[In the following essay, Levene argues that in the Bellum Catilinae Sallust was working in the tradition of Cato the Censor as he calls for moral uprightness and condemns the lack of virtue in contemporary life.]

That Sallust¹ owed a considerable debt to the writings of Cato the Censor was observed in antiquity,² and the observation has often been discussed and expanded on by modern scholars.³ 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.⁴ 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.⁵ Sallust, by writing in a Catonian style, aligns himself with that tradition.

However, recent studies of Sallust have tended to stress that his moral position is more complex and nuanced than might appear from a superficial reading: that although his prefaces and explicit statements on the state of Roman morality would point the reader towards a simple picture of ancient virtue overtaken by utter corruption, the detail of his narratives leads one to draw different conclusions, so that even apparent villains such as Catiline will exhibit exceptional heroic qualities.⁶ The object of this paper is to show that the Catonian allusions in the Catiline fit into this pattern: far from reinforcing a simple moral dichotomy of present vice and past virtue, they combine systematically to precisely the opposite effect, and indeed provide us with some of the central paradoxes through which the work must be interpreted. The loss of the great bulk of Cato's writings means that there are likely to be numerous allusions to him that we fail to recognize; but even from what we have, a clear and systematic pattern emerges. I shall be focusing on three sections of the Catiline in particular in which the Catonian references are especially charged: (I) Sallust's initial programmatic statements (1-4); (II) the so-called Archaeology (6-13); and (III) the debate between Caesar and the Younger Cato on the punishment of the conspirators (51-4).

I. THE PROGRAMME

Sallust begins the Catiline with a passage (1-2) which, highly unusually for an historical work in the ancient world,⁷ contains no clear reference either to the topic of the work or even to history as a genre,⁸ but rather sets out a series of moral dichotomies pitched at a stratospheric level of generality. Man/beast, mind/body, virtue/vice are all placed before the reader and correlated to one another.⁹ To surpass the beast, one must not seek physical rewards, but rather virtus, which is eternal (1.4); both body and mind are necessary for success (1.2, 1.7, 2.1), but it is essential that the mind must be in charge (1.2, 2.2, 2.3). Failure in this regard is equated with the lapse of virtue into vice (2.5), as well as with the beast-like behaviour of sloth and gluttony (1.1, 2.5, 2.8).

Nothing in this should of itself make one think of Cato. It is true that his own moralistic approach had a good deal in common with Sallust's here: for example, Sallust's specific focus on gluttony and sloth, both of which (but especially the former) had been famous objects of Cato's attacks.¹⁰ Sallust (2.5) speaks of restraint (continentia) and justice (aequitas) being taken over by lust (lubido) and arrogance (superbia)—likewise an area with which Cato had shown himself especially concerned.¹¹ However, there are no recognizable allusions to surviving portions of Cato's work; and while various earlier writers have been canvassed as the sources of Sallust's general thought in these chapters, it is clear that many of the particular ideas expressed are regular ancient commonplaces: thus the fact that they overlap with Cato's expressed attitudes proves nothing.

However, when we reach the following chapters, in which Sallust first mentions the writing of history directly, describes his own political career, and gives his reasons for taking up historiography, we instantly find something more pointed (2.9-3.2):

sed in magna copia rerum aliud alii natura iter ostendit. pulchrum est bene facere rei publicae, etiam bene dicere haud absurdum est; vel pace vel bello clarum fieri licet; et qui fecere et qui facta aliorum scripsere multi laudantur. ac mihi quidem, tametsi haudquaquam par gloria sequitur scriptorem et auctorem rerum, tamen in primis arduom videtur res gestas scribere.

But in the great range of affairs nature shows different people different routes. It is a fine thing to act well for the state; it is not a preposterous thing even to speak well for it.¹² One may become famous in peace or war, and of those who have acted and of those who have written of the acts of others, many are praised. And indeed to me, although far from equal glory attends a writer and a doer of deeds, nevertheless writing about deeds seems to me outstandingly difficult.

The phrase rei publicae bene facere is unusual and not otherwise attested in extant Latin¹³—apart from being used by Cato of his own deeds in a striking section of his speech De sumptu suo: it looks as if Sallust is alluding to that here.¹⁴ The immediate conclusion might be that Sallust is contrasting himself as an historian who ‘speaks well’ with Cato as one who ‘acted well’. However, Cato was manifestly someone who both acted and spoke—indeed, the very fact that his writings are the source of the allusion that Sallust is making demonstrates this. The contrast rather appears to be that, as Sallust goes on to explain, his own attempt at a political career was prevented through the corruption of the society around him (3.3-4.1), and so he returned to his initial intention of writing historiography (4.2).¹⁵ The specific words in which he expresses his determination to write history, moreover, link his own writing to Catonian historiography in particular: he says ‘statui res gestas populi Romani carptim … perscribere’ (4.2) (‘I decided to write out the deeds of the Roman people selectively’), which recalls the opening words of Cato's Origines (fr. 1: ‘si ques homines sunt, quos delectat populi Romani gesta discribere’, ‘if there are any people whom it delights to describe the deeds of the Roman people’). Expressions like res gestas populi Romani are, naturally, paralleled elsewhere, but the general phrasing here is close,¹⁶ and Sallust's intention expressed in the following sentence to write about the Catilinarian conspiracy ‘briefly’ specifically suggests the Catonian manner (paucis absolvam).¹⁷ In other words, the implication is that whereas Cato was able to prove himself in both speech and deeds, Sallust is being Catonian in the only sphere that the corruption of contemporary society now allowed.¹⁸

The implications of this passage extend further still. For a Roman reader, bene dicere in its immediate context would most naturally be taken to refer not to historiography, but to oratory. However, having introduced the phrase, Sallust immediately shifts the antithesis from ‘doing’ vs. ‘speaking’ to ‘doing’ vs. ‘writing’.¹⁹ His historiographical enterprise is thus not linked narrowly to the imitation of Cato as an historian: historiography and oratory are here effectively equated, for all that Sallust's work proves to be in the former genre alone. But the paradox is then expanded: for the term that he uses for ‘doer’ as opposed to ‘writer’—auctor rerum—would itself naturally be taken to signify ‘historian’.²⁰ In setting up a contrast between himself and Cato, Sallust collapses together the different aspects of the Censor's career: language normally applied to historians is used to describe political and military activity, while the language that would normally apply to oratory is linked to the writing of history—in effect, the three are equated. As we shall see, this is significant: the role of Cato for Sallust's work will not be confined to his history or indeed his writings alone.

The moral tone adopted in the opening chapters takes on a particular focus in the light of these Catonian allusions. While there was (as far as we can tell) no reason on an initial reading to link this tone to Cato's ideas, once it has been established that Sallust is not merely writing history, but is setting himself up to write it following Cato in particular, the coincidence of various of the topics of that initial moralizing with those famously adopted by Cato himself throughout his career appears to align Sallust with Cato not only in manner, but in topic: an interpretation of history is at hand along Catonian moral lines. This is especially so given the simple fact that such an apparently abstract moral discussion proves to be the preface to a history: it reminds the reader of the single historian who was famous above all for the moral approach that he took to both his life and his works.

However, there is a further aspect to Sallust's allusions to Cato in this section. At 4.1 he describes his choice of a writing career in negative terms:

non fuit consilium socordia atque desidia bonum otium conterere, neque vero agrum colundo aut venando, servilibus officiis intentum aetatem agere.

It was not my plan to waste good leisure in idleness and sloth, nor even to spend my life concentrating on agriculture or hunting, the duties of slaves.²¹

The general sentiment of the importance of occupying one's otium in a proper fashion is a Roman commonplace, but in the context of historiography it recalls once again Cato's comments at the opening of the Origines.²² However, the specific application of the sentiment to agriculture looks distinctly odd in the light of this, since agriculture was one of the chief activities with which Cato was associated, and which he saw as an especially proper activity for an upper-class Roman.²³ Moreover, this image of agriculture as especially bound up with traditional virtue was one that had survived into the Roman ideology of Sallust's own day: Livy 3.26.7-10 is only the most famous instance. For Sallust to refer to it in such a fashion appears to run against the whole tenor of the Catonian allusions in this section.²⁴ While aligning himself with Cato, he appears to be denying that he can, like Cato, unite in himself the qualities of the man of action and the man of letters; but he also suggests that one of the spheres in which Cato distinguished himself was not in fact a proper component of virtue at all. In other words, at the same time as presenting a Catonian conception of virtue, he appears to be questioning whether Cato himself met those standards. Something here appears not quite to fit.

II. THE ARCHAEOLOGY

Separated from the Preface only by the short character-sketch of Catiline comes the Archaeology—the account of the earlier history of Rome (6-13). As the name suggests, it is to the Thucydidean model that scholars have often referred this passage: yet its opening (6.1) recalled Cato above all:

Cato in Originibus hoc dicit, cuius auctoritatem Sallustius sequitur in bello Catilinae: primo Italiam tenuisse quosdam, qui appellabantur Aborigines. hos postea adventu Aeneae Phrygibus iunctos Latinos uno nomine nuncupatos.

Cato says this in his Origines, and Sallust in the Catiline follows his authority: the first inhabitants of Italy were called Aborigines; afterwards, the arrival of Aeneas united them with the Phrygians, and they took on the single name of Latins.

Servius, ad Aen. 1.6 (= Cato, Origines fr. 5)

Servius here is witness to the fact that Roman readers saw Cato underlying the opening sentence of Sallust's Archaeology. When taken in conjunction with the Catonian allusions that appeared when Sallust established his theme in the preceding chapters, it seems clear that Sallust is creating a set of expectations about his treatment of the past: his summary of Roman history will be presented along Catonian lines.

