The Fragments of the Histories

The grammarian M. Valerius Probus also published an edition of and interpreted Sallust’s style of speaking for his students.1) Gell. I 15. III 1. Soon after, the Emperor Hadrian greatly cherished Sallust,2) Spart. Hadr. 16. and Fronto and his followers even more so. A certain Zenobius, who translated Sallust’s works into Greek,3) Cf. Suid. s. v. Zenobius. seems to belong to this same age; at that time, the speeches and letters which many manuscript books still exhibit were excerpted and collected. Indeed, after Tacitus, most writers of the third and fourth centuries AD diligently imitated Sallust’s language with study and labor.4) Wölfflin in Mus. Rhen. XXIX p. 285, Pratje, "Sallustian questions" (diss. Gotting. 1874) p. 28 sq.; Vogel in actis sem. Erlang. I (1878) p. 313, II (1881) p. 405; Opitz in annal. phil. 1883 p. 217; Klebs in Mus. Rhen. XLIII p. 330. Quintilian alone maintained a moderately prudent judgment amidst this common admiration.5) Inst. II 5, 19; IV 2, 45; X 1, 32; ibid. 101 ss. The remarkable opinion of Granius Licinianus regarding Sallust is also worth noting:6) p. 42 A 18 ss. (ed. Bonn.). "We encounter the work of Sallust, but, as we have instituted, we will omit the delays and non-urgent matters. For they say Sallust should be read not as a historian,7) "historica" (historici?) are in the codex; "historicum" scribunt Bonn. but as an orator. For he criticizes his own times, picks at faults, inserts speeches,8) "convitia" Bonn., better supplemented by Madvig. and provides a census description/inventory of places, mountains, rivers, and things of this pleasant and cultured sort,10) "cultae" cod., corr. Keil; "culpat" Bonn. and compares them by discussion." But from the end of the fourth century AD, Sallust’s histories, because they were composed in five books, gradually ceased to be read, although people were still studying his minor works even then. Ausonius, indeed, possessed and read not only the Catilinarian Conspiracy but also a complete copy of the histories, as he himself testifies in XIII 2. 61:

'Now I connect the series of your crime, Catilina, and the tumult of Lepidus,
From Lepidus and Catulus now the affairs and times of Rome
Having begun, I connect the sequence through twice-six years;
Now I read the duel mixed with civil Mars,
Which Sertorius the exile moved with the Iberian ally.'