[93] In the sifting of less accessible authorities he is culpably careless. His account of the early history of Africa is almost worthless, though he speaks of having drawn it from the books of King Hiempsal, and taken pains to insert what was generally thought worthy of credit. It is in the delineation of character that Sallust's penetration is unmistakably shown. Besides the instances already given, we may mention the admirable sketch of Sulla, [94] and the no less admirable ones of Catiline [95] and Iugurtha. [96] His power of depicting the terrors of conscience is tremendous. No language can surpass in condensed but lifelike intensity the terms in which he paints the guilty noble carrying remorse on his countenance and driven by inward agony to acts of desperation. [97] His style is peculiar. He himself evidently imitated, and was thought by Quintilian to rival, Thucydides. [98] But the resemblance is in language only. The deep insight of the Athenian into the connexion of events is far removed from the popular rhetoric in which the Roman deplores the decline of virtue. And the brevity, by which both are characterised, while in the one it is nothing but the incapacity of the hand to keep pace with the rush of thought, in the other forms the artistic result of a careful process of excision and compression. While the one kindles reflection, the other baulks it. Nevertheless the style of Sallust has a special charm and will always find admirers to give it the palm among Latin histories. The archaisms which adorn or deface it, the poetical constructions which tinge its classicality, the rough periods without particles of connexion which impart to it a masculine hardness, are so fused together into a harmonious fabric that after the first reading most students recur to it with genuine pleasure. [99] On the whole it is more modern than that of Nepos, and resembles more than any other that of Tacitus. Its brevity rarely falls into obscurity, though it sometimes borders on affectation. There is an appearance as if he was never satisfied, but always straining after an excellence beyond his powers. It is emphatically a cultured style, and, as such often recalls older authors. Now it is a reminiscence of Homer: _aliud clausum in pectore, aliud in lingua promptum habere_; [100] now of a Latin tragedian: _secundae res sapientium animos fatigant_. Much allowance must be made for Sallust's defects, when we remember that no model of historical writing yet existed at Rome. Some of the aphorisms which are scattered in his book are wonderfully condensed, and have passed into proverbs. _Concordia parvae res crescunt_ from the _Iugurtha_; and _idem velle, idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est_, from the _Catiline_, are instances familiar to all. The prose of Sallust differs from that of Cicero in being less rhythmical; the hexametrical ending which the orator rightly rejects, is in him not infrequent. It is probably a concession to Greek habit.