¹ Catiline 4.4: ‘…nam id facinus in primis ego memorabile existumo sceleris atque periculi nouitate.’ I shall be working with L.D. Reynolds’ Oxford Classical Text (C. Sallusti Crispí Catilina … 1991); my debt to the Commentary of Vretska, Karl (C. Sallustius Crispus De Catilinae Coniuratione, Heidelberg 1976Google Scholar) is too extensive to be specified at every single point. It is not proposed to list or review here the enormous scholarly literature touching on Sallust's relation to and treatment of Cicero; the alleged feud and its alleged effect on Sallust's representation of Cicero has been rolled back, but except in the case of a single scholar, not scotched: see on L. Havas (n.17). The two justly acclaimed standard works on Sallust in English offer little on Sallust's dialectic with Cicero: Earl, D.C. in The Political Thought of Sallust (Cambridge 1961Google Scholar) devotes his third chapter to Cicero and Sallust as innovators in the conceptualisation of virtus, for the most part (but note 38-9) in their capacity of novi homines, Sallust being simply juxtaposed with Cicero as a little later and more radical in his thinking (39). SirSyme, Ronald in Sallust (Berkeley/Los Angeles 1964Google Scholar) with every sign of good conscience—his parti pris is already observable in The Roman Revolution (Oxford 19391Google Scholar)—makes Cicero a foil to his Sallust, though he duly exculpates Sallust from the charge of doing this himself (n.17). Büchner, KarlSallust (Heidelberg 1982Google Scholar) is so structured as to exclude our present concern except in respect of the Invectiva in Ciceronem (20-40) which he considers genuine; cf. Syme, 314-8.

² The publication-date of Sallust's monograph De coniuratione Catilinae is not anywhere attested. The range of conjecture is narrow, however, as even the proponent of an early date of original composition (i.e. 50 B.C.) argues a late revision newly including the speeches of Caesar and Cato and publication in 41-40 B.C. (McKay, L.A. ‘Sallust's Catiline: Date and Purpose’, Phoenix 16 [1962] 181–194)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In an article in preparation titled ‘Sallust and the Cardinal Virtues’ I intend to argue that Sallust indicates a date. For the present purpose, however, it will be sufficient to assume either of the usual current datings: 1) after Cicero's quarrel with Antony and before his death (mid- to late 44 to December 43), or 2) after Cicero's death. Only readers who envisage publication after Caesar's death (March 44) and before the circulation of the Second Philippic (November-December 44) and who also believe that Cicero's public relations with Antony were cordial throughout the period before that formal rupture (or for a large part of it) will be disturbed. For them Sallust's treatment of P. Lentulus Sura has to be explained in some other fashion. (Cf. Section 7 below.)

That Sallust was himself an Antonian, as argued by Allen, W. Jr. (‘Sallust's political career’. Studies in Philology 51 [1954] 1–14)Google Scholar, is thinly evidenced in itself, but may indeedrepresent for Sallust the bolt-hole found by many good Republicans at one point or another during those years. If true at any time, Sallust's expressed views of C. Antonius, Antony's uncle (Cat. 26.1 and 4), and of Antony's beloved step-father, P. Lentulus Sura (Cat. 55.6 and passim), show no trace of it. (Cf. Sallust's damaging assessment of Antony's father, M. Antonius praetor 74, Hist. 3 frg. 2 and 3 [Maurenbrecher, McGushin], frg. 3 [Reynolds OCT].)

³ Velleius Paterculus 2.36.2: ‘… aemulumque Thucydidis Sallustium …’, and implicitly, perhaps, in Quintilian's choice of the two for comparison (Inst. Or. 10.1.101Google Scholar). Paul Perrochat long ago demonstrated Sallust's preoccupation with Thucydides in ‘Salluste et Thucydide’ (REL 25 [1947] 90–121Google Scholar), an article which became the most substantial chapter of his paradigm-altering book Les modèles grecs de Salluste (Paris 1949)Google Scholar. If closely followed, Perrochat's demonstration of Sallust's re-modelling of Thucydidean thought, especially of the speeches, becomes a prime text on Sallust's intellectual praxis, though Perrochat's own real interest is in stylistic mimesis. (Cf. n.26.)

⁴ Not only civil rights were at issue in the Late Republic; magistrates were at risk from direct mob activity and mob-supported prosecutions. 1) Cicero, as vulnerable to the rule of law as non-magistrates like C. Rabirius or L. Bellienus, associated the Senate with him in the pronouncement of the death-penalty on the arrested conspirators in December 63 (Cat. 4.5: ‘… rei confessi sunt, uos multis iam iudiciis iudicauistis … ut ei qui in custodiam nominatim dati sunt sine ulla dubitatione a uobis damnati esse uideantur’), all in vain when the time of accounting came in 58. 2) The assassination of Caesar precisely because he was in the office he held was treated as ‘removing without trial the first man of the highest magistrates’ (Plutarch Brutus 27.4)Google Scholar; and the lawfulness of the lex Pedia under which this crime was tried is emphasised by Augustus (Res gestae div. Aug. 2: ‘iudiciis legitimis’; Velleius Paterculus 2.69.5; Dio 46.48.2). The legal acts of one dispensation were constantly being legally reversed by the next: it was after a long period of this that Sallust began writing as a good citizen seeking norms without which res publica was a nullity.

Theodor Mommsen's multi-volume, and in every sense magisterial, Römisches Staatsrecht, published in three editions in his mature years, and late in life his Römisches Strafrecht (Leipzig 1899)Google Scholar, one volume of over one thousand pages, codified the public practice of the Romans by a methodology of accumulation, combination and critical analysis of texts with a view to deductive certainty about a constitutional totality defined by the author. This procedure scholars now recognise as tending to obliterate the inevitable discontinuities and fluidities of history as lived by a society. Unfortunately, legalism like law itself enjoys a prolonged half-life. A genuine attempt to throw it off precisely in connection with Sallust's treatment of the issues raised by this conspiracy has been made by Drummond, AndrewLaw, Politics and Power (Stuttgart 1995)Google Scholar; cf. n.62. Mommsen inhabited a world of Fundamental Sovereignty and Savigny-ian jurisprudence; we live in an Academy for better and worse sociologically relativised, but so accommodating as still to have room for an unreconstructed constitutional talisman. An uncompleted paradigm-shift?

⁵ Sallust, Cat. 52 (especially 52.36, 53.1)Google Scholar

⁶ ibid. 51 (especially 51.43)

⁷ Cie, . Philippics 2.14–18Google Scholar

⁸ ibid. 8.1-4: L. Caesar agreed politically with himself, Cicero urges, but family propinquity led him to baulk at a word.

⁹ Asconius pp. 37, 45, 49C. However spurious (n.1), the composition of the Invectiva in Ciceronem presupposes ancient awareness of ill-feeling between Sallust and Cicero; but even if it were genuine it could not cover Sallust's historiographical composition of a later time. On the ‘real’ Sallust see Earl, D.C. ‘The Early Career of Sallust’ Historia 15 (1966) 302–311Google Scholar. Less useful is W. Allen Jr. (n.2).

