An examination of the idealized image of Rome before 146 b.c. constructed in the Jugurtha (Jug.) reveals that despite the narrator's own stated opinions, his depiction of it is perverse and unhistorical. The narrator's value judgements are unappealing, his archaizing affected, his history plainly wrong: these are serious interpretative problems. Is this an attempt, as in the dialogues of Cicero, to re-educate the moral intuitions of his day by means of a fictitious past? Perhaps; but narratological analysis of the relevant sections suggests another solution, an extrapolation to the narratorial persona of the technique of ironic subversion used in the speeches. The key to understanding the depiction of Rome before 146 lies in the identification of political and historical discourse and the consequent extension to the latter of the factionalization characteristic of the former. The problematic aspects of the depiction of Rome before 146 empower the reader to articulate a critique of faction; the text needs to be surmounted to be understood.

The narrator of the Jugurtha begins the monograph by establishing a non-specific chronology. First, a series of gnomic statements about human nature. Second, he introduces the narrative present, marked with the ablative hac tempestate (3.1), characterizing it negatively: public office is not associated with virtus, and does not even protect those who gain it by fraud (3.1). More gnomic statements follow (3.2–4.1); and the narrator discusses his career and his choice to write history in the narrative present (4.2–4). Third, the narrator introduces the past (4.5), signalled by the temporal adverb antea (4.7), which the narrator characterizes positively in contrast to the present: leading citizens, such as Q. Maximus and P. Scipio, were roused to virtue by images of their ancestors (4.5).Footnote ¹ After reflecting further on the contrast between the past and the present, the narrator introduces the main subject of the monograph: the Numidian War (5.1). He therefore introduces two pasts in the preface, distant and recent.Footnote ² The Numidian War, the recent past, lies between the distant past and the present, both temporally and morally; for a mid-point in a downward-sloping line must be lower than its starting point. The narrator thus intertwines the monograph's chronological framework and its moral framework: morals have declined as time has progressed. Of course most of the Jugurtha concerns the Numidian War; this paper, however, will consider the depiction of Rome in that more distant past, which the narrator develops essentially in the digression on the rise of factions at Rome (41–2).

In that digression, the narrator characterizes this distant past as harsh and difficult, but also as the apogee of the moral quality of Rome and the concord of its citizens. In his view, ante Carthaginem deletam, the Romans placide modesteque inter se rem publicam tractabant, neque gloriae neque dominationis certamen inter civis erat (41.2). This happy condition prevailed because metus hostilis in bonis artibus civitatem retinebat (41.2).Footnote ³ The temporal boundaries of this distant past thus become clearer: the years before 146.Footnote ⁴ Then, when formido disappeared, those qualities that res secundae promote arose, namely lascivia atque superbia (41.3).Footnote ⁵ The otium that followed the Third Punic War (an otium that curiously includes the narrator's chosen subject, the Numidian War) was asperius acerbiusque than the Punic Wars (41.4).Footnote ⁶ Concluding his analysis, the narrator contends that civil discord arose ubi primum ex nobilitate reperti sunt qui veram gloriam iniustae potentiae anteponerent (41.10).

Some of the narrator's value judgements depart from what is normal or at least expected.Footnote ⁷ In this ideal period, there was metus (41.2), formido (41.3); and Romans were in advorsis rebus (41.4). The Numidian War, however, when in the narrator's view matters started to decline precipitously, was a time of res secundae (41.3), when the nobility put true glory before unjust power (41.10). Given a choice between fear and adversity on the one hand, or abundantia (41.1), res secundae, otium and leaders who shunned unjust power on the other, the latter seems preferable; based on the descriptions provided of the two, the denigration of the period of the Numidian War in favour of the distant past is therefore intuitively strange. There are, however, some more conventional choices: the time of the Numidian War has associated with it lascivia, superbia, asperitas, acerbitas, ‘ducere, trahere, rapere’ (41.5) and avaritia (41.9). Additionally, because the narrator uses the comparative form of asper and acer, these qualities belong to the distant past as well, although to a lesser degree. More positively, although the narrator significantly does not use the word concordia, clearly the distant past was a time of concord; this is the central point of the digression. For clarity's sake these qualities can be listed:

