A DECLAMATION AGAINST SALLUST.

FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO CICERO1.

I. It is your great pleasure, Sallust, to lead a life suitable and correspondent to your words, and to utter nothing, of however foul a character, to which your conduct, even from your earliest boyhood, has not been answerable; so that your language is uniformly consistent with your morals. For neither can any one, who lives like you, speak otherwise than you speak; nor can the life of any one, whose conversation is so impure, be more honourable than your own.

In what direction shall I turn my thoughts, Conscript Fathers; and with what shall I commence ? The better each of us is known, the heavier is the task which I undertake in addressing you. Should I answer this calumniator with regard to my own life and actions, envy will still follow my glory; and, if I expose his actions, habits, and whole course of conduct, I shall fall into the same fault of shamelessness which I object to him. If, therefore, you are at all offended, you ought to express displeasure at him, who commenced the subject, rather than at myself. It shall be my care to defend myself with the least possible offensiveness of language, and to make it appear that I advance nothing false against my opponent.

I am aware that, in replying, I have no great expectation of securing your attention, for you are certain that you will hear no new charges against Sallust, but will merely recognise old accusations, with which your ears and mine, as well as his own, have long tingled. But you have, on this account, the greater reason to detest the man; a man who, not even at his entrance on vice, contented himself with essays in small matters, but commenced his course in such a way that he could neither be surpassed by any one, or surpass himself during the rest of his life. He indeed aims at nothing else, but, like a filthy swine, to wallow with any one whatsoever. But he is greatly deceived if he thinks that he shall palliate his conduct by his charges against myself; for infamy of life is not to be effaced by impudence of tongue; and there is a certain feeling of abhorrence, of which every one is sensible from the prompting of his own mind, against him who throws out false aspersions on respectable characters. If, therefore, the acts of his life defy recollection, you must form your estimate of it, Conscript Fathers, not from his speeches, but from his habits. I will endeavour, as far as I can, to despatch my account of him with brevity. Nor

1

1 Cicero] Glareanus observes that there is an imitation of Cicero's copiousness of style in this Declamation; as there is of Sallust's brevity in the preceding.

will this dispute of ours, Conscript Fathers, be without advantage to yourselves; for the authority of a government is often increased by the enmities of individuals, whose influence allows no man to conceal his real character.

II. In the first place, then, since Sallust judges of the ancestors of all men by one precedent and rule', I would wish him to tell me of what estimation2 or fame were the Scipios, Metelli, and Fabii, whose names he has mentioned, before their exploits, and a life of honour, recommended them to notice. But if such was the commencement of their reputation and celebrity, why may not the case be similar with myself, whose actions are honourable, and whose life has been passed without blame? You speak as if you yourself, Sallust, were sprung from such men! But if you were, there would be some to be ashamed of your infamy. I have outshone my ancestors in merit, so that if they were previously unnoticed, they may date the origin of their notice from me; you, by the disgraceful life which you have led, have thrown a great cloud over yours, so that, though they may have been excellent citizens, they may well sink into oblivion. Forbear, therefore, to taunt me with the want of distinguished forefathers; for it is better that I should attain eminence by my own actions, than be dependent on the fame of my ancestors, and that I should live a life which may be the commencement of nobility, as well as an example of virtue, to my descendants. Nor is it just, Conscript Fathers, that I should be compared with those who are dead, and who are free from the influence of hatred or envy, but with those who are engaged with me in the service of my country. But if I have been too ambitious of honour, (I do not allude to the ambition to serve the state, in which I confess that I would stand foremost, but to that pernicious ambition in defiance of the laws, in which Sallust has ever been a leader,) or if I have been as severe as you state that I have been, in the exercise of office or the punishment of crimes; or if I have been as vigilant as you represent in defence of the state, (a vigilance which you call a proscription, I suppose because all like yourself did not live unmolested in the city, though how much better would be the present condition of the country, if you, who resembled those infamous traitors, had been numbered with them in death!) did I, who, clad in the toga, cut off armed incendiaries, and suppressed a war without disturbing peace, unjustly say Cedant arma toga, or, when I extinguished such desperate hostility, such formidable treason within the city, did I unreasonably exclaim Fortunatam natam, me consule, Romam ?

