ABSTRACT
Shortly after Cicero’s murder in 43 BC, Sallust began his career as a historian by publishing the Bellum Catilinae, a monograph on the Catilinarian conspiracy of 63 BC.1 He followed this with the Bellum Iugurthinum, a monograph on the Jugurthine War of 118-105 BC, and finally with the Histories, a full-length account of the years 78 to perhaps 40 BC.2 In these works Sallust amply fulfilled the requirements for ‘nature of content’ (rerum ratio) which Cicero had put into the mouth of Antonius in the De Oratore some fifteen or so years earlier (above, pp. 78-80, 836). Cicero had asked for topographical descriptions: Sallust gives a description of Africa in BJ and of the Black Sea in H.3 Cicero had required that the historian should reveal in what manner things were said: Sallust puts speeches into the mouths of the various personages in all three works.4 Cicero had asked for biographical and character sketches of any famous protagonists: Sallust obliges in each monograph, while he introduces the convention of the obituary notice in H.5 Yet if Sallust thus followed Cicero as far as the nature of his content was concerned, he signally failed to do so in the other major area which Cicero had emphasised: the ‘nature of style’ (uerborum ratio).