While the time of the Numidian War is not attractive – the verbs in particular are troubling – the distant past has only concord and bones artes as unambiguously positive attributes. Again the idealization of the distant past and the contemning of the time of the Numidian War seem counterintuitive; for in order to accept the narrator's narrative of decline, the reader must prefer the qualities listed under ‘pre-146’ to those listed under ‘post-146’. Surely life post-146 seems the less unpleasant of the two; besides the two exceptions noted, the terminology for pre-146 is unambiguously negative in Latin. Compare the descriptions of the distant past in the Catiline (6.3–7, 9.1–5, 12.3), which use none of these terms and employ conventionally positive vocabulary (for example, boni mores, domi parci, in amicos fideles, and so forth). The description of Rome before 146 in the Jugurtha thus differs substantially from the description in the first monograph; indeed, the positive use of this pre-146 terminology in the Jugurtha cannot be paralleled in contemporary literature. Moreover, suppose the reader accepts the narrator's thesis: is mortal fear of an enemy once again the solution to Rome's travails? Is Jugurtha the hero of the Jugurtha, because if he had been as successful as Hannibal he might have restored concord to Rome? Jugurtha's few successes early in the war, however, although they bring metus to Rome (39.1), do nothing to promote concord, but rather stimulate Memmius' populist, and hence discordant, rhetoric.Footnote ⁸

Echoing the narrator's appeal to the morality of Rome before 146, his archaizing style also recalls Cato.Footnote ⁹ The rejection of contemporary language is more than a stylistic choice, however, since it is in contemporary language that the politics with which the narrator declares his disgust are expressed; he demonstrates by his stylistic choice that even the language has become corrupted. Just as the solution to Rome's moral crisis may be found in Rome before 146, so too can a better means of expression; once again the present is found wanting in comparison with the past. Similarly, the positive judgement of asperitas found in the digression is reflected stylistically, for surely that term could describe many of the stylistic features of this monograph. The use of the language of Cato to idealize an age which he used to censure, however, suggests that the narrator is not what he seems.

Later sources describe a second-century debate between Cato and Nasica about whether Carthage ought to be destroyed.Footnote ¹⁰ Cato thinks it must be destroyed; Nasica argues that its presence provided the Romans with a salutary fear, which compelled the Romans to live in harmony, while its destruction would cause a domestic crisis – obviously a precursor to the metus hostilis thesis.Footnote ¹¹ Nasica's opponent, however, was the model for Sallust's narratorial voice, not just stylistically but morally. The fragments of Cato's speech Pro Rhodiensibus, for example, begin: Scio solere plerisque hominibus rebus secundis atque prolixis atque prosperis animum excellere atque superbiam atque ferociam augescere atque crescere.Footnote ¹² An obvious similarity, clearly more than terminological; the ancients themselves connected the two personae.Footnote ¹³ Two paradoxes arise: first, the narrator's style comes from the man who used it to advocate the destruction of Carthage, the act which in the narrator's analysis led to the great moral crisis.Footnote ¹⁴ Second, an original partisan conflict, indeed from the supposed period of concord, thus lies at the centre of the work, implicit in the choice of Cato and Nasica, two political opponents, as sources for style and argument respectively.

Moreover, the portrayal of Rome before 146 as a golden age conflicts with the information about that period known from other sources. The third decade of Livy contains ample refutation, describing troubles domestic and foreign; fragments of Cato's speeches, all from before 146, show friction with the army (frr. 17–18 ORF), allegedly horrendous crimes in the provinces (frr. 58–63 ORF), theft by provincial governors (frr. 154–5 ORF) and conspicuous lavishness (frr. 173–5 ORF).Footnote ¹⁵ The lack of contemporary sources from before the second century precludes pre-Catonian confutation; but even a basic understanding of Republican history suffices to disprove the depiction of Rome before 146 in the Jugurtha. More than counterintuitive, then, the depiction of Rome before 146 is unhistorical. Sallust was not ignorant of these facts; he certainly knew the evidence in Cato, whom he read extant. In the Catiline Sallust mentions the superbiam dominationemque of the kings (6.7), an unpleasant aspect of the past omitted from the Jugurtha; even within the Jugurtha itself, Memmius refers to the Struggle of the Orders (31.17), undercutting the narrator's claims of concord in Rome before 146. In the Historiae, Sallust portrays this period in a harsher and more veristic light; he mentions earlier periods of discord (Hist. 1.11) and places less emphasis upon 146 as a turning point (1.12, 1.16).Footnote ¹⁶ Sallust knew more about Rome before 146 than the narrator of the Jugurtha and so probably did his readers.