And indeed that is what emerges as the Archaeology proceeds. The account of the growth of the Roman state sets out the early Romans' virtues in language which draws on and expands the moral tone adopted in the Preface. The stress on virtus (6.5, 7.2, 7.5, 8.4, 9.2), on the union of mind and body (8.5) under the control of the former (6.6, 7.1), on justice (9.3, 10.1) and labor (7.4, 7.5), all indicate that the earlier abstractions are being given a concrete expression in the history of Rome; linked to these is a further set of virtues for which antique Rome is praised, including generosity and willingness to pardon (6.5, 7.6, 9.5); there is a great stress on military virtues more generally (7.4-7, 9.2-4), as well as private frugality (9.2). The importance of military virtue was a central theme of Cato's writings (which included a handbook de re militari),²⁵ as was his support of justice and opposition to political corruption and abuse of power;²⁶ and his extensive recommendations of frugality and attacks on luxury are too well known to require much comment.²⁷ This last theme comes to the fore in the second part of Sallust's Archaeology where, following the fall of Carthage, he describes the lapse into vice of late-Republican Rome. These vices can in some respects be seen as the obverse of the virtues of early Rome: in all the respects in which Rome had excelled, Sallust now shows its degeneracy, reinforcing the polarized picture of present virtue and past vice.²⁸ But it is on luxury that he focuses, and which he suggests lies at the heart of the vices of his contemporaries (11.3-13.2)—a clear Catonian theme. It is true (cf. above, p. 171) that many of these topics are not shared exclusively by Cato and Sallust but are regular commonplaces; however, the linking of them all together here in a narrative which has a recognizably Catonian opening and which was written in a recognizably Catonian style strongly suggests that the whole picture of Roman history is being presented by Sallust in distinctly and recognizably Catonian terms.²⁹

This impression is further reinforced by one formal feature of the Archaeology. Cato was famous for the fact that in the later books of the Origines, he narrated wars without naming the generals in them:³⁰ for him, it appears, it was the collective achievement of the Roman people that mattered, rather than the glorification of individuals. It is therefore noteworthy that Sallust in the whole Archaeology does not name a single individual between Aeneas at the beginning of his account (6.1) and Sulla at its chronological end (11.4).³¹ In between, individual Romans are referred to, but only by sidelong allusion rather than direct naming. The allusions are clearly recognizable, but at the same time self-consciously oblique: the reader will therefore see the omission of the names as pointed, and so associate them with Cato's similarly self-conscious omissions.³²

Thus of early Rome, following its foundation, Sallust says ‘res eorum civibus moribus agris aucta’ (6.3: ‘their state grew in citizens, customs and territory’), a clear allusion to its first three kings: Romulus (who attracted immigrants and united Rome with the Sabines), Numa (who established Rome's legal and religious system), and Tullus Hostilius (who conquered Rome's ‘parent’ city of Alba Longa). The sense that Cato's manner is being followed here is reinforced by the fact that Sallust is actually imitating Cato's phrasing directly at this point—see Origines fr. 20: ‘eodem convenae conplures ex agro accessitavere. eo res eorum auxit’. The power of the kings is said to have turned ‘in superbiam dominationemque’ (6.7: ‘to pride and domination’), leading to the foundation of the Republic—an allusion to the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus. At 9.4 we are told ‘in bello saepius vindicatum est in eos qui contra imperium in hostem pugnaverant quique tardius revocati proelio excesserant’ (‘in war people were more often punished for fighting the enemy against orders and when recalled departing from battle too slowly’). The person who was famously punished in Roman history for fighting contrary to orders was the son of Manlius Torquatus, executed by his father in 340 b.c., and this is manifestly an allusion to him.³³ Here too the passage is introduced by a phrase that appears to imitate Cato directly (9.3: ‘seque remque publicam curabant’;³⁴ cf. Cato, Orationes fr. 21, ‘arbitror rem publicam curare industrie summum periculum esse’).³⁵ This suggests once again that Sallust is writing history in a self-consciously Catonian manner.

This last allusion, however, points to something disquieting in Sallust's Catonian narrative. It is true that Sallust here is treating the imperia Manliana as a limiting case: the fact that punishments were recorded for such things rather than for cowardice proves that early Romans conducted war with audacia (9.3). Nevertheless, it is a surprising example for him to introduce, given that its traditional connotations at Rome were far from positive: it was regularly used as an exemplum of strictness excessive to the point of cruelty.³⁶ An allusion to it thus seems rather strange in the context of the Archaeology, since it would tend to undermine the rigorous dichotomy between the virtuous past and the vicious present, reminding the reader of actions in the past that were at best morally complex and at worst entirely unacceptable.

Nor is this the only point at which the Catonian manner of writing works against the apparent moral clarity of the narrative. One might feel that the fact of imitating Cato was itself problematic. As was said above (p. 170), Cato addressed moral strictures against his contemporaries, contrasting them with the virtuous men of the past. Yet Cato also lived precisely at the time when, according to Sallust's scheme, Rome was in a state of pristine virtue. Nor is this something that could easily be overlooked: for Cato famously died on the point of Carthage's destruction—the moment that, for Sallust, marks the transition from virtue to vice (below, p. 178). The very imitation of Cato might appear to endorse the contradictory notion that the earlier Republic was not uncomplicatedly virtuous, but contained the same moral degeneracy that Sallust identifies with the later period.

This paradox is especially apparent when one looks at Sallust's account of the corruption of the troops of Sulla at 11.4-8. The description here appears to draw on the opening of Cato's speech in defence of the Rhodians (Orationes, fr. 163; see further below, p. 186): in particular, note the final sentence (11.7-8): ‘quippe secundae res sapientium animos fatigant: ne illi corruptis moribus victoriae temperarent’ (‘for in fact success troubles the minds of the wise: still less would those men, with their morals corrupted, set bounds to victory’). Cato began his speech with the words: ‘scio solere plerisque hominibus rebus secundis atque prolixis atque prosperis animum excellere atque superbiam atque ferociam augescere atque crescere’ (‘I know that in favourable, prosperous and successful times most men's minds swell and their arrogance and insolence grows and increases’); and shortly afterwards added: ‘secundae res laetitia transvorsum trudere solent a recte consulendo atque intellegendo’ (‘prosperity is accustomed through joy to push people aside from proper deliberation and understanding’). In other words, Cato was warning his contemporaries against precisely the flaws that Sallust associates with Rome in decline.

On the face of things, of course, Sallust's position is not self-contradictory. For one thing, he does accept that even ‘the wise’ (sapientium) are capable of being troubled by success, thus allowing the possibility that even the virtuous Romans of the past might at least have been at risk; moreover, Cato did succeed in persuading his audience not to be carried away by their victory (below, p. 188). However, the detail of Cato's words undermines that conclusion, since he treats the Rhodian case as atypical, and presents the dangers of success as something that people of his day did usually succumb to. So too Sallust's statement in 11.5 that Sulla ‘exercitum … contra morem maiorum luxuriose nimisque liberaliter habuerat’ (‘had treated his army, contrary to ancestral custom, luxuriously and too generously’) appears problematic in the context of the Rhodian speech, where acting luxuriose, far from being something that the Romans of Cato's day eschewed as a matter of course (as implied by contra morem maiorum), is something that Cato needed specifically to warn them against (Orationes, fr. 163: ‘neve haec laetitia nimis luxuriose eveniat’, ‘and lest this joy turn out too luxuriously’). The parallel vocabulary combines with the general sentiments to recall Cato in a highly problematic way: the imitation itself undercuts the idea that in the middle Republic the vices of Sulla's day were absent.

This conclusion may perhaps be reinforced by the opening of the account of Sulla, where, speaking of the depredations of the proscriptions, Sallust says ‘rapere omnes, trahere’ (‘everyone seized, carried off’). The collocation rapere trahere is surprisingly uncommon in extant Republican Latin, but it is found elsewhere in Sallust in a similar context (BJ 41.5),³⁷ and earlier appeared in Plautus (Trinummus 288; cf. Persa 410) as part of an attack on contemporary public morality. All these passages share the feature that the words are not merely placed in conjunction, but in asyndeton, and La Penna argues that this is not coincidence: that rapere trahere was a political slogan of the 180s of those combating official corruption, and specifically a slogan associated with Cato.³⁸ If this is correct (and La Penna's arguments, though based on indirect evidence, are strong), then Sallust begins his account of Sulla's dictatorship—the climactic moment of Roman decline according to his model—with a phrase that directly recalls Cato's moral campaigns against the corrupt of his own day. Here, once again, the idea that the destruction of Carthage was the root cause of Roman moral collapse is undermined: Cato's Rome before the fall of Carthage, contrary to the overt tenor of Sallust's narrative, has uncomfortable similarities to Sulla's Rome after it.

But the identification of the destruction of Carthage with the moral decline of Rome is more problematic still. Sallust, in selecting this particular event as a turning-point in Rome's history, goes against the majority opinion up to his day, which had regarded the first onset of decline as rather earlier.³⁹ The precise connection that he is making between the destruction of Carthage and the moral decline of Rome is admittedly not entirely clear. In his later works he directly states that the mechanism is ‘fear of the enemy’ (metus hostilis): that it is necessary for a state to have an enemy in order to keep it virtuous, since total security leads to moral corruption.⁴⁰ According to this theory, Carthage represented the last threat to Rome: once it had gone, there was no further constraint to keep the Romans on a moral path. However, this is not stated in so many words in the Catiline; what is said here is slightly different (10.1-2):

sed ubi labore et iustitia res publica crevit, reges magni bello domiti, nationes ferae et populi ingentes vi subacti, Carthago aemula imperi Romani ab stirpe interiit, cuncta maria terraeque patebant, saevire fortuna ac miscere omnia coepit. qui labores pericula, dubias atque asperas res facile toleraverant, iis otium divitiae, optanda alias, oneri miseriaeque fuere.

But when the state had grown through labour and justice, great kings were mastered in war, fierce nations and mighty peoples overcome by force, Carthage, the rival of Roman power, utterly perished, all seas and lands lay open, then fortune began to rage and confound everything. To those who had easily endured labours, dangers, and doubtful and difficult circumstances—to them leisure and wealth, things desirable at other times, were a source of burden and wretchedness.

