The Commentaries of Caesar have been compared with the work of the great soldier-historian of Greece, Xenophon. Both are eminently simple and unaffected, but there the parallel ends. The severe contempt of ornament, which characterizes the stern Roman, is totally unlike the mellifluous sweetness of the Attic writer.
Sallust (85-35 B.C.) was born of a plebeian family, but, having filled the offices of tribune and quaestor, attained senatorial rank. He was expelled from the Senate for his profligacy, but restored again to his rank through the influence of Caesar, whose party he espoused. He accompanied his patron in the African war, and was made governor of Numidia. While in that capacity, he accumulated by rapacity and extortion enormous wealth, which he lavished in expensive but tasteful luxury. The gardens on the Quirinal which bore his name were celebrated for their beauty; and there, surrounded by the choicest works of art, he devoted his retirement to composing the historical records which survived him. As a politician, he was a mere partisan of Caesar, and therefore a strenuous opponent of the higher classes and of the supporters of Pompey. The object of his hatred was not the old patrician blood of Rome, but the new aristocracy, which had of late years been rapidly rising up and displacing it. That new nobility was utterly corrupt, and its corruption was encouraged by the venality of the masses, whose poverty and destitution tempted them to be the tools of unscrupulous ambition. Sallust strove to place that party in the unfavorable light which it deserved; but, notwithstanding the truthfulness of the picture which he draws, selfishness and not patriotism was the mainspring of his politics; he was not an honest champion of popular rights, but a vain and conceited man, who lived in an immoral and corrupt age, and had not the strength of principle to resist the force of example and temptation. If, however, we make some allowance for the political bias of Sallust, his histories have not only the charms of the historical romance, but are also valuable political studies. His characters are vigorously and naturally drawn, and the more his histories are read, the more obvious it is that he always writes with an object, and uses his facts as the means of enforcing a great political lesson.