From his position in public life and from his intimacy with Caesar, he had gained excellent opportunities of acquiring correct information. The desire to write history seems to have come on him in later life. Success had no more illusions for him. The bitterness with which he touches on his early misfortunes [78] shows that their memory still rankled within him. And the pains with which he justifies his historical pursuits indicate a stifled anxiety to enter once more the race for honours, which yet experience tells him is but vanity. The profligacy of his youth, grossly overdrawn by malice, [79] was yet no doubt a ground of remorse; and though the severity of his opening chapters is somewhat ostentatious, there is no intrinsic mark of insincerity about them. They are, it is true, quite superfluous. Iugurtha's trickery can be understood without a preliminary discourse on the immortality of the soul; and Catiline's character is not such as to suggest a preface on the dignity of writing history. But with all their inappropriateness, these introductions are valuable specimens of the writer's best thoughts and concentrated vigour of language. In the _Catiline_, his earliest work, he announces his attention of subjecting certain episodes of Roman history [80] to a thorough treatment, omitting those parts which had been done justice to by former writers. Thus it is improbable that Sallust touched the period of Sulla, [81] both from the high opinion he formed of Sisenna's account, and from the words _neque alio loco de Sullae rebus dicturi sumus_; [82] nevertheless, some of the events he selected doubtless fell within Sulla's lifetime, and this may have given rise to the opinion that he wrote a history of the dictator. Though Sallust's _Historiae_ are generally described as a consecutive work from the premature movements of Lepidus on Sulla's death [83] (78 B.C.) to the end of the Mithridatic war (63 B.C.); this cannot be proved. It is equally possible that his series of independent historical cameos may have been published together, arranged in chronological order, and under the common title of _Historiae_. The _Iugurtha_ and _Catilina_, however, are separate works; they are always quoted as such, and formed a kind of commencement and finish to the intermediate studies.