sullenly silent; and the new hierarchy was still at the best only half
educated. The professional man of letters was at first fostered and
subsidised; but even before the death of Augustus State patronage of
literature had fallen into abeyance, while the cultured classes fell more
and more back on the use of Greek. The varying fortunes of this struggle
between Greek and literary Latin as it had been formed under the
Republic, belong to a later period: at present we must return to complete
a general survey of the prose of the Ciceronian age.

Historical writing at Rome, as we have seen, had hitherto been in the
form either of annals or memoirs. The latter were, of course, rather
materials for history than history itself, even when they were not
excluded from Quintilian's famous definition of history[5] by being
composed primarily as political pamphlets. The former had so far been
attempted on too large a scale, and with insufficient equipment either of
research or style, to attain any permanent merit. In the ten years after
Caesar's death Latin history was raised to a higher level by the works of
Sallust, the first scientific historian whom Italy had produced.

Gaius Sallustius Crispus of Amiternum in Central Italy belonged to that
younger generation of which Marcus Antonius and Marcus Caelius Rufus were
eminent examples. Clever and dissipated, they revolted alike from the
severe traditions and the narrow class prejudices of the constitutional
party, and Caesar found in them enthusiastic, if somewhat imprudent and
untrustworthy, supporters. Sallust was expelled from the senate just
before the outbreak of the Civil war; was reinstated by Caesar, and
entrusted with high posts in Illyria and Italy; and was afterwards sent
by him to administer Africa with the rank of proconsul. There he
accumulated a large fortune, and, after Caesar's death, retired to
private life in his beautiful gardens on the Quirinal, and devoted