Editing Sallust (section)

=== As a historian ===

On the whole, antiquity looked favourably on Sallust as a historian. [[Tacitus]] speaks highly of him.<ref>Tacitus, ''[[Annals (Tacitus)|Annals]]'' 3.30.</ref> [[Quintilian]] called him the "Roman [[Thucydides]]".{{sfn|Levene|2007|p=280}} [[Martial]] joins the praise: "Sallust, according to the judgment of the learned, will rank as the prince of Roman historiographers".<ref>(Mart. XIV, 191) Martial. Epigrams, XIV, 191: Hic erit, ut perhibent doctorum corda virorum, // Primus Romana Crispus in historia.</ref>

In late antiquity, he was highly praised by [[Jerome]] as "very reliable"; his monographs also entered the corpus of standard education in Latin, with [[Virgil]], [[Cicero]], and [[Terence]] (covering history, the epic, oratory, and comedy, respectively).{{sfn|Mellor|2002|pp=46–47}}

In the thirteenth century Sallust's passage on the expansion of the Roman Republic (Cat. 7) was cited and interpreted by theologian [[Thomas Aquinas]] and scholar [[Brunetto Latini]].{{sfn|Osmond|1995|p=104}} During the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, Sallust's works began to influence political thought in Italy. Among many scholars and historians interested in Sallust, the most notable are [[Leonardo Bruni]], [[Coluccio Salutati]] and [[Niccolò Machiavelli]].{{sfn|Osmond|1995|p=107 et seq}} Among his admirers in England in the early modern period were [[Thomas More]], [[Alexander Barclay]] and [[Thomas Elyot]].{{sfn|Osmond|1995|p=120}} [[Justus Lipsius]] marked Sallust as the second most notable Roman historian after [[Tacitus]].{{sfn|Osmond|1995|p=101}}

Historians since the 19th century also have negatively noted Sallust's bias and partisanship in his histories, not to mention some errors in geography and dating. Also importantly, much of Sallust's anti-corruption moralising is "blunted by his sanctimonious tone and by ancient accusations of corruption, which have made him out to be a remarkable hypocrite".{{sfn|Mellor|2002|p=47}}

Modern views on the period which Sallust documented reject moral failure as a cause of the republic's collapse and believe that "social conflicts are insufficient to account for the political implosion".<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Review of: The Breakdown of the Roman Republic: From Oligarchy to Empire |journal=Bryn Mawr Classical Review |year=2010 |url=https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2010/2010.12.65/ |issn=1055-7660}}</ref> The core narrative of moral decline prevalent in Sallust's works, is now criticised as crowding out his own examination of the structural and socio-economic factors that brought about the crisis of the republic while also manipulating historical facts to make them fit his moralistic thesis; he, however, is credited as "a clear-sighted and impartial interpreter of his own age".<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Brunt |first=PA |date=1963 |title=Review of "The Political Thought of Sallust" by DC Earl |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0009840X00216417/type/journal_article |journal=The Classical Review |language=en |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=74–75 |doi=10.1017/S0009840X00216417 |s2cid=153649280 |issn=0009-840X}} On moral decline crowding out socio-economic factors, see {{cite book |last=Earl |first=DC |title=The political thought of Sallust |year=1961 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |pages=57–59}}</ref>

His focus on moralising also misrepresents and over-simplifies the state of Roman politics. For example, {{harvnb|Mackay|2009|pp=84, 89}}: 

{{quote|text=
Sallust paints a picture that is unsatisfactory in a number of ways. He has great interest in moralising, and for this reason, he tends to paint an exaggerated picture of the senate's faults... he analyses events in terms of a simplistic opposition between the self-interest of Roman politicians and the "public good" that shows little understanding of how the Roman political system actually functioned...{{sfn|Mackay|2009|p=84}} The reality was more complicated than Sallust's simplistic moralising would suggest.{{sfn|Mackay|2009|pp=89–90}}
}}