Some commentators take the reference to ‘fortune’ here to be a demonstration that Sallust in the Catiline saw the central mechanism in the fall of Rome not in the sort of rational psychological terms implicit in metus hostilis, but rather as the workings of the irrational power of fortune bringing it down.⁴¹ However, the entire argument of the passage, taken in its context, implies a close causal connection between Rome's attainment of unchallenged world power and the decline in Roman morals.⁴² It is true that this connection is not attributed directly to metus hostilis, but metus hostilis was a standard explanatory mode in antiquity, and thus some connection along the general lines of the moral dangers of unchallenged success after the fall of Carthage would be assumed, even if the detailed mechanism is not precisely spelled out:⁴³ and the singling out and naming of Carthage suggests strongly the central importance of its destruction in this historical analysis.

But in the light of this it is somewhat disturbing to recall the historical tradition as to why Carthage was destroyed. It was above all, according to later writers, the responsibility of none other than Cato himself, who famously ended every speech, on whatever subject he was being consulted, with the opinion that delenda est Karthago (‘Carthage must be destroyed’). He was, however, opposed by Scipio Nasica, who likewise ended his speeches by advising that servanda est Karthago (‘Carthage must be preserved’). And the reason that Nasica gave for this opinion, according to the tradition, was in fact metus hostilis—that Rome needed Carthage to survive as an enemy in order to preserve its own virtue.⁴⁴ By selecting the fall of Carthage as the turning-point for Rome, Sallust alludes to this famous debate.⁴⁵ But his doing so is stunningly paradoxical. His account demonstrates that Nasica was right in his predictions of the appalling effect on Rome of destroying Carthage. And Cato, the very man whom he has consistently been using as his model for his account of the virtues of early Rome, was disastrously wrong—to the point of being the prime, though unwitting, mover in destroying the Roman morality that in his writings and his life he had consistently advocated. Sallust's employment of Catonian topics and a Catonian style of writing in the Archaeology thus cannot be taken as a simple endorsement of Cato's approach to Roman history and Roman morals: for at the vital moment Cato's attitudes and policies are shown by Sallust as destructive of all that he—and Sallust—had apparently stood for.

III. CAESAR AND CATO

With these considerations in mind, let us now turn to our third key passage: the debate between Caesar and the Younger Cato, along with the famous synkrisis that follows it. It is with the synkrisis that I shall begin (53.6-54.6):

sed postquam luxu atque desidia civitas corrupta est, rursus res publica magnitudine sui imperatorum atque magistratuum vitia sustentabat ac, sicuti †effeta parentum†, multis tempestatibus haud sane quisquam Romae virtute magnus fuit. sed memoria mea ingenti virtute, divorsis moribus fuere viri duo, M. Cato et C. Caesar … iis genus aetas eloquentia prope aequalia fuere magnitudo animi par, item gloria, sed alia alii. Caesar beneficiis ac munificentia magnus habebatur, integritate vitae Cato. ille mansuetudine et misericordia clarus factus, huic severitas dignitatem addiderat. Caesar dando sublevando ignoscundo, Cato nihil largiundo gloriam adeptus est. in altero miseris perfugium erat, in altero malis pernicies. illius facilitas, huius constantia laudabatur. postremo Caesar in animum induxerat laborare vigilare; negotiis amicorum intentus sua neglegere, nihil denegare quod dono dignum esset; sibi magnum imperium, exercitum, bellum novom exoptabat ubi virtus enitescere posset. Catoni studium modestiae, decoris, sed maxume severitatis erat; non divitiis cum divite neque factione cum factioso, sed cum strenuo virtute, cum modesto pudore, cum innocente abstinentia certabat; esse quam videri bonus malebat.

But after the state had been corrupted by luxury and sloth, the country on the other hand thanks to its greatness supported the vices of generals and officials and, as if their ancestral qualities had been exhausted [?], in many generations there was barely anyone in Rome outstanding in virtue. But in my recollection there were two men of great virtue, but different characters: Marcus Cato and Gaius Caesar … They were almost equal in family, age, and eloquence; their grandeur of spirit was the same, as was their glory, but they differed in other respects. Caesar's greatness was seen in his kindnesses and generosity, Cato's in his uprightness of life. Caesar became famous through his gentleness and pity, Cato had severity to give him dignity. Caesar obtained glory by giving, relieving, pardoning, Cato by his lack of bribery. In the one was a refuge for the unfortunate, in the other a danger for the evil. Caesar was praised for flexibility, Cato for constancy. Finally Caesar had inculcated into his mind work and wakefulness, attention to his friends' affairs to the detriment of his own, the refusal of nothing that was worth the giving: he desired for himself a great command, an army, a new war in which his virtue might be manifest. Cato concentrated on moderation, decency, and above all severity. He did not compete in wealth with the wealthy or in partisanship with the partisan, but competed with the active man in courage, with the moderate man in decency, with the blameless man in self-restraint. He preferred to be good than to seem so.

One may observe that Sallust here begins by recalling the Archaeology's model of the collapse of Roman morality, with the loss of virtue from the state. When, against that background, he asserts that within his recollection Caesar and Cato did possess great virtue, he invites the reader to link their qualities to those of the Roman past, to the perfect virtue of the earlier Republic that he had described before: the word virtus is stressed here, as there (cf. p. 175 above). And this is further reinforced by the fact that many of the different qualities ascribed to Caesar and Cato do indeed recall different aspects of the qualities ascribed to the early Romans. Thus Caesar's qualities include beneficiis (54.2: cf. 6.5, 9.5),⁴⁶ignoscundo (54.3; cf. 9.5), and laborare (54.4; cf. 7.5, 10.1-2); and, of course, it is in war that he seeks to exhibit his virtus (54.4; cf. 7.4). Cato shows innocentia and pudor (54.6; cf. 12.1) and is described as competing in virtus (54.6; cf. 9.2); while the final phrase—that he preferred to be good than to seem so—shows him as the reverse of the Romans in decline depicted after the fall of Carthage (54.6; cf. 10.5).⁴⁷ Both Caesar and Cato thus would appear for Sallust to be the modern exemplars of ancient virtue.

Yet against this one must set other aspects of Sallust's description. The opening phrases encourage us to see both Caesar and Cato as equal possessors of virtus, but in different ways (divorsis moribus). Nothing in the Archaeology prepares us for such an idea. There virtus appears to be a unitary phenomenon: either one possesses it, or one does not. There is no suggestion there of the possibility found in the cases of Caesar and Cato: antithetical qualities separated out into different people, yet each equally counting (so it would appear) as virtus. If ancient virtue is to be seen in Caesar and Cato, it appears to have been fragmented.⁴⁸

Moreover, it is not only virtue in general that appears to have been fragmented here, but the virtue of Cato the Censor in particular. Cicero addressing the Younger Cato in Pro Murena 66 had described the Censor as follows:

quemquamne existimas Catone, proavo tuo, commodiorem, communiorem, moderatiorem fuisse ad omnem rationem humanitatis? … si illius comitatem et facilitatem tuae gravitati severitatique asperseris, non ista quidem erunt meliora, quae nunc sunt optima, sed certe condita incundius.

Do you consider that anyone was more agreeable, more affable, more moderate than your great-grandfather Cato in every aspect of humaneness? … If you sprinkle his civility and flexibility onto your seriousness and severity, those qualities will not indeed be improved, since they are now excellent, but at least seasoned more pleasantly.

The importance of the interaction of harsher and softer virtues was a standard Roman topos: Cicero here shows that it was associated with the Censor in particular (see also below for an indication that Sallust may have had the Pro Murena in mind when writing this synkrisis).⁴⁹ The Younger Cato of the synkrisis is recognizably the same character as Cicero addressed; while the additional virtues ascribed to his great-grandfather are here applied to Caesar alone. There are other allusions also. It is well known that the statement that Cato did not ‘compete in wealth with the wealthy’ is derived from a saying of the Censor himself about his own behaviour: ‘I prefer to strive in virtue with the most virtuous than in wealth with the richest and in avarice with the most avaricious.’⁵⁰ The Younger Cato is thus described in terms that recall his great-grandfather. But so too is Caesar: in an earlier passage of Pro Murena (32) Cicero says of the Censor ‘quo quidem in bello virtus enituit egregia M. Catonis, proavi tui’ (‘in that war the noble virtue of your great-grandfather M. Cato was manifest’). Sallust appears to be alluding to that phrase in his description of Caesar here (54.4). Caesar and the Younger Cato are splitting between them the qualities of Cato the Censor.

Moreover, ancient virtue as well as being fragmented appears to have some problematic gaps. In the cross-references connecting the qualities of Caesar and Cato with those of the Romans of the Archaeology, there are three striking omissions. The key virtues assigned to Caesar and Cato are mansuetudo and misericordia for Caesar, and severitas for Cato: this is especially significant in the context of the Catilinarian debate, where the point at issue is precisely whether Caesar's lenient approach or Cato's severe one is more appropriate.⁵¹ Yet none of these key virtues appears at all in the Archaeology: nothing there allows us to judge whether Caesar's gentleness and pity or Cato's severity makes the one or the other the true heir to the heroic past. Conversely, the virtue of aequitas or iustitia, which plays a central role in the Archaeology (9.3, 10.1; cf. also p. 175 above),⁵² is ascribed to neither man here: we are not allowed to draw the easy conclusion that either Caesar or Cato, in advocating their respective policies towards the conspirators, has justice on his side. If the synkrisis in some sense places the seal on the debate scene, it does so only by leaving the points at issue troublingly open.

