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Sallust's Jugurtha: An ‘Historical Fragment’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

D. S. Levene
D. S. Levene
Affiliation:
Brasenose College, Oxford
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Extract

The ancient historian is used to dealing with texts that are fragments through the accident of transmission. This paper is concerned with a deliberate fragment: a work that is notionally complete, in that it is written and presented as something finished and whole, but which at the same time draws the reader's attention in a more or less systematic fashion to the fact that it is incomplete; it shows itself to be only part of the whole. The mode was especially popular in the Romantic period; the best-known example for English readers is Coleridge's Kubla Khan, but it also revealed itself in such diverse forms as the aphoristic writings of thinkers like Friedrich Schlegel, or the widespread admiration of the ruins of ancient buildings. I intend to argue that Sallust's Jugurtha is a work of this sort.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 82 , November 1992 , pp. 53 - 70
Copyright
Copyright ©D. S. Levene 1992. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 On the relationship between Schlegel's aphoristic form and his theory of the narrative fragment, see H. Gockel, ‘Friedrich Schlegels Theorie des Fragments’, in Ribbat, E. (ed.), Romantik (1979), 22–37Google Scholar; Eichner, H., Friedrich Schlegel (1970), 47–8Google Scholar.

2 See McFarland, T., Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin (1981), 25Google Scholar. Compare Schlegel's aphorism: ‘Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many modern works are already so when they are created’ (Athenäums–Fragmente 25).

3 The essential modern discussion of closure is Smith, B. H., Poetic Closure (1968)Google Scholar; while for ancient texts see above all D. P. Fowler, ‘First thoughts on closure: problems and prospects’, MD 22 (1989), 75–122, which also has a substantial bibliography.

4 Smith, op. cit. (n. 3), 211; Fowler, op. cit. (n. 3), 80.

5 Torgovnick, M., Closure in the Novel (1981), 13Google Scholar calls this a ‘tangential ending’. Cf. also Smith, op. cit. (n. 3), 120.

6 Propertius IV. 6.66, Livy, Per. 67, Valerius Maximus VI. 9.14, Plutarch, Marius 12. 3–4; cf. CIL 12. 1 p. 195.

7 See below, Section V.

8 cf. Smith, op. cit. (n. 3), 1–2; Kuzniar, A. A., Delayed Endings (1987), 3Google Scholar.

9 Scanlon, T. F., Spes Frustrata (1987), 61Google Scholar.

10 It is perhaps also relevant that Sallust refers to Gauls here, when Marius was in fact due to fight the Cimbri, who were Germans. The terminology should be used loosely (Paul, G. M., A Historical Commentary on Sallust's Bellum Jugurthinum (1984), 257Google Scholar); at the same time, the inexactitude serves a purpose, as there was a longer history of Romans fighting Gauls, up to and including Caesar's recent conquest. The end thus refers all the more clearly to the wider pattern of Roman history. The ‘gloria’ contrast also needs Gauls, since only they, and not the Germans, could be plausibly presented as the ‘real enemy’.

11 cf. Smith, op. cit. (n. 3), 120.

12 idem, 101–2, 172–82.

13 idem, 196–210.

14 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 3), 122 n. 166.

15 On the theme in general, cf. Herkommer, E., Die Topoi in den Proömien der römischen Geschichtswerke, unpub. dissertation, Tübingen (1968), 164–71Google Scholar.

16 Cat. 4.4: ‘That crime I consider among the most memorable because the evil and the danger were unprecedented.’ Cf. Cat. 36.4: ‘At that time the Roman Empire seemed to me far and away at its most wretched.’

17 Thucydides e.g. 1.1. 1–2, 1.21.2, 1.23.1. On Thucydides as a model for Sallust in general, see P. Perrochat, Les modèles grecs de Salluste (1949), ch. 1; T. F. Scanlon, The Influence of Thucydides on Sallust (1980).

18 Note in particular Livy XXI. 1. 1: ‘I can begin a part of my work by saying what most historians have proclaimed at the start of the whole: that I am about to describe the war that is the most memorable of all that have ever been fought.’ Livy clearly regards this way of introducing one's story as standard to the point of cliché.

19 Woodman, A. J., Rhetoric in Classical Historiography (1988), 167–8Google Scholar.

20 Florus 1.36.2: ‘And in Jugurtha the Romans had the one thing that was to be feared after Hannibal.’

21 I assume here what is still occasionally denied: that the preface is not intended to be unrelated to the narrative, but is there to govern the way in which we are to read the work. For various defences of this position, see F. Egermann, ‘Die Proömien zu den Werken des Sallust’, SAWW 214.3 (1932), 16–23; M. Rambaud, ‘Les prologues de Salluste et la démonstration morale dans son oeuvre’, REL 24 (1946), 115–30; La Penna, A., Sallustio e la ‘rivoluzione’ romana (1968), 16–18Google Scholar. Earl, D. C., The Political Thought of Sallust (1961), chs 1, 3–5Google Scholar, shows more generally the continuity of ideas between the preface and the body of the work.