¹⁰ Asconius p. 37C

¹¹ Cie, . Fam. 7.2.2–3Google Scholar; 8.1.4; Plutarch, Pompey 55.5–6Google Scholar

¹² Valerius Maximus 4.2.7

¹³ Dio 40.63.3-4; Varrò apud Aulum Gellium 17.18 (removed for adultery, therefore?). The censor Ap. Claudius Pulcher effected massive expulsions from the Senate; his relations with Cicero at this time were full of snares, and at this time also he became an outright enemy of Cicero's friend Rufus, M. Caelius (Fam. 8.14.4Google Scholar; 8.12.1-3).

¹⁴ After Caesar's invasion of Italy Cicero stayed on good terms with (e.g.) M. Caelius Rufus, aedile 50 (Fam. 8.15Google Scholar; 8.16; 2.16; 8.17), C. Scribonius Curio, tribune 50 (Att. 10.8.10Google Scholar) and Dolabella, P. Cornelius (Fam. 9.9Google Scholar) now in Caesar's service. Particularly noteworthy is the wonderful letter to Atticus (10.4) in which serious disapproval of Curio exists side by side and interacting with intimacy, ease and goodwill (10.4.7-11). Even letters from Antony and Caesar observe the forms of friendship (Att. 10.8AGoogle Scholar; 10.8B).

¹⁵ Note especially for tone and language 1.26 and 2.84.

¹⁶ Cat. 53.6Google Scholar

¹⁷ So extreme was Eduard Schwartz's position (‘Die Berichte ueber die Catilinarische Verschwoerung’, Hermes 32 [1897] 554–608Google Scholar) on Sallust as a Caesarian pamphleteer and political opponent of Cicero that it invited rebuttal by scholars who essentially agreed with him that Sallust wrote as a Caesarian. W.A. Baehrens offered a corrective that only made things worse (Sallust als Historiker, Politiker und Tendenzschriftsteller [Neue Wege zur Antike, 4] [Leipzig 1927] 35–82)Google Scholar: Sallust told the truth about Cicero only the more effectively to distort it in Caesar's interest. A universe away from this T.R.S. Broughton held that Sallust's fairness to Cicero was not so much deceitful as subdued by externalities: the times required discretion under the Triumvirate (‘Was Sallust Fair to Cicero?’ TAPA 67 [1936] 34–46, especially 45Google Scholar). A candid, thorough and acute treatment of the points at issue in Sallust's reporting of Cicero's involvement by Otto Seel (Sallust von den Briefen ad Caesarem zur Coniuratio Catilinae [Leipzig/Berlin 1930]Google Scholar) pointed the way ahead along two diverging paths: 1) Sallust's failure to do more for Cicero simply represents the truth that Cicero's achievements were not outstanding and in no way compromises the historian's objectivity toward his old opponent (64-5); 2) by the time of writing it is conceivable that Sallust and Cicero took a similar view of current affairs (65). Both views were taken up. Steidle, W. (Sallusts Historische Monographien, Wiesbaden 1958Google Scholar) at 15 develops Seel's first point within a differentiation of Cicero's and Sallust's broad historical analyses: Cicero saw the concord-ideal as something important revived by him and recognised by society; Sallust saw recent events within a historical partem of overall moral decline under which Cicero's suppression of the conspiracy of 63 could hardly be regarded as salvation since it was purely ephemeral. Sallust conscientiously places a limited value on Cicero's services.

Syme (n.1) is to be placed, but not comfortably, within this tradition of reaction against Schwartz: for it is not for him a question of Cicero's credit but of Sallust's in his handling of his old rival. Syme's management of his argument at 110-11 is subtle—-frank in manner, but structurally tendentious—for in conceding so much he still holds a trump produced on 111: ‘On Sallust's showing, the consul acquits himself nobly and deserves well of the Republic. But he has to yield prominence at once to Caesar and to Cato.’ (My italics.) Thus, Syme has lost nothing even in allowing the possibility that in Triumviral Rome Sallust envisages a good defence of Cicero (110), as already in Seel and Broughton. Cicero is not—with what palpable relief!—the hero.

A truly independent, indeed sometimes breathtaking, interpretation brought to my notice by O. Steen Due's review of the scholarship (‘La position politique de Salluste’, Class, et Med. 34 [1983] 113–139Google Scholar), is extensively based on the political configuration and its socioeconomic base after the elimination of Caesar. Little notice has been taken of this bracing article in two parts by Havas, L. ‘La monographie de Salluste sur Catilina et les événements qui suivirent la mort de César’, Acta Classica Univ. Scient. Debrecen 7 (1971) 43–54Google Scholar, and 8 (1972) 63-73; its radical criticism of prevailing views deserves attention, e.g. at 46 on Sallust vis à vis Caesar, and at 48-50 on the political convergence of Cicero and Sallust—all leading, however, in the second part, to a Marxian placing of Sallust in terms of his wealth, fully investigated by Havas, and his class-interest in backing the sort of respublica Cicero was fighting for.

¹⁸ At Thucydides 3.36-48 each of the proponents, it is taken for granted, is committed to his argument without arrière-pensée; Caesar's legalism, his parliamentary ‘respect’ for the Senate's dignitas, for the courage of D. Silanus and for the legality of the consul Cicero at Cat. 51 carry a heavy load of irony. (How much more is there?) Cato is made bluntly (though not abusively as in Plutarch Cato Min. 23-24) to puncture the credibility of Caesar as a citizen in good standing (52.13-16).

¹⁹ Book 3 escalates from Mytilene to Plataea to Corcyra, culminating in a general comment on the moral plague of the time at Chapters 81-83.

²⁰ The locus classicus for the epideictic monograph is Cicero's letter to Lucceius, L. (Fam. 5.12Google Scholar) requesting the historian to write up (celebrare, ornare, etc.) Cicero's consulate so as to confer glory by way of the subject's res gestae and the author's style on the suppression of Catiline's Conspiracy. Syme, like many, makes merry at Cicero's expense (n. 1) 57; a more serious approach is possible, as in Fornara, C. W.The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley/Los Angeles 1983) 101-2, 140–1Google Scholar; and relating the epistle to historiographical theory, Woodman, A.J.Rhetoric in Classical Historiography (London/Sydney 1988Google Scholar) Chapter 2, with special reference to epideictic at 95-8. That Sallust's Catiline eschews some (but not all) epideictic practice has often been noted; apart from speeches and characterisations, moreover, the prime function of allocating praise and blame (Fam. 5.12.4Google Scholar) is very much in evidence—and, as will be argued in this paper, in Cicero's case par excellence. It may be suggested tentatively that Cicero in including Herodotus' nuanced and critical ‘Themistocles’ alongside the encomiastic Agesilaus and Timoleon (ibid. 7) might have been more able to appreciate Sallust's approach to himself than many would allow him credit for. (On the immediate literary background to Sallust's adventure in style and composition, the following can be noted among many: Shimron, B. ‘Ciceronian Historiography’, Latomus 33 [1974] 232–244Google Scholar; Brunt, P.A. ‘Cicero and Historiography’, : Miscellanea di studi classici in onore di Eugenio Manni, 1 [1980] 309–340Google Scholar; Wiseman, T.P.Clio's Cosmetics [Leicester 1979] especially Chapter 3.)Google Scholar

²¹ Closest to it comes ‘quamuis egregius homo nouos’ (23.6)Google Scholar, a single phrase alluding to Cicero's supremacy (‘quamuis’) in a class that needs rare distinction (‘egregius’) to attain the consulate, and even then hardly ever does. Minimalism of coverage (which some hold deliberately abstains from specifying Cicero!) could hardly sink lower.