What, then, of the debate itself? It is striking that, in one sense, the arguments of Caesar and Cato fail to engage with each other. Caesar concentrates the bulk of his fire on the question of precedent, and largely lets the wider issues of the immediate danger to the state and the viciousness of contemporary Rome go by the board. Cato, on the other hand, deals almost entirely with the moral degeneracy of his contemporaries, and their consequent failure to respond to the threat posed by Catiline: the question of precedent is generally ignored by him. Of this latter speech it has often been observed that its language and themes correspond closely to the moral and political analysis that Sallust had earlier put forward in his own voice, and that accordingly the reader is left with the distinct impression that Sallust is endorsing Cato's opinion on the necessity of executing the conspirators (see further below, p. 190).⁵³

Cato's speech is not only Sallustian, however: it also appears to be Catonian. Near the start Sallust writes (52.4; cf. 52.35):

nam cetera maleficia tum persequare, ubi facta sunt; hoc nisi provideris ne adcidat, ubi evenit, frustra iudicia inplores: capta urbe nihil fit relicui victis.

For other crimes you may pursue when they occur: but this one, unless you take care that it does not happen, when it arises you will beg in vain for justice: once a city has been captured nothing is left for the defeated.

This closely resembles Lycurgus, Against Leocrates 126:⁵⁴

τω̑ν μὲν γὰρ ἄλλων ἀδικημάτων ὑστἐραs δει̑ τετάχθαι τὰs τιμωρίαs, προδοσίαs δὲ καὶ δήμου καταλύσεωs προτἐραs.

For in the case of other wrongs vengeance must be arranged afterwards, but in the case of treachery and overthrow of the people it must be beforehand.

However, there is nothing in Lycurgus corresponding to Sallust's final phrase; and it is worth pointing also to a saying of Cato, itself dependent upon Lycurgus, quoted by Vegetius, De Re Militari 1.13 (= Cato, De Re Militari fr. 3):⁵⁵

in aliis rebus … siquid erratum est, potest corrigi; proeliorum delicta emendationem non recipiunt, cum poena statim sequatur errorem.

In other matters … if there is any mistake, it can be corrected; but the faults of battles do not allow correction, since the penalty follows them instantly.

The quotation, as Jordan suggests,⁵⁶ presumably comes from Cato's De Re Militari, which Vegetius cites (probably indirectly) several times elsewhere.⁵⁷ It adapts what was originally a political statement to a military context. The context in Sallust is itself, of course, a political one not dissimilar to Lycurgus': however, the imagery he employs (persequare, capta urbe, victis) is military. This suggests a double allusion, a ‘two-tier reference’ via Cato's work back to Lycurgus', carrying with it some of the connotations of both.⁵⁸ The use of such military phrasing is especially important in establishing the conspirators not merely as an internal threat, but as the equivalent of an external enemy such as those about whom the Censor was writing: however, as will shortly be seen (below, pp. 185-8), the implications of such an equivalence are more double-edged than may at first sight appear.

Various other sentiments in the speech have also been suggested to depend on sayings of the Censor;⁵⁹ and the phrase used of Cato following his speech, ‘clarus et magnus habetur’ (‘he was thought famous and great’), links that speech to his great-grandfather, who used a similar phrase allusively of himself at the opening of the Origines (fr. 2, quoted above, p. 174).⁶⁰ Moreover, there is a strong overlap between certain themes and phrases of this speech and that put into the mouth of the elder Cato at Livy 34.2-4—in particular 52.7 is very close to Livy 34.4.1-2.⁶¹ It is, of course, possible that Livy is here imitating Sallust; but the fact that this speech in Livy appears in some other respects to be employing Catonian phraseology and ideas⁶² makes it plausible to suggest that similarities between it and Sallust are the result of both authors' depending on Catonian models—or at any rate that Livy saw this speech in Sallust as being significantly Catonian. Cato's attack on contemporary Roman mores, like Sallust's in his own voice (above, pp. 177-8), thus recalls the Censor's similar attacks on his own contemporaries.

But if Cato's speech is generally being written by Sallust to appear ‘Catonian’, one allusion in it is more problematic. At 52.8 Cato says ‘qui mihi atque animo meo nullius umquam delicti gratiam fecissem, haud facile alterius lubidini male facta condonabam’ (‘I who would never have given any indulgence to myself and my mind was not going to excuse easily the evils of another's lust’). This recalls a saying of the elder Cato quoted by Plutarch, Cato Maior 8.9 (cf. Apophthegms 198E): συγγνώμην ἔφη διδόναι πα̑σι τοι̑s ἁμαρτάνουσι πλὴν αὑτου̑ (‘he said that he pardoned every sinner except himself’). However, Sallust in alluding to this saying reverses its sentiment. His Cato, very pointedly unlike the Censor, holds others to the same standards as those which he holds himself. And this is especially important when we recall that ‘pardoning’—ignoscundo—is a quality that in the synkrisis is ascribed to Caesar, and a respect in which he recalls the virtues of primitive Rome (above, p. 181). As before, Caesar as well as Cato is shown by Sallust as exhibiting ‘Catonian’ characteristics: Cato himself, for all his Catonian speech, partially lacks such characteristics.

Cato's speech is problematic in another way. As was said above, his response to Caesar misses Caesar's key argument about precedent (on which see further pp. 185-90 below). Caesar claimed that executing the conspirators was contrary to ancestral precedent. Although Cato's final sententia refers to ‘ancestral custom’ (52.36: more maiorum), the only point at which he directly challenges this argument of Caesar's is at 52.30-1:

apud maiores nostros A. Manlius Torquatus bello Gallico filium suom, quod is contra imperium in hostem pugnaverat, necari iussit, atque ille egregius adulescens inmoderatae fortitudinis morte poenas dedit: vos crudelissumis parricidis quid statuatis cunctamini?

Among our ancestors Aulus Manlius Torquatus in the Gallic war ordered his son to be killed, because he had fought the enemy against orders. That noble young man was executed for excessive courage: are you hesitating what you should decree for the cruellest parricides?

This is the sole exemplum that Cato brings forward to show that executing the conspirators conforms to Roman tradition. Yet it is a very uncomfortable example. It is the very story that Sallust alluded to in the Archaeology, and which, as I suggested above (pp. 176-7), was usually seen by the Romans as an example not to be imitated but avoided: an example of strictness excessive to the point of cruelty.⁶³ Its introduction in the Archaeology appeared to show something disturbing underlying Sallust's Catonian history. Similarly, the very fact that it recurs here, in identical language (note 9.4: ‘eos qui contra imperium in hostem pugnaverant’), as the sole example that Cato brings to counter Caesar's arguments about precedent, in effect demonstrates the opposite of what it was meant to prove: far from endorsing the execution of the conspirators as part of Roman tradition, it indicates the degree to which such a policy runs against what was best in that tradition.

The same point further emerges from Caesar's speech, where there are several examples to demonstrate that mercy to the conspirators would be correct according to precedent. Three such precedents in particular, however, are worth looking at more closely. He twice (51.22, 51.39-40) refers to the lex Porcia de provocatione, which provided sanctions to protect citizens from flogging. It is not certain that Cato the Censor was the actual promulgator of this law, but it looks at least plausible from Orationes, fr. 117: ‘si eum percussi, saepe incolumis abii; praeterea pro re publica, pro scapulis atque aerario multum rei publicae profuit’ (‘If I struck him, I often departed unharmed; besides it was a great profit to the state on behalf of the state, the shoulders and the treasury’).⁶⁴ Hence the reference to this law here is especially pointed: the policy shortly to be advocated by the Younger Cato will be going not only against Roman precedent in general, but the precedent set by his famous ancestor in particular. Once again, it is Caesar as much as the Younger Cato who can claim to be the Censor's heir.

A similar conclusion may be drawn from Caesar's citation of Roman treatment of the Rhodians (51.5):

Bello Macedonico, quod cum rege Perse gessimus, Rhodiorum civitas magna atque magnifica, quae populi Romani opibus creverat, infida atque advorsa nobis fuit; sed postquam bello confecto de Rhodiis consultum est, maiores nostri, ne quis divitiarum magis quam iniuriae causa bellum inceptum diceret, inpunitos eos dimisere.

In the Macedonian War, which we waged with King Perses, the great and magnificent state of Rhodes, which had grown with the help of the Roman people, was faithless and against us. But when the war ended and consideration was given to the Rhodians' case, our ancestors sent them away unpunished, so that no one should say that the war was undertaken more for the sake of their wealth than of their wrongdoing.

This alludes to what was probably Cato's most famous speech, famous not least because he actually incorporated it into his historical narrative in the Origines:⁶⁵ his defence of the Rhodians. Here too Caesar shows himself to be acting according to Catonian precedent in particular:⁶⁶ the Younger Cato is implicitly doing the contrary. Moreover, Cato's speech, according to Gellius 6.3.52, itself appealed to past precedent in support of its case:⁶⁷ by alluding to it here, Caesar not only models himself upon Cato, but indirectly bolsters his argument that the whole weight of Roman tradition was on the side of mercy—Caesar is following Cato, who in turn was acting in accordance with ancestral values.

But it is worth considering the detail of Cato's speech further (it is the speech of his for which the longest fragments and testimonia survive). He opened with a striking generalization (Orationes, fr. 163, cited as the opening of the speech by Gellius 6.3.14):

scio solere plerisque hominibus rebus secundis atque prolixis atque prosperis animum excellere atque superbiam atque ferociam augescere atque crescere. quo mihi nunc magnae curae est, quod haec res tam secunde processit, ne quid in consulendo advorsi eveniat, quod nostras secundas res confutet, neve haec laetitia nimis luxuriose eveniat. advorsae res edomant et docent, quid opus siet facto, secundae res laetitia transvorsum trudere solent a recte consulendo atque intellegendo. quo maiore opere dico suadeoque, uti haec res aliquot dies proferatur, dum ex tanto gaudio in potestatem nostram redeamus.

I know that in favourable, prosperous and successful times most men's minds swell and their arrogance and insolence grows and increases. Hence I am now greatly concerned, since this war has been so successful, lest something adverse turn out in deliberation, which might undermine our success, and lest this joy turn out too luxuriously. Adversity overcomes and teaches what needs doing, prosperity is accustomed through joy to push people aside from proper deliberation and understanding. Hence I emphatically say and recommend that this matter should be postponed for a few days, until we return from such great joy to self-mastery.