22 Leeman, A. D., Mnemosyne 8 (1955), 46–7;Google ScholarLefèvre, E., Gymnasium 86 (1979), 257–8Google Scholar.

23 There is, of course, a little historical background at the start (BJ 5.4–7), but it is very brief, and moreover focuses closely on providing the information necessary for us to understand the personal background of Jugurtha, with whom the narrative begins.

24 See K. von Fritz, TAPhA 74 (1943), 140–2; also Paul, op. cit. (n. 10), 40–2, though his attempt to save Sallust's historicity is implausible.25Koestermann, E., C. Sallustius Crispus Bellum Iugurthinum (1971), 97Google Scholar.

26 We may compare the topos of ‘more later’, which similarly draws attention to the fact that there are topics not covered by the current work. Cf. C. W. Macleod, CR 24 (1974), 294; Woodman, A. J., Velleius Paterculus: The Tiberian Narrative (1977), 108Google Scholar; also Woodman, CQ 25 (1975), 287, who refers to this as a ‘conventional method of relegating or omitting material that is unwanted for one reason or another’.

27 cf. Scanlon, T. F., Ramus 17 (1988), 141–3Google Scholar.

28 So too Thucydides usually introduces speeches with τοιάδε: cf. Hornblower, S., Thucydides (1987), 53–4Google Scholar.

29 e.g. Syme, R., Sallust (1964), 177Google Scholar; Koestermann, op. cit. (n. 25), 33–4, 339.

30 Histories 1.24–53, 58–61.

31 There are probably no more than a couple of words missing: Shackleton-Bailey, D. R., Mnemosyne 34 (1981), 355–6Google Scholar, suggests ‘erga suos humanus’.32Plutarch, Sulla 6 and 35–6; cf. Sallust, Histories 1.60–1. Paul, op. cit. (n. 10), 236, claims that ‘uxore’ is a generic singular, and hence means ‘wives’. This looks like wishful thinking; such a generic singular in such a context would be unparalleled in classical Latin. It is especially improbable in an author who only very rarely uses generic singulars in any context (Leumann–Hofmann–Szantyr, , Lateinische Grammatik II (1965), 13)Google Scholar.

33 No fewer than twenty of the surviving fragments of the Histories (1. 32–51) cover the last stages of the Civil War and Sulla's dictatorship. Cf. the attack on Sulla's dictatorship in Lepidus' speech (1.55), and also Augustine, CD 11.18, ‘Sallust then says more about the vices of Sulla’, and CD 11.22, ‘Who would not shudder when reading Sallust's account of the life, morals, and deeds of Sulla?’.

34 Paul, op. cit. (n. 10), 29.

35 This is denied by K. Vretska, ‘Studien zu Sallusts Bellum Iugurthinum’, SAWW 229.4 (1955) 29–30, who regards Micipsa's fears as Sallust's indirect characterization of Jugurtha. However, Vretska relies on the false assumption that the ancients could not conceive of a genuinely changing character, and hence that Sallust must be presenting Jugurtha as vicious from the start; against this see C. Gill, ‘The question of character-development: Plutarch and Tacitus’, CQ 33 (1983), 469–87. Moreover, to attribute Micipsa's views uncritically to the author is to overlook the implicit irony: not only do his ideas conflict with the tenor of the context, but at the same moment as he fears treachery in another, he is displaying it in himself (6.3–7.2).

36 Vretska, op. cit. (n. 35), 94–5 claims, somewhat perversely, that the fact that Metellus is said to be the opponent of ‘populi partium’, not ‘populi’, shows that he is free of party strife, and hence that he is being praised here; but see Steidle, W., Sallusts historische Monographien: Themenwahl und Geschichtsbild, Historia Einzelschnften III (1958), 67–8Google Scholar.

37 Koestermann, op. cit. (n. 25), 189.

38 Though, unlike Plutarch, Sallust does not suggest that Turpilius was really innocent, and he has earlier harshly criticized him for his escape (67.3).

39 Lefèvre, op. cit. (n. 22), 266–8.

40 cf., e.g., Cat. 11.5: ‘loca amoena, voluptaria facile in otio ferocis militum animos molliverant.’

41 cf. Cicero, Tusc. 4.16: ‘invidentiam esse dicunt aegntudinem susceptam propter alterius res secundas, quae nihil noceant invidenti.’

42 Cicero, Red. 25; Quir. 9; Dom. 82; Sest. 37, 130; Pls. 20; Balb. 11; Planc. 89. Also Velleius 11.15.3–4; Valerius Maximus III.8.4; Seneca, Ep. XXIV.4; Floras 11.4.3; Plutarch, Marius 28–9; Appian. BC 1.29–32.

43 Scanlon, op. cit. (n. 9), 55–7.

44 The juxtaposition of Marius' fortuna with Sulla's is observed by Avery, H. C., ‘Marius Felix (Sallust, Jug. 92–94)’, Hermes 95 (1967), 324–30Google Scholar; however, he does not examine it in the light of Sallust's earlier discussion of fortuna, and so misses its significance.

