deprived of his seat in the great council of the republic; and L. Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, is said not to have opposed the partiality of his colleague in the censorship, in order to increase the number of Caesar's partisans. When, in B. C. 49, Caesar established his right by force of arms, Sallust went over to him, and was restored not only to his seat in the senate, but was advanced to the praetorship in the year B. C. 47. Sallust served, both before and during his year of office, in the capacity of a lieutenant in Caesar's armies. He also accompanied him to Africa in the war against the Pompeian party there, and after its successful termination, was left behind as proconsul of Numidia, which was made a Roman province. In the discharge of his duties, he is said to have indulged in extorting money from the new subjects of Rome. He was accused, but acquitted. This is the historical statement of Dion Cassius; but a hostile writer of doubtful authority mentions that, by paying 12,000 pieces of gold to Caesar (perhaps as damages for the injury done), he purchased his acquittal. Hereupon Sallust withdrew from public life, to devote his leisure to literature, and the composition of works on the history of his native country; for, as after the murder of Caesar, in B. C. 44, the republic was again delivered over to a state of military despotism, peaceful advice was deprived of its influence. It need hardly be mentioned that Sallust, as he had qualified himself for the highest political career, and the great offices of the republic, must have been possessed of an independent property; but the statement, that he afterwards gave himself up to a life of luxury--that he purchased a villa at Tibur, which had formerly belonged to Caesar--and that he possessed a splendid mansion, with a garden laid out with elegant plantations and appropriate buildings, at Rome, near the Colline gate--is founded on the equivocal authority of a writer of a late period, who was hostile to him. It is indeed certain that there existed at Rome _horti Sallustiani_, in which Augustus frequently resided, and which were afterwards in the possession of the Roman emperors; but it is doubtful as to whether they had been acquired and laid out by our historian, or by his nephew, a Roman eques, and particular favourite of Augustus. The statement that Sallust married Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero, is still more doubtful, and probably altogether fictitious.[1] There is, however, a statement of a contemporary, the learned friend of Cicero, M. Varro, which cannot be doubted--that in his earlier years Sallust, in the midst of the party-strife at Rome, kept up an illicit intercourse with the wife of Milo; but how much the hostility of party may have had to do with such a report, cannot be decided. In his writings, Sallust expresses a strong disgust of the luxurious mode of life, and the avarice and prodigality, of his contemporaries; and there can be no doubt that these