²² Apart from the Catilinarian speeches and other extant works that hark back to the Conspiracy, Cicero published several works that were accessible to Sallust and his readers and were the narrative counterpart of the revised edition of the political speeches of his consulate. All these were part of a single apologetic and self-advertising publication programme whose progress can be traced in the early to middle months of 60 B.C. (Att. 1.19.10Google Scholar; 20.6; 21.1-3). They included a Greek memoir on his consulate, a possible Latin version (Att. 1.19.10Google Scholar), and a poem. Though he proclaims them historical, not encomiastic, it is clear that much of the interior history had to be left out: De consiliis suis was first planned to make this good in 59 B.C. (Att. 2.6.2Google Scholar) and was eventually published in time to be used by Sallust for his Catiline (n.86). An open letter to Pompey from 62 B.C. on his res gestae and summa res publica (Pro Sulla 67) may have remained in the public domain; it will have been similar in character though lengthier than his report to Cato from Cilicia (Fam. 15.4Google Scholar).

²³ We have by courtesy of Cicero's tendentious rebuttal in the Thirteenth Philippic selective quotations from a public letter or manifesto of Antony at Chapters 22-48. There is no need to advance any case for the formal authenticity of the speech of Q. Fufius Calenus (Dio 46.1-28) or of the Sallustian Invective against Cicero to recognise in these contemporary material cohering well with genuine evidences of current political defamation.

²⁴ The theme of Cicero's ‘foreign-ness’ is captured by Sallust, himself equally or even more foreign, Amiternum in this being as bad as Asculum (Pro Sulla 25), and hence worse than Arpinum, in Catiline's slur at Cat. 31.7 ‘inquilinus ciuis For full documentation see Berry's, D.H. discussion at 181–191 of his edition Cicero: Pro P. Sulla Oratio (Cambridge 1996)Google Scholar.

²⁵ Cf. n.23. Careers and consulates are keenly compared for size: note synkrisis of careers (In Pisonem 1-3); of consulates (ibid. 3-36; Phil. 2.15–17Google Scholar).

²⁶ Sallust is a much tried author and yet there is still great analytical potential: e.g. Sallustian terms have been studied for interpretative significance on the model of work on Thucydides in recent decades by Scanlon, T.F. (Spes frustrata: a reading of Sallust [Heidelberg 1987]Google Scholar; the connection is already made in the earlier The Influence of Thucydides on Sallust [Heidelberg 1980]Google Scholar. Working in quite a different context from that of the present paper Levene, D.S. ‘Sallust's Jugurtha: An “Historical Fragment”’, JRS 82 (1992) 53–70Google Scholar may be noted honoris causa as an example of what structural analytics can do for a historical text.

²⁷ ‘… Catilina … opprimundae reipublicae consilium cepit.’

²⁸ ‘Sed antea item coniurauere pauci contra rempublicam, in quis Catilina fuit.’

²⁹ ‘Nam postquam res publica in paucorum potentium ius atque dicionem concessit…’

³⁰ ‘Quod si primo proelio Catilina superior aut aequa manu discessisset, prefecto magna clades atque calamitas rem publicam oppressisset, neque illis qui uictoriam adepti forent diutius ea uti licuisset quin defessis et exsanguibus qui plus posset imperium atque libertatem extorqueret.’

³¹ ‘Namque antea pleraque nobilitas inuidia aestuabat, et quasi poliui consulatum credebant, si eum quamuis egregius homo nouos adeptus foret; sed ubi periculum aduenit, inuidia atque superbia post fuere.’

³² consulibus insidias tendere, parare incendia, opportuna loca armatis hominibus obsidere; ipse cum telo esse ….’ On ‘consulibus insidias tendere’, compare in uis-contexts ‘… magistratibus uimattulerint…’ (Cie, . Pro Caelio 1Google Scholar); ‘… manum consulumet principum ciuitatis interficiendorum causa parauisse …’ (Cie, . Cat. 1.15)Google Scholar; ‘… insidias senatui fecerat…’ (Inv. in Cie. 2.3)Google Scholar. On ‘parare incendia’ compare ‘… aedis incenderei? … tempia deorum immortalium inflammaret? …’ (Pro Sestio 84)Google Scholar. On ‘opportuna loca armatis hominibus obsidere’ compare ‘… armati senatum obsederint …’ (Cael. 1)Google Scholar; ‘(M. Saufeius) repetitus … lege Plautia de ui, subscriptione ea quod loca <edita or the like> occupasset …’ (Asconius p. 55C); ‘senatum obsideret? … principem ciuitatis ferro obsessum teneret?’ (Cie, . Pro Sestio 84Google Scholar). On ‘ipse cum telo esse’ compare ‘… te … stetisse in cornino cum telo’ (Cie, . Cat. 1.15Google Scholar); ‘fit senatus consultum ut Vettius quod confessus esset se cum telo fuisse, in uincula coniceretur …’ (Att. 2.24.3Google Scholar) and ‘Nunc reus erat … Vettius de ui …’ (ibid. 4); ‘(M. Saufeius) repetitus … lege Plautia de ui … quod … et cum telo fuisset…’ (Asconius p. 55C). It is noteworthy that a prosecution under the lex Plautia de ui had been initiated against Catiline by L. Aemilius Paulus when Cicero's first Catilinarian speech changed the course of events (Sallust, Cat. 31.4Google Scholar).

³³ ‘… seque ad exercitum proficisci cupere, si prius Ciceronem oppressisset: eum suis consiliis multum officere.’

³⁴ The force of Gaius Gracchus’ well known law restricting capital jurisdiction over Roman citizens to the (centuriate) assembly of the People is best stated by Cicero at Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo 12: ‘C. Gracchus legem tulit ne de capite ciuium Romanorum iniussu uestro iudicaretur’. (Cf. Cie, . Cat. 4.10Google Scholar; Plutarch, C.Gracchus 4Google Scholar.)

³⁵ Cicero Pro Rabirio perd, reo is the vital text. That the prosecution of C. Rabirius in 63 B.C. for acts committed long ago in the emergency of 100 B.C. was an attack on the right of the Senate prospectively to validate the killing of citizens acting seditiously emerges from Chapters 2-5, where any fetter on the power of the Senate and consuls to handle an emergency is deplored (also, not surprisingly, by the authoritarian Dio 37.26.2-3), and from Chapters 18-19, where the prosecution case that Rabirius had killed L. Saturninus in that crisis is denied in fact, but hypothetically defended in principle. (Cf. Pro Milone 72 ff. for the same strategy.) In finding Rabirius guilty of treason the duumuiri C. and L. Caesar (Suetonius Jul. 12; Dio 37.26-28) differed from Cicero on the facts, and more importantly declared the killing to be a violation of Saturninus' civil rights which no constitutional expedient devised by the Senate could override. We find Sallust rebutting this popularis view at 29.3.