First of all one should note the resemblance of this to the opening of Caesar's own speech a few lines earlier (51.1):

omnis homines, patres conscripti, qui de rebus dubiis consultant, ab odio amicitia, ira atque misericordia vacuos decet.

All men, senators, who deliberate about doubtful matters, ought to be free from hatred, friendship, anger and pity.

Caesar's opening words here reproduce both the form and the general sentiment of Cato's famous opening; hence the direct references to the Rhodians shortly afterwards emphasize the extent to which Sallust is presenting Caesar as following a Catonian model.⁶⁸

Furthermore, Cato began his speech with a warning of the dangers of success, which leads people into superbia and ferocia: joy can turn out luxuriose (cf. above, p. 177). In its immediate context this is simply advising the Romans to delay for a few days after their victory to allow themselves to make their decision calmly. However, it also has other overtones: of the commonplace of the undesirability of unchallenged power for a state, and of the connection between this and moral collapse. That Cato had this idea in mind is apparent from the fragment that follows (Orationes, fr. 164, which Gellius 6.3.15 indicates to be the argument that immediately succeeds the one above), where this point is made directly.⁶⁹

atque ego quidem arbitror Rodienses noluisse nos ita depugnare, uti depugnatum est, neque regem Persen vinci. sed non Rodienses modo id noluere, sed multos populos atque multas nationes idem noluisse arbitror atque haut scio an partim eorum fuerint qui non nostrae contumeliae causa id noluerint evenire: sed enim id metuere, si nemo esset homo quem vereremur, quidquid luberet faceremus, ne sub solo imperio in servitute nostra essent. libertatis suae causa in ea sententia fuisse arbitror.

And I indeed consider that the Rhodians did not want us to fight the matter out in the way in which it was fought out, nor did they want King Perses to be defeated. But it was not only the Rhodians who did not want it, but I consider that many peoples and many nations did not want the same thing; and my view is that it was not as an affront to us that some of them did not want it to turn out like this, but they were afraid that if there was no man whom we feared, we would do whatever we pleased, lest they be under our sole rule in slavery to us. I consider that it was for the sake of their liberty that they held this view.

The same point emerges also from a controversial passage of Appian (Punica 65):

εἰσὶ γὰρ οἱ καὶ τόδε νομίζουσιν, αὐτὸν ἐs ‘Ρωμαίων σωφρονιsμὸν ἐθελη̑σαι γείτονα καὶ ἀντίπαλον αὐτοι̑s φόβον ἐs ἀεὶ καταλιπει̑ν, ἵνα μή ποτε ἐξυβρίsειαν ἐν μεγἐθει τύχηs καὶ ἀμεριμνίᾳ. καὶ τόδε οὕτω φρονη̑σαι τὸν Σκιπίωνα οὐ πολὺ ὕστερον ἐξει̑πε τοι̑s ‘Ρωμαίοιs Κάτων, ἐπιπλήττων παρωξυμἐνοιs κατὰ ‘Ρόδου.

There are also those who think that Scipio wanted for Roman self-control to leave a neighbour and counterbalance as a fear to them for ever, so that they would never act insolently in the magnitude of fortune and freedom from care. That Scipio had this intention was declared to the Romans not long after by Cato, upbraiding them for having been provoked over Rhodes.

On this reading, Appian records that Cato in the course of this speech referred to the treaty that Scipio Africanus had made with Carthage in 201 b.c., and actually attributed Scipio's motives to a desire for—in effect—metus hostilis. However, the text here is uncertain. Hoffmann persuasively argues that we should follow the oldest MS (V) in reading the second sentence καὶ τόδε οὕτω φρονη̑σαι τὸν Σκιπίωνα ὃ οὐ πολὺ ὕστερον ἐξει̑πε τοι̑s ‘Ρωμαίοιs Κάτων, ἐπιπλήττων παρωξυμνοιs κατὰ ‘Ρόδου (‘And [they think that] Scipio was thinking the same thing as Cato not long after declared to the Romans, upbraiding them for having been provoked over Rhodes’).⁷⁰ On this interpretation, Cato made no reference to Scipio or Carthage: Appian is simply comparing his own (anachronistic) explanation of Scipio's policy with comments that Cato made in a different context—namely at the opening of his speech quoted above.

However, even on Hoffmann's reading, Appian's evidence is significant for our understanding of Sallust. Even if Cato did not discuss Carthage in terms of metus hostilis, it is clear from Appian that Cato's opening statements in the speech were read (at least by later generations) as an important and famous generalization about the dangers of prosperity that one might appropriately cite in the context of metus hostilis. Caesar's allusion to Cato's speech here is thus doubly significant: it is not only that he identifies his own policy with that of his opponent's ancestor, but more specifically that the Censor's arguments on behalf of the Rhodians were famously prefaced by a warning that closely recalls the analysis that Sallust in the Archaeology had established as the key to Roman history. Sparing the Rhodians was Cato's way of resisting the decline into immorality that prosperity brings, and which Sallust has told us finally took hold with the destruction of Carthage: Sallust implicitly aligns Caesar with this policy.

That the reader is to make this connection is reinforced by the fact that immediately after his account of Rhodes, Caesar discusses Carthage directly (51.6):

item bellis Punicis omnibus, quom saepe Carthaginienses et in pace et per indutias multa nefaria facinora fecissent, numquam ipsi per occasionem talia fecere: magis quid se dignum foret quam quid in illos iure fieri posset quaerebant.

Likewise in all the Punic Wars, although the Carthaginians often committed many horrendous crimes in peace and during truces, they [the Romans] never took the opportunity to do such things themselves: they looked more for what would be worthy of themselves than what could justifiably be done to others.

In the context of the Catiline this is extremely disquieting. It recalls Sallust's statement in the Archaeology that ‘accepta iniuria ignoscere quam persequi malebant’ (‘having received an injury they preferred to pardon it than pursue it’, 9.5); yet ultimately, as Sallust has already told us, Rome did not leave Carthage unpunished but destroyed it. It might thus seem a strange example for him to have Caesar cite as an exemplum of Roman mercy, since it could appear to be no less an exexemplum of the contrary. But in fact it is dreadfully appropriate: because, in Sallust's account, the destruction of Carthage was disastrous for Rome—and that destruction was the work of Cato the Censor.⁷¹ Sallust alludes in rapid succession to the Censor's two most famous interventions in foreign affairs: the Rhodians, where he successfully argued for mercy; and Carthage, where he successfully argued for destruction—and Roman morality fell in its wake. The Younger Cato, in arguing for the execution of the conspirators, will be acting in the manner of the Censor—but it was through that aspect of the Censor that the morality he espoused was destroyed.

But Caesar's concentration on precedent has further implications. He argues not only that the execution of the conspirators would be contrary to past precedent, but also that it would itself provide a dangerous precedent for the future (51.26-36):

illis merito adcidet quicquid evenerit; ceterum vos, patres conscripti, quid in alios statuatis considerate. omnia mala exempla ex rebus bonis orta sunt. sed ubi imperium ad ignaros eius aut minus bonos pervenit, novom illud exemplum ab dignis et idoneis ad indignos et non idoneos transfertur. Lacedaemonii devictis Atheniensibus triginta viros inposuere qui rem publicam eorum tractarent … nostra memoria victor Sulla quom Damasippum et alios eius modi, qui malo rei publicae creverant, iugulari iussit, quis non factum eius laudabat? homines scelestos et factiosos, qui seditionibus rem publicam exagitaverant, merito necatos aiebant. sed ea res magnae initium cladis fuit. nam uti quisque domum aut villam, postremo vas aut vestimentum aliquoius concupiverat, dabat operam ut is in proscriptorum numero esset. ita illi quibus Damasippi mors laetitiae fuerat paulo post ipsi trahebantur, neque prius finis iugulandi fuit quam Sulla omnis suos divitiis explevit. ego haec non in M. Tullio neque his temporibus vereor, sed in magna civitate multa et varia ingenia sunt. potest alio tempore, alio consule, quoi item exercitus in manu sit, falsum aliquid pro vero credi. ubi hoc exemplo per senatus decretum consul gladium eduxerit, quis illi finem statuet aut quis moderabitur?

Whatever happens to the conspirators, they will deserve it. But you, senators, think about the precedent you are setting. All evil precedents have arisen from good measures. But when power passes to those ignorant of the case, or the less good, that new precedent is transferred from those cases which are merited and appropriate to those that are unmerited and inappropriate. The Spartans after the defeat of the Athenians placed over them thirty men to control their state. … In our memory when the victorious Sulla ordered the slaughter of Damasippus and others like him, who had grown as an evil to the state, who did not praise his deed? They said that wicked and divisive men who had harassed the state with their uprisings had rightly been killed. But that was the start of great disaster. For as each person desired someone else's house or estate, and in the end vessel or garment, he took care that the person was placed on the list of the proscribed. Thus those who had rejoiced in the death of Damasippus were shortly afterwards dragged off themselves, and there was no end to the slaughter before Sulla had glutted all his followers with wealth. My fears are not about Marcus Tullius or about now, but in a great state characters are many and varied. It can be that on another day, under another consul who likewise has control of an army, something false is believed to be true. When, following this precedent, the consul draws his sword by senatorial decree, who will set a limit to him or who will control him?

The phrase ‘vas aut vestimentum’ recalls Cato, Orationes fr. 174: ‘neque mihi aedificatio neque vasum neque vestimentum ullum est manupretiosum neque pretiosus servus neque ancilla. si quid est quod utar, utor; si non est, egeo’ (‘I have neither any building nor vessel nor garment of value nor expensive slave or maid. If there is anything I may use, I use it; if there is not, I go without it’).⁷² The Romans of Sulla's day have indeed abandoned Cato's prescription of simplicity and lack of covetousness: when he presents Caesar as warning against it, once again Sallust is aligning his position with the best of Catonian morality.