How does the reader explain the conflict between the narrator's view of events, his narrative, and the reality?Footnote ¹⁷ Ignorance or incompetence being eliminated, two solutions remain: either (i) the author is knowingly constructing and seriously promoting a largely fictitious and morally non-intuitive past; or (ii) the author is creating an ironic contradiction between story and discourse. The mutual incompatibility of these explanations requires their elucidation.

The first explanation takes seriously the claims about historiography made in the preface, wherein the narrator presents history as something that is useful for the life of the state. The narrator claims that maius ... commodum ex otio meo quam ex aliorum negotiis rei publicae venturum (4.4);Footnote ¹⁸ and he describes how before 146 the memory of historical accomplishments used to inspire leaders to equal the virtue of past ages (4.5, 4.6). Considered as accurate statements about Sallust's view of history,Footnote ¹⁹ and not products of a literary persona distinct from Sallust himself, these statements then suggest an explanation for the portrayal of Rome before 146: the Jugurtha contains Sallust's diagnosis for the ills of Rome: the problem is with the mores, with the moral intuitions and the customs of the age; Romans are thinking about the world in the wrong terms. Sallust thus begins from the common Roman belief that their ancestors, literally their maiores, were better than they were; he then expounds his own version of the past in an attempt to persuade his contemporaries to alter their mores.Footnote ²⁰ Sallust's argument in the Jugurtha runs essentially: given that our ancestors fared better than we, since in the past adverse circumstances and fear of the enemy prevailed, we are wrong to value the opposite, and would fare better if we valued adverse circumstances and fear. The apparent unattractiveness of the terminology is thus not a problem but the point.

Compare Cicero's De re publica, wherein Scipio narrates the early history of Rome, focussing on the story of Romulus (2.4–20). When Scipio has finished, Laelius intervenes: ‘es enim ita ingressus, ut, quae ipse reperias, tribuere aliis malis quam, ut facit apud Platonem Socrates, ipse fingere et illa de urbis situ revoces ad rationem, quae a Romulo casu aut necessitate facta sunt’ (2.22). Laelius asserts here that Scipio's account of the life of Romulus is his invention, a vehicle for Scipio's own views and thoughts; since Scipio and Laelius are characters in Cicero's dialogue (which itself relates a fictitious discussion set in 129 b.c.), this narrative and subsequent interjection constitute an explicit statement by Cicero that he is creating a fictitious past to advance his own thoughts on the commonwealth.Footnote ²¹ Elsewhere in De re publica Cicero laments in propria persona the condition of the commonwealth, arguing that the men and morals of the past were what made Rome great (5.1), whereas in the present the morals of old are ignored and unknown (5.2). Cicero constructs the morality of the past as an ideal to be emulated – in the case of Scipio's Romulus an explicitly constructed past – and thus an alternative to contemporary mores and a solution to the crisis Cicero laments.Footnote ²²

Cicero's strategy in De re publica could be compared with Sallust's in the Jugurtha. Sallust knowingly creates a largely fictitious portrait of Rome before 146, to demonstrate by contrast with contemporary life some of the moral problems of his age. The fact that, for example, there was not actually political concord before the destruction of Carthage is irrelevant, because Sallust's aim in describing this past is not to conduct a scientific enquiry, but rather, as he says, to construct something of political use for his fellow citizens (Jug. 4.4). The unpleasantness of the terminology he uses to describe this period can be understood as an attempt to alter the standard Roman terms of description and evaluation.Footnote ²³ Sallust relies upon the Roman commonplace that the past was better than the present to attempt a reconfiguration of contemporary morality; surely the student of Thucydides can be credited with an understanding of how terminology is shaped by rhetoricians and politicians to suit their agendas.Footnote ²⁴

This more traditional explanation entails equating the narrator's claims in the preface and the intentions of Sallust himself; there are, however, good reasons why this equation is problematic, beyond simply concerns about the inaccessibility of Sallust's intentions. The second explanation elucidates these concerns and provides an alternative.

