The Fragments of the Histories

‘And you, who have stolen many words from ancient Cato,
Crispus, founder of the Jugurthine history’,

which I do not know whether to attribute to Lenaeus, the freedman of PompeySee Suetonius, On Grammarians 15.. At the same time, Asinius Pollio composed a book 'in which he criticized Sallust's writings as being smeared with an excessive affectation of archaic words'Suetonius, On Grammarians 10; cf. Gellius X 26.; Caesar AugustusSuetonius, Augustus 86., LivySeneca, Controversiae IX 1, 14; note also that Livy did not often use him as a source for his histories., and SenecaEpistles XIX 5, 17 ff. held similar opinions about Sallust. Pompeius Trogus criticized the speeches added by Sallust to his worksJustin XXXVIII 3.. See with what disdain the learned men of that age rejected Sallust! This agrees with the fact that Pliny never used him as an authorSee the indices of authors, in which Sallust is never named.. Conversely, others arose who imitated Sallust, such as Arruntius in a ridiculous manner, Velleius Paterculus more modestly, and a little later, Curtius RufusSee Wiedemann in Philologus XXXI, p. 756.; even Seneca the Elder did not disdain Sallust's historical worksControversiae III pr. 8; cf. Ribbeck in Rheinishes Museum XLVI, p. 333.. But from the end of the first century AD, the Romans admired Sallust more and more, and already Martial dared to writeXIV 191 in an epigram published in 84 or 85 AD.:

‘This man will be, as the hearts of learned men claim,
The first in Roman history, Crispus’,

and Cornelius TacitusAnnals III 30; regarding Tacitus's Sallustian studies, see Wölfflin in Philologus XXVI, p. 122.: 'Sallust, the most flourishing author of Roman affairs.' Aemilius AsperVery recently, Lämmerhirt, "On the passages of ancient writers cited by Servius" (diss. Jena 1890) assigned Aemilius Asper's time to the end of the second or beginning of the third century. I do not dare to judge this very difficult question. wrote a commentary on the books of Sallust, especially on the histories, in nearly those same times.