But what is the significance of Caesar's final comment? A common view is that Sallust is here covertly hinting at the behaviour of the triumvirs—and especially Octavian—in 43.⁷³ This interpretation is, however, challenged by Drummond on several grounds: that Octavian's army was privately raised, that the proscriptions were not the result of a consul drawing his sword under a senatorial decree, and that ‘falsum aliquid pro vero credi’ is hard to parallel in 43; he further argues that the ‘senatorial decree’ in question is not the senatus consultum ultimum, as usually thought, but a decree such as that proposed by Silanus at 50.4.⁷⁴ Drummond's own view (35) is that ‘the strong military colour of the passage reflects, at a more general level, the violent atmosphere of 44-3’.

Drummond's objections to the thesis that this is a specific allusion to Octavian are strong; but is he right to deny that there is a specific allusion here at all? The reason that scholars have generally sought a precise allusion is that Sallust's language appears to lead in that direction. The pointed contrast between his temporibus and alio tempore; the emphatically placed potest, the apparent precision of item, and the implied foreknowledge in ubi … eduxerit, all add up to a strong impression that Sallust, writing of course with hindsight, is directing the reader to some very precise future event. Yet it is also undeniable that there is no event between 63 and 42 that fits Caesar's description in every detail. This combination of apparent precision and absence of correspondence to any single event does more than simply reflect a general atmosphere of violence: it has the effect of inviting the reader to relate Caesar's description simultaneously to various particular events that correspond to it in some degree. There is no reason why the proscriptions of the Second Triumvirate should be the only, or even the primary, referent of the passage (the allusion to Sulla's proscriptions is simply one example of good precedents leading to bad actions in general): there are several other events that correspond even more closely. Examples include several with the senatus consultum ultimum—for, even if we accept Drummond's argument that the decree at issue here is not the SCU, Caesar's words simply refer to a consul acting per senatus decretum, and this can clearly cover the SCU exactly as it can any other senatorial decree. Thus in 48 the SCU was passed by the senate and used by Caesar's consular colleague Servilius to kill Caelius and Milo, who had raised street riots in support of a programme of debt relief; in the following year the same decree was passed against the tribune Dolabella, and many of his supporters were massacred by Antony, acting as magister equitum under Caesar's dictatorship. Both of these cases involved magistrates in command of an army killing Roman citizens without trial, just as Caesar describes in Sallust; and while the correspondence is not exact (cf. above), it is at least as close as any of the other possibilities. In other words, the evil future actions which Caesar fears will follow this precedent will be as much as anything the work of Caesar himself.

Does all of this mean that Sallust is endorsing Caesar's analysis, and implying that Cato was wrong to argue for the conspirators' execution? The close correspondence between Cato's moralistic analysis of Rome in his speech and Sallust's own (above, pp. 182-3) makes that unlikely. Rather the conclusion is far more paradoxical—and far more pessimistic. Catiline does represent a threat to Rome that has to be met in the most extreme manner: hence his treatment as in effect a foreign enemy (above, p. 184), with the implicit parallels between him and the earlier enemies of Rome that Rome—led by Cato the Censor—had the opportunity to spare or destroy. But, precisely because Catiline is a threat to Rome, he is something that can enable the Romans to act morally: he is an enemy, and so a challenge to the security of Roman power of the sort that can galvanize the Romans to virtue. But as an enemy, he needs to be destroyed—and so Rome will once again be secure from threat, and morality will once again perish. Roman history is being replayed, and a Cato is, in effect, playing the same role. Just as the Censor used his full moral weight to argue for the destruction of Carthage—and so led to the downfall of morality—so the Younger Cato is arguing for the destruction of the conspirators—and this will lead, among other things, to the excesses of Caesar, Cato's ultimate foe. As Sallust had indicated in his Preface (2.5-6), virtue leads to its own destruction.⁷⁵ Caesar meanwhile is himself the heir to the Censor in a different way: he unsuccessfully deploys Catonian precedents of mercy and forbearance—but that very lack of success will provide him with precisely the precedents that will enable the least Catonian sides of his career to come to the fore.

IV. CONCLUSION

Cato the Censor is thus not imitated casually by Sallust, but his life and works provide some of the central paradoxes through which the Catiline is to be understood. It is from the allusions to the Censor that we can understand that the apparently simple—not to say simplistic—morality of the Preface, and the Archaeology merely provides a starting point for the genuine complexity of Sallust's moral analysis. The Preface sets up the Catiline as a Catonian moral history, but contains indications that in the world in which Sallust works Cato's combination of moral activity and moral writing is no longer possible; moreover, Sallust even hints that Catonian morals are not themselves uncomplicatedly desirable. He follows this up in the Archaeology with an abridged history of Rome that is overtly presented along Catonian lines. However, his selection of the fall of Carthage as the crucial turning-point for Rome undermines this, both because Catonian allusions to moral problems demonstrate that, contrary to the overt tenor of the narrative, some of the problematic elements of Rome after the destruction of Carthage were already paralleled prior to its destruction; and because of Cato's own central role in that destruction. Even in the apparent perfection of the Republic, virtue was not as pure as Sallust suggested, and ultimately it was that very virtue that led to its own downfall. Likewise Caesar and the Younger Cato reflect in their debate the different aspects of the Censor: Caesar argues for Catonian mercy at the expense of Catonian rigour, Cato for the reverse. In the Censor these elements were combined: here they are fragmented and separated into contradictory opposites. But here, as before, the policy of moral rigour is the one that wins out at the end: for a genuine threat to the life of Rome has to meet a firm response. Catiline is that threat, as Carthage was before him: removing that threat removes the moral order that made such a victory possible in the first place, and instead allows Rome to accelerate into further disaster.

Notes

1. References in this paper to the fragments of Cato's Orationes are according to the numbering of H. Malcovati, Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta Liberae Rei Publicae (Turin, 1953³). References to the fragments of the Origines are according to the numbering of H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1914²). Fragments of Cato's other works are cited from H. Jordan, M. Catonis praeter librum de re rustica quae extant (Leipzig, 1860). Versions of the ideas developed in this paper have been tried out previously on audiences in Durham, Leeds, and Oxford, and I am grateful for the comments that I have received on those occasions. I should also like to thank for their help Christina Kraus, Damien Nelis, Clemence Schultze, and Tony Woodman.

2. Quintilian 8.3.29: ‘nec minus noto Sallustius epigrammate incessitur: et verba antiqui multum furate Catonis, / Crispe, Iugurthinae conditor historiae’ (‘Sallust is equally the object of attack from the famous epigram: “And you, the great thief of the words of ancient Cato, / Crispus, the creator of the Jugurthine history”’); Suetonius, Divus Augustus 86: ‘verbis, quae Crispus Sallustius excerpsit ex Originibus Catonis’ (‘words, which Sallustius Crispus extracted from Cato's Origines’); Suetonius, De Grammaticis 15: ‘Sallustium historicum … priscorum Catonisque verborum ineruditissimum furem’ (‘the historian Sallust … an utterly uneducated thief of ancient vocabulary (especially Cato)’); Fronto, Ad M. Caesarem 4.3.2: ‘M. Porcius eiusque frequens sectator Sallustius’ (‘M. Porcius and his constant disciple Sallust’).

3. For example F. Deltour, De Sallustio Catonis imitatore (dissertation, Paris, 1859); G. Bruennert, De Sallustio imitatore Catonis, Sisennae aliorumque veterum historicorum Romanorum (dissertation, Jena, 1873); A. Ernout, ‘Salluste et Caton’, Information Littéraire 1 (1949), 61-5; E. Skard, Sallust und seine Vorgänger (Oslo, 1956), 75-107; W. Lebek, Verba Prisca (Göttingen, 1970), 291-335.

4. See e.g. Deltour (n. 3), 43-7; F. Egermann, ‘Die Proömien zu den Werken des Sallust’, SAWW [Sitzungberichte. Akademie der Wissenschaft in Wien] 214.3 (1932), 77-8; Ernout (n. 3), 61; D. C. Earl, The Political Thought of Sallust (Cambridge, 1961), 44-5.

5. For example, Cato, Orationes frs. 18, 58, 144, 200, 221-2, Carmen de Moribus frs. 1-2; Cicero, De Divinatione 1.28; Plutarch, Cato Maior 20.5. See A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor (Oxford, 1978), 100.

6. Examples include T. F. Scanlon, Spes Frustrata (Heidelberg, 1987); W. W. Batstone, ‘The antithesis of virtue: Sallust's Synkrisis and the crisis of the late Republic’, Classical Antiquity 7 (1988), 1-29; A. T. Wilkins, Villain or Hero: Sallust's Portrayal of Catiline (New York, 1994); C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman, Latin Historians (Oxford, 1997), 10-50.

7. Cf. D. C. Earl, ‘Prologue-form in ancient historiography’, ANRW [Austlieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt] 1.2 (1972), 842-56.

8. Naturally, history is in fact covertly alluded to from the start, with, for example, the stress on the avoidance of ‘silence’ (1.1), and the importance allotted to ‘memory’ (1.3), but it is only in retrospect that their relevance to the genre of the work becomes apparent. On silentium in this passage, see A. J. Woodman, ‘A note on Sallust, Catilina 1.1’, CQ [Classical Quarterly] 23 (1973), 310.

9. Cf. A. D. Leeman, ‘Sallusts Prologe und seine Auffassung von der Historiographie. I: Das Catilina-Proömien’, Mnemosyne 7 (1954), 323-39, at 325-8.

10. Cato, Orationes frs. 78, 132, 139, 142, 144, 146, Carmen de Moribus frs. 2-3; Plutarch, Cato Maior 7.1, 9.5, Apophthegms 198D; cf. Cato, Orationes fr. 111. See Astin (n. 5), 91-2.

11. Cato, Orationes frs. 58, 173, 177, 224. See Astin (n. 5), 90, 95-6.

12. This interpretation of bene dicere has been questioned, but see Leeman (n. 9), 329.

13. More common are related phrases of the form beneficium in rem publicam: see J. Hellegouarc'h, Le Vocabulaire latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la république (Paris, 1963), 168, n. 11.