³⁶ ‘Animus audax subdolus uarius, quoius rei lubet simulator ac dissimulator…’

³⁷ Att. 12.21.1Google Scholar (‘hic autem se etiam tribuere multum mi putat quod scripserit ‘optimum consulemV). Ed. Schwartz (n.17) at 580 considers ‘optimus consul’ both scornfully ironic and purely formal. It is hard to see how irony is extracted by reversing the force of a term of formalist reductionism in the first place! W.A. Baehrens (n.17) at 45 holds to the irony, but recognises that the term is enthusiastic, not reductive, in its natural sense (Cie, . Philippics 7.5Google Scholar of C. Pansa, consul 43). And Baehrens does not think Sallust knew of the relevant letter to Atticus; he presumes irony on the basis of his general case. T.R.S. Broughton (n.17), on his view that Sallust is merely ‘fair’ to Cicero, is content to deny irony unless it be taken as Bestia's. Sallust is reminiscing (ironically again) of Cicero in Catullus Poem 49, according to Allen, W. Jr. (CV 32 [1937] 298Google Scholar), although ‘optimus’ there goes with ‘patronus’, not ‘consul’. Scholars’ interpretation of ‘optimus consul’ reflects in each case their interpretation of Sallust's tendency.

³⁸ ‘At Romae Lentulus cum ceteris … constituerant uti … L. Bestia tribunus plebis contione habita quereretur de actionibus Ciceronis bellique grauissumi inuidiam opiumo consult inponeret; …’

³⁹ ‘… consul est qui consulit patriae’, Carbo, C. Papirius apud Cie. De orai. 2.165Google Scholar; cf. Polybius 6.12.1.

⁴⁰ ‘… alii Tarquinium a Cicerone inmissum aiebant, ne Crassus ….’

⁴¹ E.g. by the consul of 58, Gabinius, A., at Red. Sen. 12,32Google Scholar; Sest. 28.

⁴² On this see Strasburger, H.Concordia Ordinum (Boma 1931) 39–41Google Scholar raising the issue of ‘terrorism’ by the equestrian guard. It did not deter Caesar but may have influenced other senators (41). Certainly the consul Gabinius took the view that the équités must pay the reckoning for their actions on the Nones of December 63 (40).

⁴³ Mommsen, Th.Römisches Staatsrecht 3.23 (Berlin 1888)Google Scholar 1249 condemns Cicero's proceeding before the full Senate as unprecedented and contrary to convention and the essence (Wesen) of that institution! Mommsen goes on to admit Sulla's example (1250) but pronounces this the bad (arg) beginning of a bad development. On the bad beginning, at least, Cicero would agree with Mommsen—he never adduces Sulla as one of his glorious and hence legitimising predecessors—and consequently validates his actions on the nature of the case in 63 B.C. rather than on precedent. That it was not unparalleled, nevertheless, emerges from Valerius Maximus 6.3.3. (Cf. nn.4, 61 and 62.)

⁴⁴ Clodius' attacks on Cicero's tyrannical cruelty are well known. What is of more current interest at the time of Sallust's writing is their revival by Antony (Cicero, Philippics 2.15–19Google Scholar; Dio 46.20 in the speech attributed to Q. Fufius Calenus; Pseudo-Sallust [n.2] Inv. in Cie. 3, 5Google Scholar [‘…crudelissimam proscriptionem …’ etc.] is a guarantee that, whatever its provenance, the content of ‘Fufius” speech is not Dio's own composition).

⁴⁵ Plutarch Cicero 19-20 despite its largely Ciceronian provenance is less morally impressive: Cicero is indeed concerned about the status of the arrested men and the public danger they represent as Sallust says (19.6), but to it is added a concern precisely about his reputation for unmanly timidity (19.7) and the issue is decided, not by philosophical resolve, but by a divine omen that guarantees both his security and his glory (20.1-3).

⁴⁶ His shuffling in the case of C. Manilius in December 66 earned him the nickname ‘Transfuga’ (Inv. in Cie. 4, 7)Google Scholar; in Greek (Dio 36.44.2); cf. Plutarch, Cicero 9.4–7Google Scholar. His reputation for this sometimes transcended any factual basis for it: contrast the notorious account of his speech for Milo at Dio 40.54.2-4 with the sober historical version in Asconius (42C). Nevertheless the letters from exile in 58-7 and the letters to Atticus in 49 before he made a decision to join Pompey in the East are for those of us who continue to resist a negative evaluation of Cicero an embarrassment similar to that undergone by those who cared about him at the time: Livy's assessment of his life (Seneca, Suas. 6.22Google Scholar) represents the necessary balance struck by Cicero's wellwishers. (Cf. n.96.)

⁴⁷ Dolus is not inherently evil. (See Vretska [n.1] ad loc. 360; the older usage is noted at Festus 60,29 L, and by Ulpian on the Edict at Digest 4.3.1.3.Google Scholar)

⁴⁸ It need not now be laboured that Sallust's thematic emphases distort chronology, though it is wrong to say he does not care. (On this see Syme, Sallust 77–81Google Scholar; on the alleged antedating of the conspiracy, Stone, A.M., ‘Was Sallust a Liar? A Problem in Modern History’, in Hillard, T.W.et al. [edd.], Ancient History in a Modern University [Michigan/Cambridge 1998] 1.230–243.)Google Scholar In like fashion the supposed displacement of the attack of the equestrian guard from the 5th December 63 to the 3rd is simply the historian's pursuit of a logical connection between the troublemaking of the ex-consuls and the violence of the guard without taking proper steps to safeguard the chronology of an event that was perhaps among the best anchored in readers' minds anyway. Cf. Vretska ad loc. 369, noting the thematic development from 23.4 to 26.3 to 28.2; and 493, recognising the displacement of the attack on Caesar as literary choice rather than chronological inadvertence. Moles, J.L. in Plutarch: The Life of Cicero (Warminster 1988)Google Scholar at 20.4 catches Plutarch likewise running ahead of himself to represent the highlights of this close-packed and exciting series of events from December 3rd to 5th.

⁴⁹ At 29.1 ‘… neque exercitus Manli quantus aut quo Consilio foret satis conpertum habebat …’ is a perfect response to such things as ‘Haec ego omnia uixdum etiam coetu uestro dimisso comperi …’ (Cie, . Cat. 1.10)Google Scholar. Cf. Pro Sulla 12; Fam. 5.5.2Google Scholar; Att. 1.14.5Google Scholar; Inv. in Cie. 2.3Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ It is the theme of consul togatus framed by exempla from Greek and Roman history. On this see especially Nicolet, C., ‘Consul Togatus’, REL 38 (1960) 236–263Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Cicero's service to res publica as consul is better handled at De officiis 2.84Google Scholar, because handled historically: the crisis was one of debt; it was managed by a resolute policy of payment in full; Cicero's success is honestly placed in the context of its reversal by Caesar's civil war victory. Those who agitate over the ‘incredible allegations’ of Cicero's secret then, and lost now, De consiliis suis—Syme's scepticism (Sallust 62-4) should be corrected by reference to Rawson's, E. ‘History, historiography and Cicero's Expositio consiliorum suorum’, Roman Culture and Society: Collected Papers (Oxford 1991) 408–415Google Scholar—should note Cicero's frank and casually thrown out inculpation of Caesar's ‘cogitations’ in 63 in our extant De officiis.