III. Do you feel no concern, most fickle-minded of men, when you blame, on the present occasion, those parts of my conduct which in your History you describe as honourable to me? Which is more dis

1 One precedent and rule] "As the pseudo-Sallust mentions the Scipios and Fabii, who were truly noble men, the pseudo-Cicero accuses him of requiring all truly noble men to have had ancestors such as those of the Scipios and Fabii." Cortius.

2 Of what estimation] Qualis opinionis. This usage of opinio, which occurs in the same sense a few lines below, is sufficient to show that this composition is of the later Latinity.

graceful to him, Conscript Fathers, to record falsehoods in writing, or to state them to this assembly? In reply to the aspersions which you have thrown upon my life, I may say that I am as far from impurity as you are from purity. But why should I make further complaint of your calumnies? For what falsehood can you think dishonourable, when you dare to represent my eloquence as a vice, eloquence of which your guilt has constantly needed the protection? Do you imagine that any man can become a distinguished member of the state, who is not instructed in such arts and studies as I have pursued? Do you suppose that any better basis and cradle of virtue can be found, or any more effectual method of exciting the mind to the pursuit of glory? But it is not at all surprising, Conscript Fathers, that a man who is sunk in sloth and luxury should express wonder at such studies, as if they were new and unusual.

As to your attacks, so extraordinary in their virulence, upon my wife and daughter, who have more easily refrained from the opposite sex than you from your own, you have shown great skill and judgment in making them; for you naturally expected that I should not retaliate, or make any similar attack on your family, since you have matter enough for obloquy in your own person, and since there is nothing in your house more infamous than yourself. But you are greatly deceived if you hope to raise odium against me on account of my property, which is indeed much less than I deserve to have; but I could wish, on one account, that it were less than it is, and that all my friends who have left me legacies were alive, rather than that I were enriched by their favours.

Am I a fugitive, Sallust, because I retreated before the madness of a tribune of the people? I thought it better that I, as an individual, should incur any fate whatever, than be the cause of discord among the whole Roman people. But as soon as that incendiary had completed his year of disorder, and all that he had disturbed had subsided into peace and quiet, I returned at the call of this house, the whole state, as it were, leading me back by the hand. And the day of my return, if it be compared with the rest of my life, has, in my estimation, a superiority over the whole of it, as, on that day, the whole of your assembly, Conscript Fathers, and a vast concourse of the Roman people, welcomed me on my reappearance.

IV. Such was the value which they set upon me, whom you call a fugitive and a mercenary patron. Nor, indeed, is it wonderful that I should have always thought the friendship of all men justly due to me; for to no man have I played the servitor, to no man have I attached myself with a view to private interest, but have regarded every one as my friend or my enemy according to his feelings for the republic. I wished for the establishment of nothing so much as of public peace; many encouraged the audacious attempts of individuals for their own advantage. I feared nothing but the laws; many desired that their own arms should be dreaded. I never longed to exert power but for your good; many even of yourselves, relying on their own influence, abused their authority to your injury. It is not sur prising, therefore, if I have found friendship from none but such as

were friends to the state; nor do I repent either of having afforded my protection to Vatinius, when he solicited it under accusation, or of having repressed the insolence of Sextius, or of having condemned the unconcern of Bibulus, or of having been favourable to the merits of Cæsar; for such conduct should be regarded as the great and distinguished praise of a high-minded citizen, and if you impute it to me as a fault, it will be audacity on your part, and not unreasonableness on mine, that will be the proper object of censure. I would say more to the same purpose, Conscript Fathers, if I had to address myself to any other assembly than yours, for you yourselves prompted me to all that I did; and, where the proofs of actions are known, what need is there to multiply words respecting them?

