Sallust: Africa Nova Extortion, Lavish Gardens and Rome's Moral Decline

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Gaius Sallustius Crispus, known as Sallust, was born around 86 BC in Amiternum in Sabine country to a plebeian family with no senatorial ancestors, a novus homo or new man. Elected plebeian tribune, he joined the turmoil of 52 BC, when the gangs of Milo and Clodius fought in Rome's streets. After Milo's men killed Clodius on the Appian Way, Sallust whipped up crowds against Cicero, who was defending Milo; Cicero, surrounded by hostile mobs and soldiers, gave a poor defense and Milo was exiled. In 50 BC a censor expelled Sallust from the Senate for immorality, almost certainly as revenge for that trial. He sided with Julius Caesar in the civil war, failed in a command in Illyricum, and fled for his life when mutinous veterans near Rome killed two senators.

During the African campaign he secured grain from the Cercina Islands off modern Tunisia for Caesar's starving army, and Caesar made him governor of Africa Nova. There he raised grain quotas, seized estates and took bribes, and when charged with extortion he was shielded by Caesar. After Caesar's assassination he built the lavish Gardens of Sallust on the Quirinal Hill and turned to history, writing short monographs, Catiline's War and the Jugurthine War, arguing that Rome's decay began with the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC. He wrote in an abrupt, archaic style, the opposite of Cicero's. Modern historians fault him for blaming moral failure for what were structural and economic changes.

• As tribune he held an office whose holders were legally sacrosanct.
• He preferred old-fashioned spellings such as lubido for libido.
• Tacitus admired him, and the poet Martial called him the Roman Thucydides.
• Thomas Aquinas and Machiavelli read him to understand political corruption.
• His works survive in two medieval families: the Mutili, sharing a gap in the Jugurthine War, and the later Integri, which fill it.