⁵² The integrity of Cato's resistance to a supplicatio for Cicero's victories in Cilicia and his foreshadowed opposition to a triumph was accepted at face value by Cicero until Cato emerged to support an equally specious supplicatio for the res gestae of his son-in-law Bibulus in Syria (Cato to Cicero, Fam. 15.5.2Google Scholar; Cicero to Cato, Fam. 15.6Google Scholar; Att. 7.1.7Google Scholar; 7.2.6-7, to select from this fascinating and instructive series). But Cato did give Cicero full credit in his formal motion on the 5th December 63 and this, says Cicero much later, is the reason why his form of words was the one adopted (Att. 12.21.1)Google Scholar.

⁵³ In Pisonem 6; Pro Sestio 121

⁵⁴ Cf. 36.5-37.1: ‘…sed ormino cuneta plebs nouarum rerum studio Catilinae incepta probabat.’

⁵⁵ Plutarch, Cicero 22.5–8Google Scholar, with Christian Habicht's convincing comments (Cicero the Politician [Baltimore/London 1990] 32–34)Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Is not Sallust emphatic precisely because, like ourselves, he saw that fires did not make sense—except to sociopaths? Waters, K.H. (‘Cicero, Sallust and Catiline’, Historia 19 [1970] 195–215Google Scholar) and Seager, Robin (‘Iusta Catilina’, Historia 22 [1973] 240–248Google Scholar) argued the pointlessness of the conspiracy as constructed (with shifting rhetorical emphases) by Cicero and essentially endorsed by Sallust. This pointlessness was already recognised by both the orator and the historian, and represented as best they could in a language that had no word for nihilism: e.g. Cie, . Cat. 1.3; 1.12Google Scholar; etc; De officiis 1.78; and above all Sallust Cat. 39.4Google Scholar (cf. Nicolet [n.50] 245): Pompey (implicitly) was the only conceivable objective beneficiary of the conspirators' success; also via ‘Cato’ (Cat. 52.24Google Scholar: ‘Citizens have conspired to set fire to their fatherland’ is a poetic compression of the Ciceronian firepower). It is curious to find scholars in the latter part of the twentieth century insisting on the essential sanity of enacted politics and the human psyche. Apart from the abundant (and perhaps conventional) furor-language of both Cicero and Sallust, special attention should be directed toward Sallust's approach to the foothills of psycho-history: Catiline's formation (‘ab adulescentia’) and then his settled motivational pattern (‘post domina-tionem L. Sullae’) are associated with delight in civil war and aspiration toward tyranny (Cat. 5.2Google Scholar; 5.6).

⁵⁷ “… uirtutem animi ad caelum ferunt…’. The discourse has switched from popular culture to ethical philosophy.

⁵⁸ Note J.L. Moles (n.48) ad loc. I would prefer Moles’ Option (a) that ‘Cicero's actual speech was more equivocal than the published version’ to his own preferred (d) that Plutarch ‘has exaggerated Cicero's equivocation as part of Cicero's irresolution in crises …’

⁵⁹ This is the real, and only credible, basis for the general belief that Sallust is merely fair to Cicero. (Cf. Section 8 below.)

⁶⁰ Cicero, De domo sua 50Google Scholar

⁶¹ This should have pre-empted scholars from so interpreting the Roman culture as to yield any textbook maxim that a trial in the Senate was unconstitutional. At 6.16.1-2 Polybius envisages judicial activity by the Senate provided that capital condemnation is ratified by the People; at 6.17.7 he views senators as the normal panel from which jurors are drawn in public and private law cases; and after the tergiversations of Late Republican politics senators in Cicero's time from 70 B.C. on provided one-third of the jurors in any criminal trial. Not only are senators (except at times of ideological and partisan pressure) a normal source of jurors, the senior senators (principes) are a traditional repository of legal wisdom and advice (Gelzer, M.The Roman Nobility [Oxford 1969] 47Google Scholar; Aulus Gellius 13.12.6 [Varro]). It is simply, perhaps, that trials in the full Senate were cumbersome and time-consuming. Anyway, at Cat. 51.21–24Google Scholar Caesar argues only the illegality of execution, partly naming and partly alluding to the relevant legislation. Clearly, he sees no objection in lex or even mos to imprisonment with confiscation by judgment of the Senate. To leave aside the complexities of the Bacchanalian episode, note apparent cases of senatorial orders of imprisonment in Valerius Maximus (6.3.3). That the historical Caesar was no doubt motivated by tactical, not by legal or moral, considerations is hardly the point.

⁶² Ever since Mommsen (nn.4 and 43) Cicero's culpability under Roman constitutional law has been reaffirmed even in apologias for his handling of the crisis: thus notably in David Stockton's highly sympathetic Cicero—A Political Biography (Oxford 1971)Google Scholar we read yet again: ‘…The proceedings in the Senate … did not and could not constitute a trial in strict law. No decree of the Senate could override statute law …’ (at 137, in the midst of a case for the defence!)

Now Andrew Drummond (n.4) has offered to emancipate us from this sort ofthing with a relativist analytic; at 105-113, however, Cicero has been cut down from the constitutionalist hook only to be strung up again as a bourgeois oligarch (‘the greater the importance we attach to the current regime of property and power, the higher the probability that we will deem (the executions) to be justified’, at 107). And yet there are no clean class-politics, whether Marxian or Gracchan, available in this episode. The radical tribunes of the plebs of 63, i.e. all of them at the outset if Dio's language is pressed (37.25.3), including the known and proved activists T. Labienus and P. Servilius Rullus, were inactive from the 3rd to the 5th December—unless all, some, or one of them were at least ostentatious absentees from the Senate on the 5th (Cie, . Cat. 4.10)Google Scholar. Silenced by terrorism? Yet the tribune designate and known conspirator L. Calpurnius Bestia was allowed to take office (i.e. on 10th December), engage in noisy demonstration, and live on to mourn his associates in crime (Cie. Pro Sulla 31, with D.H. Berry (n.24) ad loc.; Sallust, Cat. 17.3Google Scholar; 43.1; Plutarch, Cie. 23.1Google Scholar). The future proponent of civil rights, P. Clodius, associated himself with Cicero at the time (Plutarch, Cie. 29.1Google Scholar), and the quaestor P. Vatinius is later accused of peculation back in 63, not politics (Cie, . In Vat. 12Google Scholar). Catiline and Lentulus went down in popularis legend, not as revolutionary champions, but as inoffensive members of their class until provoked beyond endurance by Cicero (Cie, . Philippics 2.17–18Google Scholar; 4.15; 8.15; ‘Q. Fufius Calenus’ at Dio 46.2.3,20.2). Is Drummond entitled to insist—without law, precedent or guidelines, under the terms of his own argument—on a minimum response? This will be strategically sound only if the original adequate response (i.e. measured by the public interest) remains an option if the minimum (i.e. observing the decencies of a civil society) does not work. That the effect of the executions on Catilinarian morale was immediate is express and credible (Sallust, Cat. 57.1Google Scholar; Plutarch, Cie. 22.8Google Scholar; Dio 37.38.1-2). For Cicero and Rome and Italy, the fallback position on any miscalculation was the reconquest of Italy by Pompey. Sallust saw this in retrospect (Cat. 39.411Google Scholar), Cicero and his opponents in advance. He was attacked immediately—and accurately—for depriving Pompey of this opportunity (Plutarch, Cato Minor 26.2Google Scholar with 29.1-2; cf. Cie. 23.4Google Scholar, where Cicero's oppression replaces Catiline as the reason for recalling Pompey as in the rhetoric, equally florid, of L. Manlius Torquatos the younger at Cie. Pro Sulla 21 on Cicero's regnum. Both Plutarch's versions refer circumstantially to a proposed law to confer a command in Italy on Pompey). To hearten Catiline's men and to bring Pompey home in force—is it for this that Lentulus’ life must be spared? Not in Sallust's considered view, but above all because Lentulus’ execution is just (Cat. 55.6)Google Scholar.