V. I now return to yourself, Sallust. Of your father, I shall say nothing, who, however, if he never committed a fault in his life, could not have done a greater mischief to his country than by sending into it such a son as yourself. Nor shall I inquire of what irregularities you were guilty in your boyhood, lest I should seem to reflect on the parent who then had charge of you; but I shall notice only the sort of youth that you passed; for, if this is shown, it will easily be understood how forward you must have been in childhood, and how impudently and audacious you grew up. After the gains of your shamelessness became inadequate to support the extravagance of your luxury, and you had grown too old to submit yourself to the pleasure of others, you were incited, by indomitable passions, to try on others what you had not thought disgraceful to yourself. It is not easy to decide, therefore, Conscript Fathers, whether the mode in which he acquired his gains, or that in which he squandered them, was the more dishonourable. He offered for sale, and actually sold, to his perpetual infamy, his father's house in his father's lifetime; and who can doubt that he shortened the life of the parent, to whose whole property he made himself heir before his death? Nor am I at all ashamed that he should ask me who lives in the house of Crassus, when he cannot inform me who lives in that of his own father. But, perhaps, his faults were only those of youth, and he corrected them as he grew older. Far from it; he united himself to the society of the abandoned Nigidianus1; he was twice brought before the magistrate, and reduced to the utmost peril; and, though he escaped condemnation, it was not because he himself appeared innocent, but because his judges were thought guilty of perjury. Having obtained the quæstorship as his first office, he looked down with contempt on this place and this assembly, to which an entrance had been opened for one so mean as himself. Fearing, accordingly, that the turpitude of his life, though he had been an object of detestation to every husband in the city, might not be sufficiently known to you, he confessed in your own hearing, and without blushing before your gaze, that he was an adulterer.

VI. But let it be enough for you to have lived as you pleased, and to have done what you wished; let it also be enough for you to be conscious to yourself of your own crimes, and do not reproach us with unreasonable heedlessness and indifference. We are careful in pro1 Nigidianus] Who he was, is unknown.

tecting the chastity of our wives, though we are not sufficiently vigi lant to guard against you; for your audacity goes beyond our imagina tions. Can any deed or word, Conscript Fathers, however dishonour able, deter him who was not ashamed, in the hearing of you all, to acknowledge his adultery? Were I to make no reply on my own behalf, but merely to recite, before this whole assembly, the censorial judgment of those irreproachable men, Appius Claudius and Lucius Piso, a judgment in which each of them concurred3, should I not be thought to inflict such a lasting stain on your character as the efforts of your whole life could not efface? Nor, after that sentence of the senate, did we ever see you in public, except, perhaps, when you threw yourself into that camp into which all the refuse of the state had collected itself. But this Sallust, who, in time of peace, had not even remained a senator, was brought back into the senate, after the expiration of his quæstorship, at a time when the government was overwhelmed with a military force, and when the same personage, who then gained the ascendancy", restored the exiles. But he exer cised his office in such a manner as to set everything to sale for which a purchaser could be found. He acted as if he thought all was right and just that he chose to do, and abused his authority as if it had been given him only to obtain spoil from it.

Having concluded his quæstorship, and having given large pledges to those, to whom, from similarity of pursuits, he had united himself, he seemed to have become one of themselves. Sallust, indeed, was an excellent specimen of that assemblage into which masses of all kinds of filth had collected as into a gulf; whatever licentious and debauched characters, traitors, despisers of religion, and debtors, were to be found in the city, in the municipal towns, the colonies, and throughout Italy, had sunk there as into the waters of an ocean; persons the most abandoned and infamous, fitted for a camp only by the extravagance of their vices, and their eagerness to disturb the state.

1 Judgment] Elogium. "The word signifies the sentence and the reasons for it." Cortius.

2 Appius Claudius and Lucius Piso] "They were censors A.U.C. 704, and expelled from the senate many of the nobility, among whom was Sallust, if Dion Cassius, lib. xl., is to be believed." Cortius.

This pas

3 In which each of them concurred] Quo usus est quisque eorum. sage is very obscure. The eorum must refer to the censors, as Cortius observes; but uterque should have been used instead of quisque. The words pro lege, which follow eorum, I have omitted, for all the commentators suspect them, and none attempt to explain them.

Camp] That of Cæsar. Many knights and senators, after the sentences of Appius and Piso, joined the party of Cæsar, according to Dion Cassius, lib. xl." Cortius.

5 Same personage, who then gained the ascendancy] He means Cæsar. The text of Cortius is idem victor, qui exules reduxit: with victor he understands fuit. Other copies have idem victores, qui exules reduxit.

6 His office] Honorem. He seems to have been reinstated in his quæstorship. See below, c. 8, bis quæstorem fieri.