SALLUSTIUS (Caius Crispus), a celebrated Roman historian, was born at Amiternum, a city of Italy, in the year of Rome 669, and before Christ 85. His education was liberal, and he made the best use of it; of which we need no other proof, than those valuable historical monuments of his, that are happily transmitted to us among the few remains of antiquity. No man has inveighed more sharply against the vices of his age than this historian; yet no man had less pretensions to virtue than he. His youth was spent in a most lewd and profligate manner; and his patrimony almost squandered away, when he had scarcely taken possession of it. Marcus Varro, a writer of undoubted credit, relates, in a fragment preserved by Aulus Gellius, that Sallust was actually caught in bed with Fausta the daughter of Sulla, by Milo her husband; who scourged him very severely, and did not suffer him to depart till he had redeemed his liberty with a considerable sum. A. U. C. 694, he was made questor, and in 702 tribune of the people; in neither of which places is he allowed to have acquitted himself at all to his honour. By virtue of his questorship, he obtained an admission into the senate; but was expelled thence by the censors in 704, on account of his immoral and debauched way of life. In the year 705 Cæsar restored him to the dignity of a senator; and to introduce him into the house with a better grace, made him questor a second time. In the administration of this office he behaved himself very scandalously; exposed every thing to sale that he could find a purchaser for; and if we may believe the author of the invective, thought nothing wrong which he had a mind to do: Nihil non venale habuerit, cujus aliquis emptor fuit, nihil non æquum
aquum et verum duxit, quod ipsi facere collibuisse. In the year 707, when the African war was at an end, he was made praetor for his services to Cæsar, and sent to Numidia. Here he acted the same part as Verres had done in Sicily; outrageously plundered the province; and returned with such immense riches to Rome, that he purchased a most magnificent building upon mount Quirinal, with those gardens which to this day retain the name of Sallustian gardens, besides his country house at Tivoli. How he spent the remaining part of his life, we have no account from ancient writers. Eusebius tells us, that he married Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero; and that he died at the age of 50, in the year 710, which was about four years before the battle of Actium. Of the many things which he wrote, we have nothing remaining but his Histories of the Catilinarian and Jugurthine wars; together with some orations or speeches, printed with his fragments.