⁶³ Sallust's ethical propensity is a truism illuminated by Quintilian's comment on violation of genre in the Prefaces (Inst.Or. 3.8.9Google Scholar), and the interest in making politics applied ethics is shared with Cicero. But Cicero's enrichment of terminology is repudiated by Sallust, who prefers to manipulate an archaising vocabulary poetically. Had he read Lucretius? (Syme, R., Sallust 243, 260Google Scholar.)

⁶⁴ It is curious that following a four-part schema Cicero nearly excludes wisdom from Book 1, as he does courage from Book 2. In Book 1 wisdom is allocated two chapters (18-19), justice with liberality (its sometime companion, sometime antithesis) forty-one (20-60), courage (magnanimity) thirty-two (61-92) and temperance (decorum) fifty-nine (93-151). On Cicero's cavalier treatment of wisdom at 1.18-19 see Dyck, A.R., A Commentary on Cicero, De Officiis (Michigan 1996Google Scholar) ad loc. and especially 104 (first paragraph).

⁶⁵ At 1.18 wisdom is associated with and polluted by (1) arrogant certainty and at 1.19 by (2) the pursuit of recondite and useless studies. For the glory of virtue consists in action. Wisdom must be subordinated to the higher, because social, virtue of justice (1.155-157), endorsed at 2.34.

⁶⁶ At 1.62-63 courage not disciplined by social utility is merely audacity, as Plato says, and will lead to an ambition characterised at 64 as ‘nimia cupiditas principatus’ echoing Cicero's condemnation already at 26 of Caesar's criminality in pursuit of a falsely grounded ambition (‘… propter eum, quern sibi ipse opinionis errore finxerat, principatum’). Like wisdom, magnanimity must be subordinated to the truly social virtue of justice (1.157). It is under the heading of courage, the most inherently military of virtues—hence his (and Panaetius’) preference for a term of broader application magnitudo animi —that Cicero inserts a bold essay on the parity or superiority of civilian statesmanship over generalship (1.74-78), brilliantly concluded by Pompey's ‘confession’ that there must be, and by courtesy of Cicero's service to res publica there was, somewhere for him to hold his Triumph (78).

⁶⁷ The subordination of wisdom and courage to justice is placed in an essay on the ranking of the virtues (1.152-160). Even within the social virtue itself there is prioritisation: 1) the gods, 2) the fatherland, 3) parents (1.160; cf. 1.58). On the inadequacies of the excursus, see Dyck ad loc.; and yet these are due to the failure of Panaetius' guidance at this point, and Cicero's insertion of this patchy discussion is the measure of his commitment. In Book 2 justice will be extensively preferred to its corruptible associate, liberality: see especially the impassioned Chapters 78-84.

⁶⁸ Interfusion of decorum with all the virtues is immediately asserted at 1.94; it acts to produce what we now call class and style: “… cum specie quadam liberali’ (96); it individualises—Panaetius' Stoic revisionism is what attracts Cicero (109-114).

⁶⁹ Introducing decorum at 93, Cicero contrary to his usual, though not invariable, practice in De officiis gives the original Greek term. Panaetius' cultural agenda is also revealed by his restoration of the philosophical classics to full esteem. He revered Plato as the Homer of philosophers (Cie, . Tusculan Disp. 1.79Google Scholar—even the appreciation of Homer, elevated by what he elevates, is telling); and he replaced Stoic jargon with high style and constant recourse to Plato, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus and Dicaearchus, whom Cicero personally recommends en masse as canonical (Cie, . De finibus 4.79)Google Scholar. Panaetius was a man of taste, then, and Cicero's adaptation of the chapters on represents cultivation of a that already had Rome in view. For fuller discussion see Dyck ad loc., with discussion of Panaetius in the Introduction.

⁷⁰ Even the prime social virtue, justice, he claims, must yield to decorum (1.159). However, conflict between them is purely hypothetical. Posidonius’ extensive disagreement is honestly noted, but Cicero (with some lack of the decorum he desiderates in all circumstances!) passes rapidly by on the other side. Clearly, in a choice between being indecent and being flustered Cicero will opt for the latter, and his ethical choice here turns out to be a matter of temperament and upbringing.

⁷¹ Briefly on the evidences of this dialectic see Gelzer, M., Caesar Politician and Statesman, trans. Needham, P. (Oxford 1968) 299–304Google Scholar, and with fuller articulation, Meyer, EduardCaesars Monarchie und das Principai des Pompeius, 3rd edn. (Stuttgart and Berlin 1922) 431–444Google Scholar. We can be, even with our best scholarly and intellectual efforts, only partly and dimly aware of what was fresh, and available for consultation, to Sallust's first readers.

⁷² These two chapters have been deconstructed by Batstone, W.W. ‘Incerta pro certis: an interpretation of Sallust Bellum Catilinae 48.4-49.4’, Ramus 15 (1986) 105–121Google Scholar, with a view to disclosing the tendentious historian at work on a very paradigm of anti-tendentious anarchy. By a mimesis of confusion in the historical participants Sallust produces, it is proposed, a willed obscurity in his account. Batstone's critical praxis enables him to brilliantly sideline Crassus and Caesar (twin dead weights on modem interpretation) and restore Cicero to centre-stage (112-113), but it will be my contention in this section that Sallust only registers darkness as part of a quest, indeed an offer, of illumination. The presumption that the chapters are about Caesar and Crassus rather than Cicero bedevils D.C. Earl's carefully reasoned but ultimately baffled discussion (The Political Thought of Sallust[Cambridge 1961] 83–5Google Scholar).

