The  personal  history  of  Sallust,  so  far  as  it  is
known,  is  creditable  only  to  his  practical  intelli-
gence. A  man  of  obscure  origin  and  unprincipled
ability,  he  managed,  by  taking  the  democratic  side
and  denouncing  the  vices  of  the  decadent  aristo-
crats, to  bring  himself  ultimately  into  a  position
where  he  could  comfortably  and  safely  emulate  and
surpass  them.  He  had  the  tact,  or  the  luck,  to
attach  himself  to  the  fortunes  of  Caesar.  Favoured
by  Caesar,  he  so  enriched  himself  with  the  spoils  of
African  provinces  that  the  spk^ndoiir  of  his  Roman
villa — the  Gardens    of   Sallust — has    never    been


220       THE  TRADITIONS  OF  ROME

quite  forgotten  by  legend;  and  here,  while  An-
tony and  Octavian,  not  yet  Augustus,  were  plot-
ting and  struggling  for  mastery  of  the  world,  he
passed  his  later  years  in  magnificent  and  luxurious
literary  leisure.
The  most  considerable  fruits  of  this  were  five
Books  of  Histories,  believed  to  have  been  concerned
with  what  happened  throughout  the  Roman  domin-
ions during  the  years  which  ensued  on  the  death
of  Sylla.  Of  these  only  fragments  remain.  His
monographs  on  the  conspiracy  of  Catiline,  however,
and  on  the  African  wars  with  Jugurtha  some  fifty
years  earlier,  are  preserved  intact.  In  manner  and
in  temper  they  are  curiously  unlike  what  we  know
of  the  self-seeking  and  self-made  millionaire  who
wrote  them.  It  is  generally  agreed  that  he  mod-
elled his  literary  methods  on  those  of  Thucydides.
First  among  the  Romans,  accordingly,  he  wrote
history  as  if  it  were  not  so  much  a  mere  record  of
fact  as  a  sound  basis  for  reflection  and  reasoning.