Irony, here meaning a narrator (or interlocutor) in a text undercut by its content, was a technique available to a late Republican writer.Footnote ²⁵ Hellenistic poetry had challenged the notion of the poet as a divinely inspired agent with privileged access to objective truth; this rejection of poetic tradition is often expressed through literary personae or framing devices that are subverted by the content of the poem.Footnote ²⁶ While admirers and students of Hellenistic poetry would have been part of Sallust's intellectual milieu,Footnote ²⁷ the possibility of an ironic style might also have been introduced through the philosophical dialogue. Plato's dialogues, which Sallust imitated in other respects,Footnote ²⁸ can be interpreted ironically, as they were by the Sceptics of the New Academy, to whom Cicero was exposed;Footnote ²⁹ how Cicero treats ironically ‘Scipio's’ pseudo-historical account has already been discussed. Most obviously, the patently different narratorial voices of the Catiline and the Jugurtha suggest Sallust's awareness of literary personae.Footnote ³⁰ An ironic persona, however, perhaps fatally for this explanation, is never found in historiography proper;Footnote ³¹ Sallust would on this view have to be innovating, although in the previous explanation he would be innovating as well. The best comparandum is therefore from a different genre, Catullus 64.Footnote ³² The works share several features – for example, allusions to Ennius,Footnote ³³ long digressions,Footnote ³⁴ omission of important closing scenesFootnote ³⁵ and moralistic narratorial personae (Catull. 64.397–408). Most importantly, the two works have a comparable chronological framework.

The narrator of Catullus 64 establishes a tripartite chronology: the golden age and the heroic age, in which most of the poem is set, are contrasted in the poem's epilogue with the narrative present.Footnote ³⁶ Here too the narrator idealizes the past and posits a decline from the nimis optato saeculorum tempore (22) to the narrative present.Footnote ³⁷ The description of the golden age and the heroic age contained within the poem, however, renders untenable the narrator's simplistic view; it seems, despite the narrator's comments, that the past was not much better than the present.Footnote ³⁸ Thus the narrator's value judgements become more problematic than they seem at first glance; ‘nostalgia and admiration for the heroes of old is undeniably present ... but the idealism is strongly qualified by a recognition of the discordant, the destructive and the tragic’.Footnote ³⁹ Are the value judgements of the narrator of the Jugurtha undercut by his descriptions of the past as those of the narrator of Catullus 64 are by his? Such an interpretation would be extraordinary in a work of historiography, where establishing and consolidating authority is normally paramount. If this technique is present in the Jugurtha – if the reader should reject or question the narrator – there must be a good reason why on this one occasion a historian is undermining his own authority.

One possibility: it permits the reader to critique factionalized discourse without having to join the narrator's side. When history has become a way to participate in the life of the commonwealth by other means than politics (Jug. 4), then the problematic aspects of political discourse must also be extended to historical discourse. It is a transitive relation: if politics is dangerously partisan, and history and politics are equivalent, then history risks being partisan as well, a risk later voiced explicitly by the narrator of the Historiae (1.6). If the narrator of the Jugurtha is understood as a representative of a faction, then the process of questioning the narrator would lead to the conclusion that if the monograph has questionable rhetoric, it is because faction produces questionable rhetoric. There would then be two ways to interpret the narrator's comments on the decline of Rome: (i) a reader who failed to question the narrator would conclude factions were problematic; or (ii) a reader who did question the narrator would conclude that factionalized history and rhetoric were problematic.Footnote ⁴⁰ In either case factionalized discourse is assailed. The central problem: how can a critique of faction escape being criticized as the product of a certain faction and thus invalid on its own terms? The solution: the ironic juxtaposition of story and discourse permits the reader to articulate for herself the problem with faction, a dominant concern of the work; far from licensing her to abrogate historical responsibility to some partisan politician or historian, the Jugurtha encourages the reader to assume that responsibility.