⁷³ 49.4 is a triumph of poetic economy: the equestrian force has a legitimate police function ‘praesidi causa’, whose public necessity is established in the immediately following sentences (50.1-2), where the gangleaders are represented as having a vested interest in public disorder: ‘…duces multitudinum, qui pretio rem publicam uexare soliti erant’ at 50.1 and as being approached to commit offences de ui: ‘grege facto’ in Sallust at 50.2 is the equivalent of ‘parare manum’ in the Lex Plautia (e.g. Cie, . Cat. 1.15Google Scholar; cf. Sallust, Cat. 31.4Google Scholar; Cie, . Sest. 84)Google Scholar; ‘cum telis ad sese inrumperent’ seems to combine ‘being cum telo in a public place’ with ‘uim adferre to the public authorities’ (n.32). In such a situation the competitive public zeal of the ad hoc police force ‘… quo studium suom in rem publicam clarius esset’ (49.4) is not laudable in so far as it is produced by animi mobilitas rather than constantia and has precisely the same deleterious effect on public order (violence against Caesar) as the operations of the gang leaders (to rescue the arrested conspirators) likewise condemned by Sallust (n.48).

⁷⁴ Note also Polybius' statement of the overall public responsibility of the consuls at 6.12.1:

⁷⁵ Suetonius, Julius 8 and 9.3Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Let it suffice briefly to attest each: 1) Crassus' flattery in the Senate in February 61 is recognised as tactical (Ad Atticum 1.14.3Google Scholar: he outbids Pompey) but is still accepted at full face value by Cicero (ibid. 4): ‘hie dies me ualde Crasso adiunxit …’. 2) Cicero's apparent swing from opposition to support of C. Manilius at the end of 66 shows a responsiveness to pressure amounting to leuitas (Plutarch, Cicero 9.4–7Google Scholar; Dio 36.43.4-44.2). There were other similar cases. 3) Cicero's ranking of useful contacts is revealed frankly to Atticus (1.1.3-4): Atticus' uncle Q. Caecilius must yield place to the powerful and combative nobleman L. Dominus Ahenobarbus, Cicero's strongest backer. And Cicero's public courtship of Pompey the Great throughout Pro lege Manilio (27-50) is evidenced best of all, perhaps, in the long sentence in 70 in which any such design to ingratiate himself is solemnly repudiated: ‘testorque omnes deos … me hoc neque rogatu faceré cuiusquam, neque quo Cn. Pompei gratiam mihi per hanc causam conciliari putem …’.4) Finally, there is the lamentable episode of P. Sulla's loan to his defence-counsel Cicero (Aulus Gellius 12,12; cf. Pseudo-Sallust (n.2) Inv. in Cic. 2.3Google Scholar), common enough practice, though the scale of this transaction seems huge. (For a defence of Cicero's conduct as not corrupt see D.H. Berry [n.24] 39-42.) Sallust's readers knew Cicero's track-record, in view of which neque precibus neque gratia neque pretio …’ at 49.1 must have resonated as something more than a cumulative rhetoric of imperviousness to temptation.

⁷⁷ ‘Pompey and the Pisones’, Calif. Studies in Classical Antiquity 1 (1968) 156–7Google Scholar, though the agnomen ‘Frugi’ is never attested of the consul of 67.

⁷⁸ Att. 1.1.2Google Scholar

⁷⁹ On the evidence, briefly, Crawford, Jane W., M. Tullius Cicero: The Lost and Unpublished Orations (Göttingen 1984) 77–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ Att. 1.20.3Google Scholar: since Catulus' death Cicero had pursued ‘uiam optimatem’ alone; In Pisonem 6 (‘… princeps huius ordinis et auctor publici consili …’); Pro Sestio 121 (Catulus is named honoris causa in contradistinction to the many other senators who glorified Cicero; at Pro Caelio 59 the dying Q. Metelius Celer names Catulus, Cicero and res publica together. Sallust and his readers were aware of Catulus' moral standing and Cicero's reverence for him. Both the standing of the one and the reverence of the other are implicitly questioned here by Sallust.

⁸¹ Cicero In Pisonem 6; alternatively pater patriae at Pro Sestio 121, but in a context where an audience is turning an apostrophe to a pater into an echo of current politics (as so often in the Roman theatre).

⁸² Asconius p. 83 C

⁸³ Whatever the nature of relations between Crassus and Caesar and Catiline in the latter months of 63, so frequently a subject of speculation, a refusal to support Catiline's consular campaign in 63 would have been so public an abandonment by his two chief backers from 64 that a rupture of amicitia would have been inevitable. But at least in Crassus' case, we find Plutarch (Cicero 15.3Google Scholar) ascribing suspicions of complicity precisely to his friendship with Catiline (… ). Caesar could hardly have been less steadfast than Crassus. And yet each could have been less zealous for Catiline in canvassing and organisation. Catiline's outburst recorded at Pro Murena 50 that the only faithful defender of the miseri was one who was himself miser and that the promises of the integri and fortunati could not be trusted must refer to something: neither Crassus nor even the indebted Caesar could count as miseri in 63 (though the wealthy but disgraced P. Sulla probably could). Such possible rifts in the old coalition of 64 were limited comfort for Cicero, and in December 63 he must still tread carefully. None of the inevitable political and tactical calculations of Cicero at this time, however, are registered in Sallust's moral paradigm of the just man in office acting justly toward Caesar, and either justly or in the public interest toward Crassus.

⁸⁴ At 48.5: ‘… alii rem incredibilem rati, pars tametsi uerum existumabant, tarnen quia in tali tempore tanta uis hominis magis leniunda quam exagitanda uidebatur, plerique Crasso exnegotiispriuatis obnoxii …’

⁸⁵ At 15.2 Sallust acknowledges that the alleged murder by Catiline of his own son is not established fact (‘… pro certo creditor …’), but goes on to factor it into Catiline's psychological motivation for a war on society nevertheless. In the same way the historian's uncertainty about Crassus’ precise deeds does not affect his confidence that he understands Crassus’ motivations.

⁸⁶ That there is a link between Chapters 18 and 19 in Sallust's Catiline and Asconius’ Commentary on In toga candida combined with the fact that Asconius cites De consiliis suis at 83 C constitutes a prima facie case for the influence of De consiliis suis on at least part of Sallust's narrative. This cannot be pursued in the present context.

⁸⁷ Cicero's public responses throw light on Antony's line of approach: at Philippics 2.14Google Scholar Antony is accused of taking Lentulus as his model (rather than his excellent uncle L. Caesar). This may be hyperbole; the following at 2.18 is not: Antony did not consider it a blunder to remind the Roman world that he had been raised in his step-father's house and, therefore, that the connection was an honour to him. Cicero responds to Antony's attack on his consulate at 2.15-17 and emphasises the confessions, evidence and handwriting that convicted the arrested conspirators of whom Lentulus was senior and chief. (Cf. “Q. Fufius Calenus” speech at Dio 46.2.3,20.2, where Lentulus is not only unconstitutionally executed but not guilty of wrongdoing: ‘……’.)

