Sallust's Catiline and Cato the Censor

Classical Quarterly 50 (01):170- (2000)
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Abstract

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

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References found in this work

A Note on Sallust, Catilina 1. 1.A. J. Woodman - 1973 - Classical Quarterly 23 (02):310-.
Nasicas Widerspruch gegen die Zerstörung Karthagos.Matthias Geizer - 1931 - Philologus: Zeitschrift für Antike Literatur Und Ihre Rezeption 86 (1-4):264-302.
A Note on Sallust, Catilina 1. 1.A. J. Woodman - 1973 - Classical Quarterly 23 (2):310-310.

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