• DOI:10.1086/366238
• Corpus ID: 162050128

A Traditional Pattern of Imitation in Sallust and His Sources

@article{Renehan1976ATP,
  title={A Traditional Pattern of Imitation in Sallust and His Sources},
  author={Robert Renehan},
  journal={Classical Philology},
  year={1976},
  volume={71},
  pages={97 - 105}
}

• R. Renehan
• Published 1 January 1976
• History
• Classical Philology

W E NOW recognize that in the view of the ancients a poet's originality was not diminished by his use of old material, but rather displayed in his ingenious adaptation of that material to his own purposes; what is true of poetic technique is also true of thought."' What Lloyd-Jones here states of ancient poetry is equally applicable to ancient prose. In the case of Sallust, it was already known in antiquity that his writings contained many imitations of earlier authors, both Greek and Roman; and, while the old sneer of Pompeius Lenaeus, "priscorum Catonis verborum ineruditissimus fur," is familiar, the judgment of a modern critic, Eiliv Skard, is both fairer and more accurate: ". . . fulr Sallust war das Wichtigste nicht, durch Neues zu glanzen, sondern im Bekannten gross zu sein. '2 In his imitations Sallust does not confine himself merely to borrowing lapidary phrases introduced arbitrarily into his work. Rather, his borrowings are sometimes taken from passages which show a context similar to that of the corresponding Sallustian passage. To take an obvious example, in discussing the decline of morals at Rome, Sallust makes much use of Thucydides' famous Corcyrean Digression. Perrochat correctly remarks ". Salluste se sert de ces textes [sc. Thucydides 3. 81-85], sur les revolutions et la decadence morale et civique des cites grecques, pour parler de faits analogues 'a Rome."3 Clearly, by taking over expressions which Thucydides uses in his account of Greek stasis and applying them to res Romanae, Sallust is making an implicit judgment on Rome: As Greece was then, so Rome is now. This technique of criticizing indirectly, by means of an artistic use of traditional material, is far more effective than a bald statement of opinion would have been. It seems to have gone all but unnoticed that Sallust is a master of this delicate device. The purpose of the present paper is to attempt to demonstrate his mastery from examples. In each instance an examination of the original context of the borrowed material will reveal a value-judgment of Sallust himself, a judgment which has determined the choice of the particular passage to be imitated.