⁸⁸ P. Lentulus suffect consul 162: prosecutor of the corrupt M'. Aquillius, consul 129 (Cie, . Div. in Caec. 69Google Scholar); vindicator of and martyr to res publica and the senatus consultum ultimum against C. Gracchus (Cie, . Cat. 3.10Google Scholar; Valerius Maximus 5.3.2 f.); of the strictest financial probity (Granius Licinianus Bk. 28 [9 Flemisch]).

⁸⁹ Lentulus' voice and deportment were not equalled by intellect (Cie, . Brutus 235Google Scholar); his insolence is strikingly illuminated by a cheeky retort to the dictator Sulla which earned him his agnomen ‘Sura’ (Plutarch, Cicero 17.2–4Google Scholar) and by the gob of spit he flung into Cato's face (Seneca, De ira 3.38.2Google Scholar). This and (perhaps many) other offences against decorum are only alluded to by Sallust in the single word ‘moribus’ at 55.6, but listed generically in the speech attributed to Cato, victim of the above face to face encounter with Lentulus, at 52.32: sexual immorality, discredit (a reference to the infamia of his expulsion from the Senate in 70?), and irreligion (perhaps shameful involvement in the trial of the Vestal Virgins in 73 to which Lentulus himself alludes [Cie, . Cat. 3.9Google Scholar]?), all compendiously in the words ‘… si ipse pudicitiae, si famae suae, si dis aut hominibus umquam ullis pepercit’.

⁹⁰ ‘… dignum moribus factisque suis exitum inuenit’ (55.6)Google Scholar.

⁹¹ On the burning of the Capitol in 83 see Plutarch, Sulla 27.6Google Scholar; Appian, BC 1.83Google Scholar; and on Lentulus as being (with Cethegus) virtually independent leader and firebrand, Plutarch, Cato Minor 22.2Google Scholar.

⁹² Asconius p. 1C: ‘L. Iulio C. Marcio consulibus … senatus consulto collegia sublata sunt quae adversus rem publicam uidebantur esse constituta’. The magistri collegiorum were thus deposed and no longer allowed (from 64 until Clodius' legislation in 58 B.C.) to give annual ludi Compitalicii in magisterial garb. The Senate's initiative deprived the populace of a venue for festivities, dissent, disorder and riot.

⁹³ Clearly in rebuttal of the Antonian propaganda alleging Cicero's wanton abuse of power, including an unseemly refusal to return Lentulus' body for burial: ‘Ad sepulturam corpus uitrici sui negat a me datum’ (Philippics 2.17Google Scholar), vehemently denied by Cicero. (Cf. Dio 46.20.3 where ‘Fufius’ accuses Cicero of denying Lentulus all established [] privileges great and small.)

⁹⁴ This most Panaetian of virtues covered in Chapters 93 to 151 is given not much less space than the other virtues put together (n.64). Under this heading at 124 the magistrate is to understand that his function is public and that he receives it as a trust (‘… ea fidei suae commisse …’). The similar concept of guardianship has appeared at 85: ‘Ut enim tutela, sic procuratio rei publicae Not far distant is the Sallustian concept of the consulate of Cicero (and Marius') as a mandate (Cat. 23.5Google Scholar; Jug. 73.7Google Scholar). Most telling of all in the present context and introduced as a vital modifier of undiluted courage or magnanimity is Cicero's insistence on the avoidance of personal humiliation in punishment, which must be kept within the limits of public utility: ‘Omnis autem et animaduersio et castigatio contumelia uacare debet… sed ad rei publicae utilitatem referri’ (Off. 1.88Google Scholar).

⁹⁵ This will be discussed in ‘Sallust and the Cardinal Virtues’ (n.2). Since statesmanship is not expressly evaluated in the synkrisis, it has been inferred into the chapter by various expedients, whether on Caesar's behalf by Schwartz (n.17) and by Hugh Last (‘Sallust and Caesar in the “Bellum Catilinae”‘ in Mélanges de philologie, de littérature et d'histoire anciennes offerts à J. Marouzeau, 1948, 355–369Google Scholar) or on Cato's behalf by Syme (n.1) at Chapter 8, especially 115-120, and since Syme by the current majority. Syme's suggestion of putting Sallust's Caesar and Cato together to get one statesman has also found favour in some quarters. It has at least the merit of showing the actual inadequacy of each of the contenders.

⁹⁶ Seneca the Rhetor is the prime location of this dialectic, as we may term it, for there was more going on than technical rhetorical strategies. It is noteworthy that in spite of much evidence that C. Asinius Pollio was indeed ‘infestissimus famae Ciceronis’ (Sen, . Suas. 6.14Google Scholar), Pollio's historical evaluation of Cicero (ibid. 24) is complex and nuanced as is Livy's broadly favourable assessment (ibid. 22). Pollio is discussed perceptively and with due caution at 129-153 in the context of a fine reconsideration of this whole subject by Andrew Wright in his as yet unpublished University of Sydney Ph.D. dissertation, Cicero Reflected: The Image of a Statesman in the Century after his Death, and its Ideological Significance, 1997.

⁹⁷ Plutarch, Cato Minor 72Google Scholar; Caesar 54 may not be mere posturing on Caesar's part: the Caesarian De Bello Africo concedes Cato a superior humanity and integrity (87.7; 88.5), and the dictator permitted eulogies of him to be published. Nevertheless, Caesar in his own person never grants Cato any moral standing (De bello civili 1.4.1Google Scholar, 32.3; Amicato apud Plutarch Cato Minor 11.4Google Scholar; 36.3; 52.4; Aulus Gellius 4.16.8; Pliny, Epp. 3.12.2–3Google Scholar; cf. Plut, . Cato Min. 6.1–2Google Scholar?). The pictorial display of Cato's suicide in Caesar's Triumph (Appian, B.C. 2.101Google Scholar) can only rest on the construction of him as a public enemy in the service of Juba.

⁹⁸ Cicero's execution was of course a public act of all the Triumvirs and was, as it were, in the first batch (Appian, B.C. 4.6Google Scholar). Octavian's alleged reluctance in contradistinction to Antony's savagery looks like a whitewash (Plutarch, Cie. 46.5Google Scholar; Dio 47.8.1), and yet even Suetonius following a source that makes Octavian the most persistent in atrocity acknowledges an initial reluctance on Octavian's part (Aug. 27.1Google Scholar). That the more focused and ‘legal’ procedure under the lex Pedia was Octavian's preferred method need not be doubted (Res gestae div. Aug. 2: ‘Qui parentem meum trucidaverunt, eos in exilium expuli iudiciis legitimis ultus eorum facinus …’; cf. n.4, and F. Hinard's discussion of the legal and political relationship between the lex Pedia and the Proscriptions at Les proscriptions de la Rome républicaine [Rome 1985] 293-300, 312–318)Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Cicero's distinction between the shortcomings of Pompey and Caesar is sometimes tellingly in abeyance: on occasion they are equated as would-be tyrants (dominatio, regnare are the terms) by contrast with Cicero's ideal moderator rei publicae presented in De re publica (Att. 8.11.1–2Google Scholar). The repentant politician Sallust would applaud. Each of the great men was more concerned with the ends of the earth than with Rome and its future as a civil society.