As Herodotus did not arise until the Greek language had been already formed by the poets, so no great prose writer appeared among the Romans for a considerable time after Plautus, Terence, Ennius, and Lucretius flourished.  The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of Cicero, born 86 B.C., the year that Marius died.  Q. Fabius Pictor, M. Portius Cato, and L. Cal.  Piso had already written works which are mentioned with respect by Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim as artists.  Sallust made Thucydides his model, but fell below him in genius and elevated sentiment.  He was born a plebeian, and rose to distinction by his talents, but was ejected from the senate for his profligacy.  Afterward he made a great fortune as praetor and governor of Numidia, and lived in magnificence on the Quirinal,—­one of the most profligate of the literary men of antiquity.  We possess but a small portion of his works, but the fragments which have come down to us show peculiar merit.  He sought to penetrate the human heart, and to reveal the secret motives which actuate the conduct of men.  The style of Sallust is brilliant, but his art is always apparent; he is clear and lively, but rhetorical.  Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history, Sallust thought more of style than of accuracy as to facts.  He was a party man, and never soared beyond his party.  He aped the moralist, but exalted egoism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and honored talent disconnected with virtue.  Like Carlyle, Sallust exalted strong men, and because they were strong.  He was not comprehensive like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, although he affected philosophy as he did morality.  He was the first who deviated from the strict narratives of events, and also introduced much rhetorical declamation, which he puts into the mouths of his heroes.  He wrote for eclat.

Julius Caesar, born 100 or 102 B.C., as an historian ranks higher than Sallust, and no Roman ever wrote purer Latin.  Yet his historical works, however great their merit, but feebly represent the transcendent genius of the most august name of antiquity.  He was mathematician, architect, poet, philologist, orator, jurist, general, statesman, and imperator.  In eloquence he was second only to Cicero.  The great value of Caesar’s history is in the sketches of the productions, the manners, the customs, and the political conditions of Gaul, Britain, and Germany.  His observations on military science, on the operation of sieges and the construction of bridges and military engines are valuable; but the description of his military career is only a studied apology for his crimes,—­even as the bulletins of Napoleon were set forth to show his victories in the most favorable light.  Caesar’s fame rests on his victories and successes as a statesman rather than on his merits as an historian,—­even as Louis Napoleon will live in history for his deeds rather than as the apologist of his great usurping prototype.  Caesar’s “Commentaries” resemble the history of Herodotus more than any other Latin production, at least in style; they are simple and unaffected, precise and elegant, plain and without pretension.