Sallust's catiline and Cato the Censor

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 50, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 170-191

  Levene, D S ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 35348991391     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/50.1.170     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. For example F. Deltour, De Sallustio Catonis imitatore (dissertation, Paris, 1859);
2. G. Bruennert, De Sallustio imitatore Catonis, Sisennae aliorumque yeterum historicorum Romanorum (dissertation, Jena, 1873);
3. A. Ernout, 'Salluste et Caton', Information Littéraire 1 (1949), 61-5;
4. E. Skard, Sallust und seine Vorgänger (Oslo, 1956), 75-107;
5. W Lebek, Verba Prisca (Göttingen, 1970), 291-335.
6. F. Egermann, 'Die Proōmien zu den Werken des Sallust', SAWW 214.3 (1932), 77-8;
7. D. C. Earl, The Political Thought of Sallust (Cambridge, 1961), 44-5.
8. See A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford, 1978), 100.
9. Examples include T. F. Scanlon, Spes Frustrata (Heidelberg, 1987);
10. W. W. Batstone, 'The antithesis of virtue: Sallust's Synkrisis and the crisis of the late Republic', Classical Antiquity 7 (1988), 1-29;
11. A. T. Wilkins, Villain or Hero: Sallust's Portrayal of Catiline (New York, 1994);
12. C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman, Latin Historians (Oxford, 1997), 10-50.
13. Cf. D. C. Earl, 'Prologue-form in ancient historiography', ANRW 1.2 (1972), 842-56.
14. Naturally, history is in fact covertly alluded to from the start, with, for example, the stress on the avoidance of 'silence' (1.1), and the importance allotted to 'memory' (1.3), but it is only in retrospect that their relevance to the genre of the work becomes apparent. On silentium in this passage, see A. J. Woodman, 'A note on Sallust, Catilina 1.1', CQ 23 (1973), 310.
15. Cf. A. D. Leeman, 'Sallusts Prologe und seine Auffassung von der Historiographie. I: Das Catilina-Proömien', Mnemosyne 7 (1954), 323-39, at 325-8.
16. More common are related phrases of the form beneficium in rem publicam: see J. Hellegouarc'h, Le Vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la république (Paris, 1963), 168, n. 11.
17. K. Vretska, C. Sallustius Crispus: De Catilinae Coniuratione (Heidelberg, 1976), 86.
18. Note the examples at E. Herkommer, Die Topoi in den Proömien der römischen Geschichtswerke (dissertation, Tubingen, 1968), 66-7.
19. M. Chassignet, Cato: Les Origines (Paris, 1986), xv-xvi. Chassignet (xvi) further suggests that capitulatim points to Cato's selectivity in deciding what to write; if so, it may be that carptim in Sallust likewise suggests a Catonian mode of writing.
20. and see J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), 139.
21. This is the usual interpretation of the sentence. J. Delz, 'Verachtete Sallust die Beschäftigung mit der Landwirtschaft?', MH 42 (1985), 168-73 argues that it should be translated 'nor even by agriculture or hunting to spend my life concentrating on the duties of slaves'. On this interpretation, Sallust is not directly referring to a landowner's engagement in agriculture as 'slave's work', but is simply saying that one who does engage in it spends an excessive amount of time supervising slaves. However, even on Delz's interpretation Sallust's rejection of the Catonian lifestyle, while couched in less directly dismissive language, is still sufficiently remarkable to require comment.
22. Various explanations have been canvassed: for example, Egermann (n. 4), 78 sees it as an example of Sallust drawing on Plato (but that in itself seems to be something that requires explanation in the light of the apparent contradiction with the ethos established elsewhere in the section). R. Syme, Sallust (Berkeley, 1964), 45-6 suggested that it was only modern agriculture to which Sallust objected, and hypothesized that there might be a response to the praise of agriculture put by Cicero into the mouth of Cato in De Senectute 51-60.
23. Cf. A. D. Leeman, 'Formen sallustianischer Geschichtsschreibung', Gymnasium 74 (1967), 108-15, at 111-13.
24. Cf. S. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (Cambridge, 1998), 34-47 for a discussion of how even standard topoi may in particular contexts shade into and incorporate very specific allusions to earlier texts that employed them.
25. Pliny, Natural History 8.11.
26. Cf. A. La Penna, Sallustio e la 'rivoluzione' romana (Milan, 1968), 118.
27. Commentators (e.g. P. McGushin, C. Sallustius Crispus Bellum Catilinae: A Commentary [Leiden, 1977], 85) sometimes refer it also to the son of the dictator Postumius, who (allegedly) was similarly executed by his father: see Diodorus Siculus 12.64.3; Livy 4.29.5;
28. That Sallust's readers would have linked the reference here to Manlius in particular is suggested by the pointed phrase contra imperium (on the use of the word imperium as a covert reference to Manlius, see R. G. M. Nisbet, 'Notes on Horace, Epistles 1', CQ 9 [1959], 73-7, at 73-4
29. It is even possible that the general sentiment was inspired by Cato, Origines fr. 82 ('imperator noster, si quis extra ordinem depugnatum ivit, ei multam facit', 'our general, if anyone goes outside the line to fight, fines him'), as suggested by W. Steidle, Sallusts historische Monographien: Themenwahl und Geschichtsbild (Wiesbaden, 1958), 7, n. 6. However, the specific situation envisaged in that fragment appears to be different, and the loss of its context makes any connection no more than a tentative possibility.
