Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-8r8nv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-10T04:55:06.720Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Sallust's Catiline and Cato the Censor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

D. S. Levene*
Affiliation:
University of Durham, D.S.Levene@durham.ac.uk

Extract

That Sallust owed a considerable debt to the writings of Cato the Censor was observed in antiquity, and the observation has often been discussed and expanded on by modern scholars. The ancient references to Sallust's employment of Cato are mainly in the context of his adoption of an archaic style, and specifically Catonian vocabulary. But the choice of Cato as a model had an obvious significance that went beyond the purely stylistic. Sallust's works articulate extreme pessimism at the moral state of late-Republican Rome, and do so partly by contrasting the modern age with a prelapsarian time of near-untrammelled virtue, brought to an end only by the fall of Carthage and the consequent dominance of Roman power, which in turn led to moral corruption. Similarly, Cato famously stood in his own day for moral rectitude—and specifically appealed to past virtue as the standard to which he wished to hold his contemporaries. Sallust, by writing in a Catonian style, aligns himself with that tradition.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable