res gestas populi Romani results from the challenge of matching the quality of virtus to the record of public action. As actions and honors no longer in themselves reveal the character of men, res gestae must give way to panegyric, and both the reader and the potential actor will need to find an alternative to political success to create a memory of themselves. This notion of a virtus that stands apart from achievements becomes so pervasive in the literature of the period as to appear as a commonplace, but it is no less important for that. Virtus above all transcends temporal limits. Thus, after the death of his friend Scipio, Cicero’s Laelius will say, “he lives for me because I loved the virtus of the man, which has not been snuffed out” (mihi quidem Scipio, quamquam est subito ereptus, vivit tamen semperque vivet; virtutem enim amavi illius viri, quae extincta non est, Cic. Amic. 102). Virtus also follows the exile across spatial boundaries, as is shown by a sententia preserved by Seneca from a late Republican treatise de Virtute (On Virtue) whose author considered it “sufficient that it is permitted for those going into exile to bring their own virtutes with them” (quod licet in exilium euntibus uirtutes suas secum ferre, Sen. Helv. 8.1).
The author of this recognition that virtutes come in individual travel sizes, independent of the dimensions of space and time that Rome’s political imperium strives to measure and control, was Brutus himself. And this third lost work, de Virtute, represents the last of the three discourses against which I want to read the Catiline, philosophy. For, if the formal aspect of Sallust’s prefaces suggests an engagement with epideictic oratory, the substance of these openings comes from philosophy. And the connection between the two alternatives to history will be obvious. The ethical philosophy Sallust presents in his openings will be true for all people in all times. Also, it proposes a system of value, and a way of describing action, that liberates the individual from the judgment of the state, from the exchange of praise and blame that, far from measuring worth from a position outside history, has been made subject to the historical transformations of the res publica. Of course, Sallust was not the only writer to import the language of philosophy into history, to challenge Aristotle’s claim that history was inevitably less philosophical than poetry because of its intrinsic connection with the specific rather than the general (Poet. 9=1451b). But here too, just because the incorporation of philosophy and history was possible, does not mean it was inevitable or unproblematic.19 In the remainder of this chapter, I will take the approach that Sallust does not so much take over a tradition of generic blending but draws attention to the relationship between the aims of history and philosophy, and in doing so he evokes that contrast with which we began between a point of view of the Roman past located outside of it and of the temporal continuities that continue to control the audience’s understanding of the text and draw them back to the position of those spectators of Catiline’s corpse.
My effort at complication begins by challenging what may seem the most obvious path for harmonizing Sallust’s philosophical perspective on events with the expected aims of historiography. If Sallust’s readers could simply recognize true virtus, and if they could actualize their own virtue in a way that made it independent of fama, then ambition and avarice would fall away. A new consensus on what virtue was could provide the basis for a collective evaluation of behavior that makes attention to individual worth not an escape route from history but a new basis for a shared history.20 Yet the quote Seneca preserves from Brutus’ de Virtute about virtutes as present comforts for exiles suggests another alternative.21 The recognition of virtus becomes something readers can take with them as they look in on the res publica from outside, not an exhortation to act but a consolation or validation for those who have not won honores in the traditional way, and perhaps even a spiritual exercise for those who are learning to put virtus ahead of other apparent goods. Whether the “utility” of Sallust’s text will reside in persuading people to act virtuously in the res publica or in accepting their separation from it depends in part upon historical circumstances beyond his control, the political fortunes of the state and his individual readers. But it also depends on the prior generic assumptions those readers will make, themselves doubtless conditioned by their own situations, about whether they are reading philosophy or history. In this way the generic openness of the works becomes dynamic and interacts with a reader’s sense of position in the civic order. Reading in otium can set the stage for a more abstracted, philosophical perspective on the past. Having been witness to events, or connected to those who were, or imagining them in the present, by contrast, draws the reader into an economy of judgment and emulation.
As the final stage of my demonstration of the importance of temporal perspective for making sense of Sallust, I want to show how the opening of the Catiline stages the tension between the timeless truths of philosophy and history’s account of passing time.22 The generic interference of philosophy teaches its audience how to read history in two important ways. First, it continually raises the question of how to view the recent past, with a recognition of the temporal continuities that make the audience’s reading contingent upon the history the text describes, or from the perspective of a philosophical audience, taking their virtues with them as they depart from Rome. Equally important will be the image we form of the nature of Sallust’s own language, for consideration of that key term virtus, where the twin discourses of history and philosophy intersect, makes the reader decide both whether Sallust’s history represents the “real reality” of history, as Aristotle suggests he should, or some more general abiding essence, and, more fundamentally, whether his words can represent anything at all.
To begin, it is important to remember that the question of how to conceptualize time is raised for the reader not just through subtle play with generic conventions, such as the retrospective contrast between claims about omnis homines and history’s focus on the increasingly fragmented parts of this whole; indeed, it is central to the argument of the passage. The distinction between what lasts and what passes away quickly structures the human individual. However, as emerges throughout the work, there are some who nevertheless focus their energies on the brief and fleeting glory of wealth and bodily attributes. There are thus those who look at themselves from the perspective of eternity and those who do not.
But as Sallust defines an audience who perceive human action from the loftier and more lasting perspective afforded by virtus, a new tension develops between the general truths articulated and the increasingly specific voice that articulates them. The differences that unfold from the initial separation of body and soul come to include the distinction between what the text says, which falls on the side of eternity, and the action of saying it.23 Batstone (1990, 120) has aptly described the first sentence’s evocation of absolute moral necessity as “making a fine promise of generalizable truth.” Its oracular authority comes from its seeming to derive from no man, much less an individual. The next sentence however gives special prominence to the possessive adjective, nostra. Such emphasis primarily points the distinction between humans and animals, but it also importantly contributes to our sense of the author behind this statement. He is one of “us”: not the voice of nature, but the voice that names nature. The final stage in the argument makes the particularization of the author even clearer. No longer one of us humans, he is now a “me,” and the conclusions he draws are a matter of opinion not authority.24 This is how things seem to him. But as the authority of the speaker contracts, the magnitude of the claim itself seems only to increase. The argument moves from an account of the bodies of animals, to a description of the divided human vis, to a virtus that is clara and aeterna.25 Not only does the crucial term virtus appear only in this climactic position in the argument, but in context it contrasts strongly with terms based on mere human appraisal. Men are responsible for giving one another glory, but virtus appears a possession, a thing that is held.26 If humans can at best create a memory that lasts as long as possible, virtue escapes those limits by becoming eternal. A sequence of thought that began with a description of downward looking animals has forced us to look up. It represents directly the attributes of a divine being, combining both apprehensibility—virtus is clara—and eternity. In the shift from glory to virtus, therefore, two transitions
