porary, gives an insight into the political machinations and the corruptions of Roman society. His style is carefully formed after that of Thucydides, and is distinguished for vigor and conciseness, but becomes sometimes sententious and abrupt. He is also censured for archaic expressions, and on the whole, lacks graceful ease and smoothness. The delineations of character, (e. g. of Catiline, Jugurtha, Marius), have always been considered masterpieces. Jouvancy rightly says: "Sallust exhibits an abundance of material and a wealth of ideas."
Tacitus is the greatest historian of Rome, if not of antiquity.[1] He was a stern Roman of the old stamp, an enthusiastic admirer of the virtus Romana, which in his time had almost totally vanished. But the sad condition of his time made him gloomy, pessimistic, and one-sided. "Tacitus and Juvenal paint the deathbead of pagan Rome; they have no eyes to see the growth of new Rome, with its universal citizenship, its universal Church (first of the Emperors, afterwards of Christ). ... The Empire outraged the old republican tradition, that the provincial was naturally inferior to the Roman: but this, which is the greatest crime in the eyes of Tacitus, is precisely what constitutes its importance in the history of the world."[2] Tacitus' sympathetic description of the simple and incorrupt manners of the Germans, in his Germania, was intended to set the Roman corruptions in a more glaring light, and is evidently too much idealized. In psychological depth, warmth of feeling, and vigor of expression, Tacitus surpasses even Thu-