This explanation finds support in the text. The treatment of the most obviously moralistic speeches demonstrates an interpretative strategy that can be applied to the narrator as well, particularly significant since the speeches reflect prima facie some of the narrator's views and voice.Footnote ⁴¹ For example, concordia, as seen above, plays a leading part in the narrator's analysis of Roman history; this emphasis notwithstanding, the narrator never uses the standard and common Latin word concordia, at this period to be found on coinage and in political slogans (referring to the concordia of the senatorial order and the equites), and honoured with a temple in the Forum. If the concept is so important to the digressions, and indeed to the work at large,Footnote ⁴² why does the narrator not make his message clear by naming the quality he wishes to promote? Yet the narrator rejects the language of contemporary politics; in the monograph the word concordia is used only twice, both times in direct speech.

First, in the speech of Micipsa to Jugurtha, the king contends that ‘concordia parvae res crescunt, discordia maxumae dilabuntur’ (10.6). At first glance the narrator's own argument in miniature; strikingly, it is clearly stated only as a banality in the mouth of an unimpressive king, whose speech the narrator discredits immediately upon its conclusion: ad ea Iugurtha, tametsi regem ficta locutum intellegebat … respondit (11.1). This noteworthy paraleptic remark – the reader has no idea why Jugurtha perceives the speech as falseFootnote ⁴³ – undercuts Micipsa's promotion of concordia, since the context is discredited. As C. Kraus has noted, ‘ficta locutum goes deeper than simple questions of regal insincerity. Jugurtha understands that the verbal edifice of proverbial wisdom and good advice that the dying king has constructed is precisely that: a construct, an invention.’Footnote ⁴⁴ The same speech contains the sentiment ‘quis ... amicior quam frater fratri?’ (10.5), another straightforward sentiment with some apparent relevance to the digressions and the main narrative, also subverted by the narrator; the relationship between the Numidian brothers is hardly amicable.Footnote ⁴⁵

The word concordia appears for a second time in Memmius' speech: ‘nam fidei quidem aut concordiae quae spes est?’ asks the orator (31.23). Here Memmius endorses the notion of concordia and generally the ideas advanced in his speech coincide with the narrator's historical analysis.Footnote ⁴⁶ Nevertheless, coming in a partisan speech filled with attacks against the nobility, the plea for concordia cannot be given much weight; it is mere rhetoric. Both times, then, that the word concordia is used, the context gives the lie to the pleading. The narrator himself abstains from using the word, abandoning its use entirely to the politicians with whom the narrator refuses to associate himself in the preface; the calls for concordia reported within the monograph are partisan appeals cloaked with a fine-sounding word. If the reader is simply to think that concordia is important, why is the concept treated in this fashion?Footnote ⁴⁷

Generally, as Ronald Syme notes, Sallust ‘is alert to make the speaker demolish himself by allegations contrary to facts which are supplied in the narrative or obvious to men of understanding’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Syme calls this technique ‘double demolition’; unfortunately he does not list instances. I identify the following: (1) Catiline (Cat. 20), whose lofty populist rhetoric is undercut by the narrator's description of his aims immediately afterwards (21.2); (2) Scipio (Jug. 9.1): the joy Scipio imagines Micipsa feels about Jugurtha's conduct in Spain is undercut by the narrator's description of Micipsa's motives for sending him there (Jug. 7), and the prediction of Jugurtha's future favour in Rome is undercut by the Numidian War; (3) Micipsa, discussed above; (4) Memmius, discussed above; (5) Marius (Jug. 85), whose description of his own conduct (85.15) is undercut by the narrator's earlier description of his conduct (Jug. 64–5), and whose claims not to know Greek literature (85.32) are undercut by the speech's allusions to Plato;Footnote ⁴⁹ (6) Lepidus (Hist. 1.55), whose self-portrayal as a liberator and whose attacks on Sulla (passim) are deflated by his admission that he purchased proscribed goods (1.55.18) and by Philippus' later description of Lepidus (1.77); (7) Cotta (2.47), whose self-representation is undercut by his narratorial introduction (2.42) and Macer's later characterization of him (3.48.8); (8) Pompey (2.98), whose letter is full of patent deception and violence;Footnote ⁵⁰ and (9) Mithridates (4.69.5, 4.69.17–21), whose assertion that Romans have always been violent and imperialistic – a refusal to periodize Roman history – conflicts with the narrator's periodization of Roman history elsewhere in the monograph. Considering his incontrovertible fondness for the ironic subversion of speakers, might not Sallust have employed ‘double demolition’ on the narrator of the Jugurtha, demolishing faction and narrator concomitantly?