14. Cato, Orationes fr. 173; cf. Skard (n. 3), 82; K. Vretska, C. Sallustius Crispus: De Catilinae Coniuratione (Heidelberg, 1976), 86.

15. This is the usual interpretation of the passage. See however Kraus and Woodman (n. 6), 15, for the alternative suggestion that the ‘return’ is to be interpreted not as Sallust resuming a prior literary activity, but as a return to politics via the medium of historiography: cf. my discussion below.

16. Note the examples at E. Herkommer, Die Topoi in den Proömien der römischen Geschichtswerke (dissertation, Tübingen, 1968), 66-7.

17. Sallust later used similar phrasing to describe Cato as he had of himself here in the Catiline: ‘Romani generis disertissimus paucis absolvit’ (Histories 1.4); see Herkommer (n.16), 155. Nepos describes Cato as recounting wars capitulatim (Cato 3.4): the precise significance of this is controversial, but it too probably indicates the brevity with which Cato summarized his narrative: see Astin (n. 5), 218; M. Chassignet, Cato: Les Origines (Paris, 1986), xv-xvi. Chassignet (xvi) further suggests that capitulatim points to Cato's selectivity in deciding what to write; if so, it may be that carptim in Sallust likewise suggests a Catonian mode of writing.

18. Cf. BJ 4.4, and see J. Marincola, Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (Cambridge, 1997), 139.

19. Leeman (n. 9), 329.

20. Leeman (n. 9), p. 329. Some MSS do in fact read actorem rerum, avoiding the ambiguity, and this reading is accepted by a minority of scholars (most notably Vretska [n. 14], 88-9). However, most editors have accepted auctorem, which has good MS authority and is supported by the quotations in Gellius 4.15.2 (in two of the three major MSS) and Charisius 1.215.28 (Keil): the corruption of auctorem to actorem in this context seems more likely than the contrary.

21. This is the usual interpretation of the sentence. J. Delz, ‘Verachtete Sallust die Beschäftigung mit der Landwirtschaft?’, MH [Mediavalia et Humanistica] 42 (1985), 168-73 argues that it should be translated ‘nor even by agriculture or hunting to spend my life concentrating on the duties of slaves’. On this interpretation, Sallust is not directly referring to a landowner's engagement in agriculture as ‘slave's work’, but is simply saying that one who does engage in it spends an excessive amount of time supervising slaves. However, even on Delz's interpretation Sallust's rejection of the Catonian lifestyle, while couched in less directly dismissive language, is still sufficiently remarkable to require comment.

22. Cato, Origines fr. 2 (from Cicero, Pro Plancio 66): ‘etenim M. Catonis illud, quod in principio scripsit originum suarum, semper magnificum et praeclarum putavi, clarorum hominum atque magnorum non minus otii quam negotii rationem exstare oportere’ (‘for I always thought that point of Marcus Cato, that he wrote at the opening of his Origines, is a splendid and distinguished one: that famous and great men ought to have available an account of their leisure [otium] no less than of their business [negotium]’).

23. This is not merely a modern association owing to the chance that Cato's De Agricultura is the only one of his works that survives complete: it is also referred to in the fragments of his other writings (esp. Ad Marcum filium fr. 6: ‘vir bonus … colendi peritus’; Orationes fr. 128: ‘ego iam a principio in parsimonia atque in duritia atque industria omnem adulescentiam meam abstinui agro colendo, saxis Sabinis, silicibus repastinandis atque conserendis’), and, most importantly, is singled out as one of his major qualities by the ancient testimonies of his life—e.g. Nepos, Cato 3.1, Livy 39.40.4, Quintilian 12.11.23, Plutarch, Cato Maior 25.1; cf. Cicero, De Senectute 51-60.

24. Various explanations have been canvassed: for example, Egermann (n. 4), 78 sees it as an example of Sallust drawing on Plato (but that in itself seems to be something that requires explanation in the light of the apparent contradiction with the ethos established elsewhere in the section). R. Syme, Sallust (Berkeley, 1964), 45-6 suggested that it was only modern agriculture to which Sallust objected, and hypothesized that there might be a response to the praise of agriculture put by Cicero into the mouth of Cato in De Senectute 51-60. (But how could a reader tell from the words ‘agrum colundo’ that it was this sort of agriculture, and not the agriculture praised by the real Cato, that was the object of Sallust's attack?) Vretska (n. 14), 108-9 has several suggestions: one (from D. C. Earl, JRS [Journal of Roman Studies] 55 [1965], 234) is that it was only an exclusive occupation on farming that was being objected to (but that hardly fits the blanket comment servilibus officiis); another is that it is manual labour that is being referred to in this way (but here too agrum colundo hardly has such a narrow connotation).

25. See Astin (n. 5), 96-7, 184-5; also Cato, Orationes frs. 148, 186, and Plutarch, Cato Maior 20.4, 20.7-8. On the high military reputation of Cato among later Roman writers, see Astin (n. 5), 49.

26. For example, Cato, Orationes frs. 94, 136, 154, 173, 177, 224. See Astin (n. 5), 63-4.

27. It is central to Plutarch's Life; see also Cato, Orationes frs. 110, 128, 141, 174, 185, 213; cf. Polybius 31.25.5; Nepos, Cato 2.3; Livy 39.2-4. See Astin (n. 5), 91-104.

28. Cf. A. D. Leeman, ‘Formen sallustianischer Geschichtsschreibung’, Gymnasium 74 (1967), 108-15, at 111-13.

29. Cf. S. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext (Cambridge, 1998), 34-47 for a discussion of how even standard topoi may in particular contexts shade into and incorporate very specific allusions to earlier texts that employed them.

30. Nepos, Cato 3.4; Pliny, Natural History 8.11.

31. Cf. A. La Penna, Sallustio e la ‘rivoluzione’ romana (Milan, 1968), 118.

32. See Cato, Origines fr. 83 for an extended example of Cato's practice in this area, along with the discussion by Astin (n. 5), 232-3.

33. Commentators (e.g. P. McGushin, C. Sallustius Crispus Bellum Catilinae: A Commentary [Leiden, 1977], 85) sometimes refer it also to the son of the dictator Postumius, who (allegedly) was similarly executed by his father: see Diodorus Siculus 12.64.3; Livy 4.29.5; Valerius Maximus 2.7.6; Aulus Gellius 1.13.10, 17.21.17. However, the association with Manlius was far more common (e.g. Cicero, Pro Sulla 32, De Finibus 1.23, 1.35; Valerius Maximus 2.7.6, 6.9.1, 9.3.4; Virgil, Aeneid 6.824-5; Seneca, Controversiae 9.2.19, 10.3.8; Aulus Gellius 9.13.20) and indeed proverbial, even to the point that Livy uses the fame of that version to deny the historicity of the Postumius story (4.29.6). That Sallust's readers would have linked the reference here to Manlius in particular is suggested by the pointed phrase contra imperium (on the use of the word imperium as a covert reference to Manlius, see R. G. M. Nisbet, ‘Notes on Horace, Epistles 1’, CQ 9 [1959], 73-7, at 73-4 = Collected Papers on Latin Literature [Oxford, 1996], 1-3), and above all by Sallust's own later reference to Manlius in almost identical language at 52.30 (see further, pp. 184-5 below).

34. It is possible that the archaism of the double -que is also relevant here, but note Lebek (n. 3), 307, n. 29.

35. It is even possible that the general sentiment was inspired by Cato, Origines fr. 82 (‘imperator noster, si quis extra ordinem depugnatum ivit, ei multam facit’, ‘our general, if anyone goes outside the line to fight, fines him’), as suggested by W. Steidle, Sallusts historische Monographien: Themenwahl und Geschichtsbild (Wiesbaden, 1958), 7, n. 6. However, the specific situation envisaged in that fragment appears to be different, and the loss of its context makes any connection no more than a tentative possibility.

36. See O. Skutsch, The Annals of Quintus Ennius (Oxford, 1985), 317; D. H. Berry, Cicero: Pro Sulla (Cambridge, 1996), 201-2. A. Feldherr, Spectacle and Society in Livy's History (Berkeley, 1998), 105-11 in a detailed study of Livy's treatment of the Manlius episode (8.7) argues that the narrative brings out a positive side as well as a negative one to Manlius' actions. Even Feldherr's analysis, however, emphasizes the inherent ambivalence of the episode, and moreover assumes that a Roman audience would in the first instance identify with the victim, and would be repelled by the consul's actions even as they learned a lesson from them.

37. Also [Sallust], Epistulae 2.3.4: even though the author is highly unlikely to be Sallust, he regularly employs Sallustian phraseology. See A. La Penna, ‘Rapere, trahere: uno slogan di Catone contra i ladri di stato?’, in S. Boldrini et al. (eds), Filologia e forme letterarie: studi offerti a Francesco della Corte, vol. 2 (Urbino, 1987), 103-10 at 103-4.

38. La Penna (n. 37).

39. Earl (n. 4), 42-6; McGushin (n. 33), 87-8.

40. BJ 41.2-3, Histories 1.11-12; the phrase metus hostilis appears in BJ 41.2, and metus Punicus in Histories 1.12.

41. So e.g. La Penna (n. 31), 39, 232-3; G. Bonamente, ‘Il “metus Punicus” e la decadenza di Roma in Sallustio, Agostino ed Orosio’, GIF [Giornale Italiano di Filologia] 27 (N.S. 6) (1975), 137-69 at 144-9. See, however, B. Latta, ‘Der Wandel im Sallusts Geschichtsauffassung vom Bellum Catilinae zum Bellum Iugurthinum’, Maia 40 (1988), 271-88, who has a similar, but more nuanced position: he denies the relevance of metus hostilis (cf. also n. 43 below), but argues that fortuna does not represent an external irrational power, but the psychological irrationality which causes the Romans' moral collapse at the moment of their imperial success. Latta's position is thus not far from Heldmann's (notes 42 and 43 below), in that he accepts that Sallust is presenting a close (albeit not inevitable) connection between unchallenged power and moral decline (esp. pp. 274-5), but his analysis of the role of fortuna, and hence of the general causal sequence, is somewhat different.

