This new nobility was utterly corrupt; and their corruption was encouraged by the venality of the masses, whose poverty and destitution tempted them to be the tools of unscrupulous ambition. Everything at Rome, as Juvenal said in later times, had its price. Sallust adds to the severity of his strictures upon his countrymen by the force of contrast; he represents even Jugurtha as asserting that the republic itself might be bought, if a purchaser could be found; and paints the barbarian as more honest and upright than his conquerors. The ruined and abandoned associates of Catiline represented a numerous class among the younger members of the upper classes, who, by lives devoted to lawless pleasures, had become ruined, reckless, and demoralized. They were ripe for revolution, because they had nothing to lose: they could not gratify their vicious propensities without wealth; they had no principles or scruples as to the means of acquiring it; their best prospects were in anarchy, proscription, and confiscation. The debauched and ruined nobleman, and the vulgar profligate of the lowest class, forgot their mutual differences, and thus a combination was formed, the members of which were the sink and outscourings of society. Such degenerate profligacy is an ample justification of Sallust’s hatred towards the new aristocracy; and the object of all his works evidently was to place that party in the unfavourable light which it deserved. In the Jugurthine war he describes the unworthiness of the foreign policy of Rome under its maladministration. His “Histories,” according to the statement of Niebuhr, describe the popular resistance to the revolutionary policy of Sulla, the profligate leader of the same party; and in the “Catilinarian war” he paints in vivid colours the depravity of that order of society, who, bankrupt in fortune and dead to all honourable feelings, still plumed themselves on their rank and exclusiveness. Nevertheless, notwithstanding the truthfulness of the picture which Sallust draws, selfishness and not patriotism was the mainspring of his politics; and it is scarcely possible to avoid seeing that he is anxious to set himself off to the best advantage. His hollowness is that of a vain and conceited man, who measures himself by too high a standard, and appears chagrined and disappointed that others do not estimate him as highly as he does himself.