Не так давно прочитал статью некоего Маккея, посвященную Саллюстию. Стремясь ответить на вопрос о причинах создания "Заговора Катилины", историческом фоне, на котором писалась эта работа, наконец, о времени создания данного произведения, автор отмечает некоторую странность в выборе темы: еще свежи были в памяти выступления Сертория и Лепида, гораздо более успешные, привлекшие невравненно большее количество сторонников, имевшие, таким образом, большее историческое значение; Саллюстий тем не менее выбирает довольно заурядное событие, пресеченное на корню, не имевшее, благодаря своевременному вмешательству властей, трагических последствий и выглядевшее значительным лишь в глазах Цицерона, но не его современников.
Автору кажется странным, что именно его Саллюстий выбрал в качестве примера падения нравов; причину, по мнению Маккея, следует искать в том, что "Заговор Катилины" был написан не в конце 40-х, как принято считать, а в середине 50-х; что данный опус представляет собой панегирик Цезарю и создан, разумеется, еще при его жизни; что Саллюстий при этом стремился угодить и нашим и вашим, чем объясняются достаточно комплиментарные отзывы в адрес Катона Младшего и Цицерона.
If we look for a time when such a presentation of Caesar might be
useful to Caesar and advantageous to Sallust, we have not far to seek.
In 50, Caesar was trying very hard to attain a second consulship within
the bounds of ostentatious legality and moderation; his opponents were
ready to blacken him and all his record with charges of revolutionary
sympathies, purposes, and activities. The Catilinarian conspiracy was
then only a dozen years in the past, and there had been no major outbreak
of revolutionary violence in the interval, to dim its colours. And in the
summer of this same year, 50, the censor Appius Claudius was conducting
a vigorous purge of the Senate, in the course of which Sallust found him-
self removed from the roll of senators, on a charge of immoral conduct.
Certainly, there is no time when Sallust would have found it more
advantageous to present himself as a champion of old-fashioned morality
and of right-thinking attitudes in politics, no time when he would be
more anxious to secure the support of a powerful leader, and no time
when such a defence of Caesar's political record and attitude would be
more acceptable to Caesar. Whatever may have been Sallust's attitude
to Caesar by 44, we need not doubt that in 50 he believed that the
election of Caesar to the consulship was in the best interests of Rome as
well as of Sallust.
It may be objected that in the Catiline as we have it, Sallust explicitly
disclaims political ambitions. But (a) this passage may have been added
at the time of final publication in the late forties, and
cool: if it was said
in 50, it was not necessarily true; Sallust might well have thought the
purposes of the pamphlet best served by assuming an air of disillusioned
disinterest.
How well does the hypothesis of composition in 50 fit the content and
handling of the Catiline? Obviously, Caesar must be Sallust's main hope;
but there is nothing to be gained by gratuitously offending other powerful
interests. Cato, whose influence would count for much, is presented in a
way that must gratify him, but at which Caesar cannot take offence. (It
must be assumed that the formal comparison was either absent from the
earlier version, or differently expressed.) The only people unqualifiedly
condemned, or presented in an unfavourable light, are those who in 50
were already dead, and consequently incapable of being any use to the
writer-the conspirators themselves, Crassus, Catulus, Piso. Nothing can
be done, in the context, for Pompey, who was absent from Rome in 63.
But if in the comment defessis et exsanguibus qui plus posset imperium
atque libertatem extorqueret (39.4) the phrase qui plus posset refers, as it
almost certainly does, to Pompey, one may ask why Sallust in 40 should
be coy about naming him directly; in 50, before Pompey had committed
himself, there would be some point to a covert warning against his reputed
ambitions. The Senate, as a whole, is treated with respect, even with
deference; disapproval is reserved for the paucorum potentia, and the
pauci are not identified. Cicero was off in Cilicia, but his potential value,
in support or in opposition, was such that he could not safely be altogether
disregarded. Extravagant praise of him would seem to promise little
reward, and he must not be allowed to encroach on Caesar, or even on
Cato, whose interest, in one side or the other, would be most effective in
securing Sallust's restitution; but his actions received a polite commenda-
tion that could, if necessary, furnish the basis for a mutually profitable
understanding.
