INTRODUCTION
The Life and Works of Sallust
Gaius Sallustius Crispus was born in 86 B.C. at Amiternum, a town in the Sabine territory about fifty-five miles north-east of Rome at the foot of the Gran Sasso d'Italia. It was not far from Reate, the native place of Varro and of the Emperor Vespasian. The family does not make its appearance in history before the end of the seventh century of the city, and it was evidently of plebeian origin, since Sallust held the office of tribune of the commons. The author of the Invective against Sallust declares that the historian was wild and dissipated in his youth and that his conduct hastened his father's end; Sallust's own words, however, in Cat. iii. 3–5, imply that his only fault was ambition, and he certainly applied himself to his studies sufficiently to acquire a good education. One of his teachers was the celebrated Ateius Philologus (Suet. Gramm. x.).
Accusations of the most outrageous kind were so freely bandied about in Roman political circles that one might naturally attribute many of those made against Sallust to malicious gossip, especially since we are informed that one Lenaeus, a freedman of
