_Jugurtha_, which deals with a time two generations earlier than the date
of its composition, involved wide inquiry and much preparation. He had
translations made from original documents in the Carthaginian language;
and a complete synopsis of Roman history, for reference during the
progress of his work, was compiled for him by a Greek secretary. Such
pains were seldom taken by a Latin historian.

The last of the Ciceronians, Sallust is also in a sense the first of the
imperial prose-writers. His style, compressed, rhetorical, and very
highly polished, is in strong contrast to the graceful and fluid periods
which were then, and for some time later continued to be, the predominant
fashion, and foreshadows the manner of Seneca or Tacitus. His archaism in
the use of pure Latin, and, alongside of it, his free adoption of
Grecisms, are the first open sign of two movements which profoundly
affected the prose of the earlier and later empire. The acrid critic of
the Augustan age, Asinius Pollio, accused him of having had collections
of obsolete words and phrases made for his use out of Cato and the older
Roman writers. For a short time he was eclipsed by the glowing and
opulent style of Livy; but Livy formed no school, and Sallust on the
whole remained in the first place. The line of Martial, _primus Romana
Crispus in historia_, expresses the settled opinion held of him down to
the final decay of letters; and even in the Middle Ages he remained
widely read and highly esteemed.

Contemporary with Sallust in this period of transition between the
Ciceronian and the Augustan age is Cornelius Nepos (_circ_. 99-24 B.C.).
In earlier life he was one of the circle of Catullus, and after Cicero's
death was one of the chief friends of Atticus, of whom a brief biography,
which he wrote after Atticus' death, is still extant. Unlike Sallust,
Nepos never took part in public affairs, but carried on throughout a long