42. See especially the careful argument of K. Heldmann, Sallust über die römische Weltherrschaft (Stuttgart, 1993), 93-117, who relates the notion of fortuna in this passage to 2.5 ‘fortuna simul cum moribus immutatur’ (108-9), arguing that it represents only the turn of events resulting from a change in Rome's morals, not an independent irrational force.

43. Earl (n. 4), 47-8 and Vretska (n. 14), 203-6 set out the theme's earlier history: both refer this passage uncomplicatedly to metus hostilis. Heldmann (n. 42), 110-12 has certain reservations about this, arguing that Sallust deliberately avoids stating the concept so as not to attribute the earlier rise of Rome to external factors rather than to the Romans' intrinsic virtue, as the earlier part of the Archaeology had indicated (cf. Latta [n. 41], 277, though his general analysis is different—see note 41 above). According to Heldmann, the reason that fortuna is introduced is in order to cover the lack of a precise description of how the causal connection between imperial success and moral disaster is operating. However, I cannot go along with Heldmann in his further suggestion (pp. 105-6) that Sallust's phrasing leaves it ambiguous whether the destruction of Carthage or some earlier date formed the real turning-point. The phrase aemula imperi Romani directly before cuncta maria terraeque patebant shows that it is Carthage that Sallust is identifying as the single barrier to Rome's unchallenged success, while the emphatic ab stirpe interiit points to its final destruction as the single key moment in the creation of that success.

44. The earliest attestation of the story is in Diodorus 34.33.3-6; the original source is usually thought to have been Posidonius (e.g. U. Hackl, ‘Poseidonios und das Jahr 146 v. Chr. als Epochendatum in der antiken Historiographie’, Gymnasium 87 [1980], 151-66), but it may go back to Rutilius Rufus (e.g. M. Gelzer, ‘Nasicas Widerspruch gegen die Zerstörung Karthagos’, Philologus 86 [1931], 261-99, at 270-2 = Kleine Schriften II [Wiesbaden, 1963], 39-72 at 47-9). Its historicity is defended by Gelzer and attacked by W. Hoffmann, ‘Die römische Politik des 2. Jahrhunderts und das Ende Karthagos’, Historia 9 (1960), 309-44; but, in either case, the story must have been firmly established in the historical tradition by Sallust's day.

45. According to Skard (n. 3), 81, the phrase ‘nationes ferae et populi ingentes’ (10.1), with which this passage is introduced, is an imitation of Cato, Orationes fr. 164.4: ‘multos populos et multas nationes’. If so, it would reinforce the idea that the reader is to see the passage with Cato in mind; but see contra Vretska (n. 14), 200.

46. This connection is seen by B. Shimron, ‘Caesar's place in Sallust's political theory’, Athenaeum 45 (1967), 335-45, at 331-2. However, he tries to convert it into a criticism of Caesar by suggesting that Sallust meant this as a virtue only in foreign affairs; but note 6.5 ‘domi militiaeque’.

47. Vretska (n. 14), 635-6. The phrase is, of course, also a direct imitation of Aeschylus, Septem 592: on the implications of the imitation see R. Renehan, ‘A traditional pattern of imitation in Sallust and his sources’, CPh [Classical Philology] 71 (1976), 97-105 at 97-9.

48. Cf. Leeman (n. 28), 113-14; McGushin (n. 33), 311. On the internal conflicts and contradictions in Sallust's presentation of virtus in the synkrisis, see above all Batstone (n. 6). My argument in these paragraphs may be seen as in some respects complementing Batstone's discussion.

49. On the relevance to the synkrisis of the descriptions of Cato the Censor in Pro Murena, see Batstone (n. 6), 18-19, 22-3.

50. Plutarch, Cato Maior 10.4.

51. It is true that Caesar at 51.1-4 (in imitation of Diodotus at Thucydides 3.48.1) denies that in arguing for leniency he is swayed by misericordia, but the very stress on this quality in the synkrisis suggests that he is being disingenuous, as indeed does the fact that the phrase ‘mansuetudine et misericordia’ in 54.2 alludes to Cato's use of similar phrases at 52.11 and 52.27 to describe the claims of those opposing the conspirators' execution.

52. On the centrality of aequitas and iustitia in Sallust's picture of Rome's rise to power, see Heldmann (n. 42), 55-7, 102-5.

53. See e.g. Steidle (n. 35), 24-5; Earl (n. 4), 97-8; A. Drummond, Law, Politics and Power: Sallust and the Execution of the Catilinarian Conspirators (Stuttgart, 1995), 74.

54. See Vretska (n. 14), 568 for a close comparison of the Sallustian and the Lycurgan passages.

55. Skard (n. 3), 86-7.

56. Jordan (n. 1), 81.

57. On Cato and Vegetius, see N. P. Milner, Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science (Liverpool, 1993), xvii-xviii, 15.

58. On this allusive technique in Latin literature, see J. C. McKeown, Ovid: Amores. Text, Prolegomena and Commentary, vol. 1 (Liverpool, 1987), 37-45.

59. For example, Skard (n. 3), 87 sees the sentiments of 52.12 (‘sint sane, quoniam ita se mores habent, liberales ex sociorum fortunis, sint misericordes in furibus aerari’) as recalling Cato, Orationes fr. 224 (‘fures privatorum furtorum in nervo atque in compedibus aetatem agunt, fures publici in auro atque in purpura’), and in an intricate argument (pp. 87-9) suggests that 52.22 may likewise come from Cato. Both of these, however, are less certain.

60. So Skard (n. 3), 81; also Vretska (n. 14), 609, who points out that the collocation is surprisingly uncommon.

61. Skard (n. 3), 90-1.

62. That Livy wrote Cato's speech in 34.2-4 in a style to resemble Cato is argued at great length by I. Paschkowski, Die Kunst der Reden in der 4. und 5. Dekade des Livius (Kiel, 1966), 107-25, 248-67; cf. H. Tränkle, Cato in der vierten und fünften Dekade des Livius (Mainz, 1971), 11-16, who denies Paschowski's claim that the speech is stylistically Catonian, but argues that its arguments and themes are nevertheless derived from Cato's writings. J. Briscoe, A Commentary on Livy Books XXXIV-XXXVII (Oxford, 1981), 40-2 is sceptical of the overall argument, but accepts some of the individual references (cf. also his notes on 34.2.13-3.3, 34.3.9, 34.4.2, 34.4.3, 34.4.14).

63. It is true that Cicero, Pro Sulla 32, like Cato here, uses Torquatus as an example to justify the execution of the conspirators. However, the logic in Cicero is rather different. In the Pro Sulla the focus is less on the use of Torquatus as a precedent, but rather on the inappropriateness of Torquatus' descendant (the prosecutor in the case) blaming Cicero for an action that was more justified than his ancestor's. Moreover, in Cicero the justification is in both cases prospective: Torquatus killed his son ‘to strengthen command over others’ (‘ut in ceteris firmaret imperium’), and similarly the state killed its enemies ‘in order not itself to be killed by them’ (‘ne ab eis ipsa necaretur’). In Sallust, on the other hand, the focus at this point in the speech is on the death penalty as a punishment (‘quod is contra imperium in hostem pugnaret’, ‘inmoderatae fortitudinis morte poenas dedit’), which thus appears to be trying to address directly—however inadequately—Caesar's claim that such a penalty was unprecedented.

64. There were in fact three leges Porciae on this subject from the early second century b.c.: the precise details are unclear. Not all of the laws were passed by Cato the Censor, and it is possible that none was, but the evidence suggests that he was certainly associated with them in some way. See Astin (n. 5), 21-3.

65. See Livy 45.25.3; also Gellius 6.3.7.

66. Syme (n. 24), 112-13.

67. Gellius 6.3.52: ‘nunc mansuetudinis maiorum, nunc utilitatis publicae commonefacit’.

68. Lebek (n. 3), 305.

69. Cf. H. Bellen, Metus Gallicus—Metus Punicus; zum Furchtmotiv in der römischen Republik (Mainz, 1985), 31.

70. Hoffman (n. 44), 318-23; contra Bellen (n. 69), 28-9.

71. It is worth observing in this context that the phrase nefaria facinora that Caesar uses to describe the crimes of Carthage appears to be a Catonian one: see Orationes, fr. 59; cf. frs. 62, 177.

72. Skard (n. 3), 80. Vretska (n. 14), 551 denies the Catonian allusion on the grounds that the phrase nec vas nec vestimentum appears also in Terence, Heautontimorumenos 141, suggesting that it is a general archaic formula. However Terence might well himself have been imitating Cato's phrase (as indeed is suggested by ancillas servos in his next line): the speech in question (the De sumptu suo) was probably delivered in 164 (Astin [n. 5], 107-8), while the Heautontimorumenos was first performed in 163. It should also be pointed out that word aedificatio immediately preceding in Cato makes the parallel with Sallust that much closer (note 51.33: domum aut villam).

73. For example Syme (n. 24), 121-3; V. Pöschl, ‘Die Reden Caesars und Cato in Sallusts “Catilina”’, in V. Pöschl (ed.), Sallust, Wege der Forschung 94 (Darmstadt, 1970), 368-97 at 385; Vretska (n. 14), 552.

74. Drummond (n. 53), 33-6; also 79-81 for the argument that Sallust is not presenting the SCU as relevant to the Caesar-Cato debate.

75. Cf. Vretska (n. 14), 606-7: ‘Catos Antrag zwar einen Brutherd moralischen Verfalls für den Augenblick vernichtete, aber ein böses exemplum für die Zukunft wurde, Caesars Antrag zwar dieses exemplum vermieden, vielleicht—so dürfen wir weiter denken—die späteren Ereignisse verhindert oder ihnen doch ein naheliegendes exemplum genommen hätte, für den Augenblick aber der Verschwörung hätte starken Auftrieb geben können’.