Sallust
Sallust
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust, was a Roman historian, politician, and novus homo from a provincial plebeian family. Sallust was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines and was a popularis, an opponent of the old Roman aristocracy, throughout his career, and later a partisan of Julius Caesar. Sallust is the earliest known Roman historian with surviving works to his name, of which Catiline's War, The Jugurthine War, and the Historiesare still extant. Sallust was primarily...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionHistorian
class elements world
Of the cosmic Gods some make the world be, others animate it, others harmonize it, consisting as it does of different elements; the fourth class keep it when harmonized.
elements destroyed ifs
Everything destroyed is either resolved into the elements from which it came, or else vanishes into not-being. If things are resolved into the elements from which they came, then there will be others: else how did they come into being at all?
glorious glory goes possession
The glory that goes with wealth is fleeting and fragile; virtue is a possession glorious and eternal.
man
Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.
man proverbs
Every man is the architect of his own fortune.
himself proper seeks seems serious sets task work
He only seems to me to live, and to make proper use of life, who sets himself some serious work to do, and seeks the credit of a task well and skillfully performed.
desire few majority men satisfied
Few men desire liberty; the majority are satisfied with a just master.
friendship true-friend desire
To desire the same things and to reject the same things, constitutes true friendship. [Lat., Idem velle et idem nolle ea demum firma amicitia est.]
wicked
By the wicked the good conduct of others is always dreaded.
grief make-happy joy
Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it.
fleeting wealth virtue
The glory of wealth and of beauty is fleeting and frail; virtue is illustrious and everlasting.
order cities expectations
That power of the Gods which orders for the good things which are not uniform, and which happen contrary to expectation, is commonly called Fortune, and it is for this reason that the Goddess is especially worshipped in public by cities; for every city consists of elements which are not uniform.
fear men mind
The man who is roused neither by glory nor by danger it is in vain to exhort; terror closes the ears of the mind. [Lat., Quem neque gloria neque pericula excitant, nequidquam hortere; timor animi auribus officit.]
grief
No grief reaches the dead.