We should, I think, consider the possibility that a first draft of the
Catiline was prepared in the late summer of 50 as part of Sallust's cam-
paign for recovery of the senatorial dignity. Sallust was a slow composer,
apparently; but it need not have taken long to write, especially as by
common consent it does not bear the marks of long and arduous research,
and it may, in its first form, have been shorter than it is now. It need
not be supposed that it ever saw general publication; I suggest that we
should give full value to Sallust's words: a quo incepto studioque me
ambitio mala detinuerat eodem regressus (4.2). He had not only been in-
terested in history, he had begun to write it; he had been diverted by
ambition, and was now beginning again precisely where he had left off.
The original work, I suggest, was prepared to be used as election material
for the consular elections in the summer of 49, as part of a normal, pacific
political campaign, in Caesar's interest. Caesar's actions at this time give
a strong impression that this is what he would have preferred, and till
the very end of the year, there were good prospects that he might attain
it. By the end of the year, the rapid movement of events had sidetracked
Sallust's literary activity. As the prospect of armed conflict increased,
the propaganda value of the pamphlet diminished, and before long both
Caesar and Sallust had much more pressing matters to think of.
Signs of a double recension may perhaps be detected in the mild
incoherence of the introductory chapters, the uncertainty about the
primacy of avarice or ambition in the corruption of society, the power of
fortuna and virtus in human affairs. It is, of course, always possible to
explain these things more simply by dismissing Sallust as a confused and
shallow thinker, or more subtly, by presenting him as a profound and
complex thinker. Without exaggerating either his profundity or his
superficiality, another explanation may be sought in the hypothesis that
for a particular purpose in the late forties he brought out, with some
revision, but less than he might have wished, a reworking of an earlier,
unpublished historical study.
How much reworking must be assumed? It would be hard even to
guess. Could the speeches have been included in an earlier draft, during
the lifetime of Caesar and Cato, especially since Caesar at least was a
very conscious stylist, and might not relish having another man's words
put in his mouth? The answer is not as simple as it might at first sight
appear. Here again we may have recourse to Cicero's letter to Lucceius.
Cicero does not explicitly say what he expects Lucceius to do about the
Catilinarian orations. He could hardly have expected him either to dis-
miss them with an orationem habuit, or, from what we know of ancient
practice, to quote them whole or in bits. The most probable solution
seems to be that Lucceius, recognized by Cicero as an independent stylist
of distinction, must have been expected to treat Cicero's speeches in
much the same way as Sallust treated those of Caesar and Cato. Since
the speeches in the Catiline expressly disclaim verbal accuracy, they are
already in a sort of sophisticated oratio obliqua. Probably at the time
Sallust composed them, no written record of either speech existed, as
written records, to which he refers the reader, did exist for Cicero's
speeches. It is not unlikely that no written record of Caesar's or of Cato's
ever had existed. Caesar was only praetor-elect, Cato tribune-elect, at
the time. Brutus' handling of the story, to which Cicero took objection
(ad Att. 12.21.1), may indicate merely that Brutus was a careless or
unscrupulous scholar, but it does not indicate the existence of a detailed
and readily available record of the debate. The official record of the trial
that Cicero had carefully had made was apparently limited, as is not
surprising, to the testimony of witnesses. Constitui senatores qui omnia
indicum dicta, interrogata, responsa perscriberent (pro Sulla 14.41). Quite
apart from the lack of a public record, we cannot expect that senators
kept full private records of their speeches in debate, or if they did, that
they made them indiscriminately available. They did not read from
manuscript; much of what they said was necessarily impromptu; and
Antonius cannot have been the only Roman orator that found it con-
venient to have no permanent record of his speeches, especially tho
from the beginning of his career (Val. Max. 7.35). On the whole, however,
the balance of probability seems to suggest that the speeches, thoroughly
impregnated as they are with Sallust's mature style, are unlikely to have
appeared in the postulated first version in the form in which we now have
them. That version may have presented only a summary of what Caesar
and Cato had urged-this would be sufficient for the purposes alleged in
this article; the speeches may have been elaborated in the final version
for another purpose.
Не знаю, был ли знаком Сайм с этой версией, хотя вероятность этого, конечно, исключать нельзя: Маккей писал в 1962 г., а монография Сайма о Саллюстии вышла в 1964.