30. See O. Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 317;
31. D. H. Berry, Cicero: Pro Sulla (Cambridge, 1996), 201-2. A.
32. Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livy's History (Berkeley, 1998), 105-11 in a detailed study of Livy's treatment of the Manlius episode (8.7) argues that the narrative brings out a positive side as well as a negative one to Manlius' actions. Even Feldherr's analysis, however, emphasizes the inherent ambivalence of the episode, and moreover assumes that a Roman audience would in the first instance identify with the victim, and would be repelled by the consul's actions even as they learned a lesson from them.
33. See A. La Penna, 'Rapere, trahere: uno slogan di Catone contra i ladri di stato?', in S. Boldrini et al. (eds), Filologia e forme letterarie: studi offerti a Francesco delta Corte, vol. 2 (Urbino, 1987), 103-10 at 103-4.
34. G. Bonamente, 'Il "metus Punicus" e la decadenza di Roma in Sallustio, Agostino ed Orosio', GIF 21 (N.S. 6) (1975), 137-69 at 144-9.
35. See, however, B. Latta, 'Der Wandel im Sallusts Geschichtsauffassung vom Bellum Catilinae zum Bellum Iugurthinum', Maia 40 (1988), 271-88, who has a similar, but more nuanced position: he denies the relevance of metus hostilis (cf. also n. 43 below), but argues that fortuna does not represent an external irrational power, but the psychological irrationality which causes the Romans' moral collapse at the moment of their imperial success. Latta's position is thus not far from Heldmann's (notes 42 and 43 below), in that he accepts that Sallust is presenting a close (albeit not inevitable) connection between unchallenged power and moral decline (esp. pp. 274-5), but his analysis of the role of fortuna, and hence of the general causal sequence, is somewhat different.
36. See especially the careful argument of K. Heldmann, Sallust über die römische Weltherrscliaft (Stuttgart, 1993), 93-117, who relates the notion of fortuna in this passage to 2.5 'fortuna simul cum moribus immutatur' (108-9), arguing that it represents only the turn of events resulting from a change in Rome's morals, not an independent irrational force.
37. The earliest attestation of the story is in Diodorus 34.33.3-6; the original source is usually thought to have been Posidonius (e.g. U. Hackl, 'Poseidonios und das Jahr 146 v. Chr. als Epochendatum in der antiken Historiographie', Gymnasium 87 [1980], 151-66)
38. but it may go back to Rutilius Rufus (e, g. M. Gelzer, 'Nasicas Widerspruch gegen die Zerstörung Karthagos', Philologus 86 [1931], 261-99, at 270-2
39. = Kleine Schriften II [Wiesbaden, 1963], 39-72 at 47-9).
40. Its historicity is defended by Gelzer and attacked by W. Hoffmann, 'Die römische Politik des 2. Jahrhunderts und das Ende Karthagos', Historia 9 (1960), 309-44; but, in either case, the story must have been firmly established in the historical tradition by Sallust's day.
41. The phrase is, of course, also a direct imitation of Aeschylus, Septem 592: on the implications of the imitation see R. Renehan, 'A traditional pattern of imitation in Sallust and his sources', CPh 71 (1976), 97-105 at 97-9.
42. A. Drummond, Law. Politics and Power: Sallust and the Execution of the Catilinarian Conspirators (Stuttgart, 1995), 74.
43. On Cato and Vegetius, see N. P. Milner, Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science (Liverpool, 1993), xvii-xviii, 15.
44. On this allusive technique in Latin literature, see J. C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores. Text, Prolegomena and Commentary, vol. 1 (Liverpool, 1987), 37-45.
45. That Livy wrote Cato's speech in 34.2-4 in a style to resemble Cato is argued at great length by I. Paschkowski, Die Kunst der Reden in der 4. und 5. Dekade des Livius (Kiel, 1966), 107-25, 248-67;
46. cf. H. Tränkle, Cato in der vierten und fünften Dekade des Livius (Mainz, 1971), 11-16, who denies Paschowski's claim that the speech is stylistically Catonian, but argues that its arguments and themes are nevertheless derived from Cato's writings.
47. J. Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy Books XXXIV-XXXVII (Oxford, 1981), 40-2 is sceptical of the overall argument, but accepts some of the individual references (cf. also his notes on 34.2.13-3.3, 34.3.9, 34.4.2, 34.4.3, 34.4.14).
48. Cf. H. Bellen, Metus Gallicus - Metus Punicus; zum Furchtmotiv in der rōmischen Republik (Mainz, 1985), 31.
49. V. Pöschl, 'Die Reden Caesars und Cato in Sallusts "Catilina"', in V. Pöschl (ed.), Sallust, Wege der Forschung 94 (Darmstadt, 1970), 368-97 at 385;