These speeches within the Jugurtha are thus mises-en-abyme, and demonstrations to the reader of how political and historical accounts serve their own particular ends.Footnote ⁵¹ By extrapolating this interpretative tactic and applying it to the narrator's own account, the reader arrives at this explanation; the tension between story and discourse, which mirrors the tension between speech and context, is resolved as an ironic critique of the prevailing rhetorical exposition of history by more conventional historians and politicians (to the extent that these categories can be separated) as well as a critique of faction that still accords with the narrator's own analysis of what is ailing Rome. On this interpretation, what looks to be a monologic workFootnote ⁵² is dialogic – in a different way.

It is tempting to look at the historical context to see if it can shed any light upon these questions. The Jugurtha was written c. 40 b.c.Footnote ⁵³ That means Sallust was ‘writing under the Triumvirs about Sulla and the time after Sulla’; it is therefore incredible that we should find in his works ‘sharp political comment’ that ‘reflects Rome under the rule of the Triumvirs’.Footnote ⁵⁴ Candour is not wont to flourish in such times. Why, especially when men of Sallust's class were being proscribed, does Sallust voice his critical views – and evade the usual dire consequences?Footnote ⁵⁵ Indeed the Jugurtha evinces this seeming forthrightness with even greater force than the Catiline. Footnote ⁵⁶ Syme offers one explanation: ‘Birth often secured protection. Sulla did not wish to destroy the aristocrats of the party of Marius and Cinna … It was not blood or revenge that the Triumvirs wanted most, but money to pay the troops and land for the veterans after victory.’Footnote ⁵⁷ The interpretation proposed in this paper suggests a further explanation – not incompatible with Syme's – for Sallust's apparent free and frank commentary. Under the circumstances of the year 40, perhaps the narrator's ironic voice could serve as Sallust's defence.Footnote ⁵⁸ If challenged on the content of his work, and his disapprobation of the times, Sallust or his defenders might point to the double demolitions, to the narrator as literary construct, as a means of mitigation, if not necessarily full exculpation. Irony, by undercutting sincerity, allows authors to distance themselves from what they write. In 40 b.c., as in many other moments in Roman history, an author with serious criticisms of the mores of the day will have had good reasons for wanting to put some distance between himself and his criticisms. Perhaps if historiography from similar moments in Roman history survived – for example, from the principates of Caligula or Domitian – we might find other authors following Sallust's example and building ironic detachment into their works, aiming similarly to defend their works through the possibility of mitigation.

Syme began his monograph by identifying three opinions of Sallust prevalent in the secondary literature, of which two were Sallust the ‘literary artist’ and Sallust the ‘political pamphleteer’;Footnote ⁵⁹ this article attempts to reconcile these alternatives by subordinating the second to the first and placing both in the service of political education. In the process, it has proposed two alternatives of its own: Sallust the reconfigurer of contemporary morality and Sallust the ironic critic of faction. Both have their merits; but which makes better sense of the text? Several observations about the Jugurtha seem difficult to refute: (1) for us, and so a fortiori for Sallust's contemporary readers, the view of Rome before 146 is too obviously unhistorical to be believed; (2) the emphasis on history as a continuation of politics, not made in the Catiline, suggests that this equivalence is important to the Jugurtha; (3) if history and politics are equivalents, there exists what I have called a ‘transitive relation’ equating history and factionalization; (4) Sallust frequently uses irony to subvert the partisan speeches included in his works; and (5) factionalization is one of the primary concerns of the Jugurtha. These all, I think, combine to make Sallust the ironist the better heuristic device; but interpretative certainty is unattainable. While this paper has not considered the implications of this interpretation for the rest of the monograph, the potential benefits of a thorough narratological study of the Jugurtha seem clear. On any interpretation Sallust would surely have wanted his readers to think carefully about interpretation and tendentiousness; this, in a few words, has been the point of this paper.