45 In addition to what I have discussed above, on the Metellus/Marius comparison, see Scanlon, T. F., Spes Frustrata (1987), 53–5, 58Google Scholar, and Ramus 17 (1988), 144–51, 153–61Google Scholar; on Marius/Sulla see Scanlon, Spes Frustrata, 57–8 and Ramus 17 (1988), 151–3Google Scholar.

46 Büchner, K., Sallust (2nd edn, 1982), 202–4Google Scholar.

47 Paul, op. cit. (n. 10), 99 observes that the language of Memmius' speech is rather more violent than the actual positions set out in it would seem to warrant.

48 Liyy, Per. 64, Floras 1.36.18, Appian, Num. 1, Augustine, Ep. 138.16, Orosius V.15.5.

49 Floras 1.36.18 gives us an idea of how Sallust could have shown Jugurtha up as misguided here, had he wanted to; after quoting Jugurtha, he comments: ‘Now, had it been for sale, it had a buyer; but when it had escaped him, it was certain that it was not about to perish.’

50 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 3), 78.

51 Abrams, M. H., Natural Supernaturalism (1971), 141–95Google Scholar; McFarland, op. cit. (n. 2), 337–9.

52 McFarland, op. cit. (n. 2), 50. More generally, McFarland, 50–4, discusses the connection (and the consequent tension) between fragments and a desire for wholeness. Cf. also Kuzniar, op. cit. (n. 8), 48–9.

53 See Kuzniar, op. cit. (n. 8), 4, 48–67.

54 For example, Abrams, op. cit. (n.51), 100–1, 123, 141–95, 209–14, argues that the Romantics' interest in fragments had a theological origin, and was connected with the idea of the fragmentation of an Edenic unity. No such dimension is apparent in Sallust.

55 The Histories, too, seem to have had their main historical digression near the start (1.11–12).

56 e.g. P. McGushin, C. Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Catilinae: A Commentary (1977), 289; but cf. Wheeldon, M. J. in Cameron, A. M. (ed.), History as Text (1989), 54–5Google Scholar.

57 Cat. 51.5–6; cf. also 51.32–4.

58 Cat. 52.30–1.

59 Cat. 51.37–42; 52.19–23.

60 Ep. Pomp. 3.14; cf. 3.4, 3.8.

61 cf. Lateiner, D., The Historical Method of Herodotus (1989), 44–50Google Scholar.

62 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 3), 117.

63 The Content of the Form (1987), 1–25Google Scholar.

64 See Woodman, A. J. in Seldon, A. (ed.), Contemporary History: Practice and Method (1988), 152–4Google Scholar.

65 Fowler, op. cit. (n. 3), 116, seems to deny this. However, his one counter example, Plutarch, Antony, where the subject dies well before the end, is not a good one: uniquely, Plutarch turns the Life in effect into a double biography of Antony and Cleopatra together, and their joint lives now provide the limits. On differences and similarities between biography and history, cf. Moles, J. L., Plutarch: The Life of Cicero (1988), 32–4Google Scholar.

66 cf. Pelling, C. B. R., Plutarch: Life of Antony (1988), 323–5Google Scholar.

67 idem., quoting J. L. Moles.

68 Indeed, other literature of the period, while not ‘fragmentary’ by our definition, shows an interest in patterns of Roman decline: for example, Horace, , Epodes VII, XVI.1–14Google Scholar, Virgil, Georgics 1.501–14.

69 See Kuzniar, op. cit. (n. 8), 16–21.

70 White, op. cit. (n. 63), 3, cf. 13–14.

71 T. J. Luce, ‘The dating of Livy's first decade’, TAPhA 96 (1965), 209–40; Woodman, op. cit. (n. 19), 128–35.

72 See G. B. Townend, ‘The unstated climax to Catullus 64’, G & R 30 (1983), 21–30.

73 von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, U., ‘Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukoliker’, Philologische Untersuchungen 18 (1906), 100–1Google Scholar, in fact claims that the Europa is genuinely incomplete, and that the aetiology would have appeared in the missing conclusion, but see Bühler, W., Die Europa des Moschos, Hermes Einzelschriften XIII (1960), 201–3Google Scholar; Hopkinson, N., A Hellenistic Anthology (1988), 214–15Google Scholar.

74 History and poetry frequently fertilized one another: apart, obviously, from historical poems, such as those of Ennius, Naevius, and Lucan, there were the ‘tragic historians’ criticized by Polybius (e.g. 11.56). For a discussion of this controversial issue, and more generally of the use of ‘poetic’ emotions and sensationalism in history (on which such borrowings from verse are usually held to centre), see e.g. Fornara, C. W., The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (1983), 120–34Google Scholar. It is claimed by Reitzenstein, R., Hellenistische Wundererzählungen (1906), 84–90Google Scholar (see also B. L. Ullmann, TAPhA 73 (1942), 42–53), that monographs were less bound by requirements of accuracy, and hence were especially likely to show poetic influence; but against this see La Penna, op. cit. (n. 21), 312–20. On Sallust's use of these ‘poetic’ techniques see e.g. Vretska, op. cit. (n. 35), 146–58.