Essai sur la pensée morale de Salluste à la lumière de ses prologues by E. Tiffou (review)

398 LETTERS IN CANADA 1978 E. THfoll. Essai sur la pensee morale de Safluste aIn Iumiere de ses prologues Les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal 1973 The prologues to Sallust's works deploy a number of general ideas as well as several explicit statements of the historian's views about historiography and its place in the public life of his day. They have therefore attracted much attention, especially on the part of those critics who have regarded Sallust as in some sense a philosophical historian. Professor Tiffou belongs to this number: he seeks to elucidate the moral ideas of the prologues and to match them with the ideas he finds in selected parts of the works. For good reasons Tiffou firmly rejects any influence of Posidonius on the prologues, but to my mind he is too ready to detect the influence of Plato (e.g., p 38). By Sallust's day the mind-body dualism had become a philosophical commonplace, part of the mental baggage of all educated persons. One need no more see in it the direct influence of Plato than one need suppose that all who nowadays use psychoanalytical terminology have studied Freud. An addiction to contrast, further, is characteristic of Graeco-Roman rhetoric and Sallust is a writer who markedly delights in it. Following the work of predecessors, especially D.C. Earl, Tiffou finds virtus to be Sallust's dominant moral concern. Other qualities tend to be subsumed under this head, with the result that the full range of Sallust's moral concepts and terminology is not considered as it deserves to be. The chapter on gloria is principally concerned with Cicero's views. The search for the use of virtus as a key concept also leads to the neglect of important aspects of Sallust's historiographical technique: for example, in considering Sallust's digressions, it is important to take into account the practice of other historians and the dictates of rhetorical theory, as well as whatever use the digressions may have for the display of exempla. Further, in looking for connections between the prologues and the works Tiffou, necessarily perhaps, concentrates on those parts of the works where plausible echoes of the prologues can be detected, leaving the reader to form his own conclusions about those parts of the works where the echoes are silent. At this date it is not easy to say anything about Sallust's prologues that is both new and true. Not unreasonably, therefore, the merits of Tiffou's lengthy study are critical rather than original. He relies substantially on previous writers even if his refinement of their views is sometimes just. He is not free, however, from historical error: for example, Cato Uticensis is described as the nephew of Cato Censorius (p 313, n 93; p 394); Sulla appears as a tribune (p 424); Pompey's follower is called Theophanes of Miletus (p 565, n311) . Tiffou also regards Sallust as a member of 'the party of the populares' (p 480) who are also on one occasion referred to as HUMANITIES 399 'democrats' (p 432, n 64). Edelstein and Kidd's edition of Posidonius (1972) is passed over in favour of Bake's (1810). There are numerous typographical errors especially in quotations from foreign languages. Tiffou's discussion of the structure of Sallust's Histories makes some useful points, though the subject really demands independent treatment on a larger scale. He is well-read in the secondary literature. His study does not, I think, break new ground, but may be considered an adequate summary and partial refinement of existing views. (C.M. PAUL) Roberta Frank. Old Norse Court Poetry: The Dr6ttkvrett Stanza Cornell University Press. 223_ $18.50 Professor Frank's book presents itself as an introductory study for students , and a very good one it is, the only one in English except for Gabriel Turville-Petre's, which appeared two years ago. The two books, however , come at their subject in different ways and complement one another, and I shall not compare them. Both are excellent and each fills in its own way a gap in Norse studies that no one seems to have thought of filling before. They make...