repeated expressions of a stern morality excited both his contemporaries and subsequent writers to hunt up and divulge any moral foibles in his life and character, especially as in his compositions he struck into a new path, by abandoning the ordinary style, and artificially reviving the ancient style of composition. [1] This strange account is found in Hieronymus's first work against Jovinianus, towards the end; and it becomes still more strange by the addition, that Terentia was married a third time to the orator Messalla Corvinus (who was consul with Augustus, B. C. 91):--_Illa_ (Terentia) _interim conjunx egregia, et quae de fontibus Tullianis hauserat sapientiam, nupsit Sallustio, inimico ejus, et tertio Messallae Corvino: et quasi per quosdam gradus eloquentiae devoluta est._ It almost appears as if in this tradition it had been intended to mark three phases in the style of Roman oratory, for Sallust was twenty years younger than Cicero, and Messalla nearly as many years younger than Sallust. The historical works of Sallust are, _De Bello Catilinae_, _De Bello Jugurthino_ (or the two _Bella_, as the ancients call them), and five books of _Historiae_--that is, a history of the Roman republic during the period of twelve years, from the death of Sulla in B. C. 78, down to the appointment of Pompey to the supreme command in the war against Mithridates in B. C. 66. This history was regarded by the ancients as the principal work of our author; but is now lost, with the exception of four speeches and two political letters, which some admirer of oratory copied separately from the context of the history, and which have thus been preserved to our times. The two _Bella_, which are preserved entire, form the contents of the present volume. The work _De Bella Catilinae_ formed the beginning of his historical compositions, as is clear from the author's own introduction; but it was not written till after the murder of Caesar in B. C. 44. In it he describes the conspiracy of L. Sergius Catilina, a man of noble birth and high rank, but ruined circumstances; its discovery, and the punishment of the conspirators at Rome in B. C. 63; and its final and complete suppression in a pitched battle at the beginning of the year B. C. 62. The _Bellum Jugurthinum_ treats of the life of Jugurtha, who in B. C. 118, together with his cousins, Adherbal and Hiempsal, governed Numidia. Having crushed his two cousins by fraud and violence, Jugurtha afterwards maintained himself in his usurped kingdom for several years against the Roman armies and generals that were sent out against him, until in the end, after several defeats sustained at the hands of the Roman consuls, L. Metullus and C. Marius, his own ally, Bocchus, king of Mauretania, delivered him up into the hands of the Roman quaestor, L. Sulla.