Sallust's character as an historian, and his grammatical style, have been the subjects of contradictory opinions even among the ancients themselves--both his own contemporaries, and the men of succeeding ages. Some condemned his introductions, as having nothing to do with the works themselves; found fault with the minute details of the speeches introduced in the narrative; and called him a senseless imitator, in words and expressions, of the earlier Roman historians, especially of Cato. Others praised him for his vivid delineations of character, the precision and vigour of his diction, and for the dignity which he had given to his style by the use of ancient words and phrases which were no longer employed in the ordinary language of his own day. But however different these opinions may appear, there is truth both in the censure and in the praise, though the praise no doubt outweighs the censure; and the general opinion among the later Romans justly declared _primus Romana Crispus in historia_. It is obvious that it is altogether unjust to say that his introductions are unsuitable, and that the speeches he introduces are inappropriate: for an author must be allowed to write a preface to make an avowal of his own sentiments; and the speeches are inseparably connected with the forms of public life in antiquity: they are certainly not too long, and express most accurately, both in sentiment and style, the characters of the great men to whom the author assigns them. We have no hesitation in declaring that the speeches in the Catiline and Jugurtha, as well as those extracted from the _Historiae_, are the most precious specimens of the kind that have come down to us from antiquity.