is not preserved, having perhaps fallen victim to opposition censorship, though for tbis theory there is no positive evidence. The episodes Sallust chose to treat were the war against the Numidian prince Jugurtha and the conspiracy of Catiline , both as examples of aristocratic mismanagement. The selections here printed from the Jugurtha present two speeches on the bad record of the aristocracy, an analysis of party strife in Rome, an account of the election of the "new man" Marius as consul, and a character sketch of the aristocratic dictator Sulla. The selections from the Catiline include Sallust's account of his motives for writing history, a grim picture of the declin" and fall of the Roman Republic, a fine chiaroscuro of the gloom in Rome during the conspiracy, lightened by the revulsion of the plebs when they discovered Catiline's true character, a critical comparison of the rival leaders Cato and Caesar, and the story of the final battle, where among the corpses of friends and loved ones, men were occasionally able to recognize even an enemy. Sallust is the first of the triumvirate of Roman historians which includes Livy and Tacitus. He shares with Livy a nostalgia for the eadie.'It days of Rome, when men were so noble and so poor. He rivals Tacitus in his cynicism and in his ability to evoke the atmosphere of crack-up, the mood of an age of anxiety. But the historian to whom Sallust would most like us to compare him i~ Thucydides. Literary critics of the Roman Empire compared the speeches in the two historians and did not find Sallust wanting. The style of both is difficult and full of abstractions almost too heavy for language to bear, and both possess to a high degree the talent of grasping what is generic in a situation without falsifying what is unique. Both had seen'the ideal vision of a great movement for liberation fade into a mere struggle for power, and both write therefore with a high pessimism. For Sallust should not be romanticized into a Shelley, with a view of "man, equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless"; if he sympathized with the common man, it was with a view to enlisting his vote for Caesar; Sallust shares with Carlyle a "great man" theory of history; the struggle, for him, is not one between the classes and masses but between rival dynasts struggling for the soul of the ordinary man. In this insistence upon the corruptive force of money, he anticipates Toynbee: faced with the challenge of Empire, Rome had failed to respond. But of all historians ancient or modern to whom Sallust may be compared, he probably has the closest affinity to the Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli. Both wrote in retirement with a political ideal in mind; each has an undeserved bad name; both study men, unearth natural causes, are champions-from whatever motive--of the forgotten man; and it would have been better for both if Nature had endowed them with a less powerful intellect or a more genial temper. FOR THE Jugurthine War and the Conspiracy 0/ Catiline, the text used is that of A. W. Ahlberg (Leipzig: Teubner, 1938); for the letter To Caesar on the Commonwealth, that of A. Kurfess (Leipzig: Teubner, 1930). Occasional turns of phrase...

Share