deprived of his seat in the great council of the republic; and L. Piso,
the father-in-law of Caesar, is said not to have opposed the partiality
of his colleague in the censorship, in order to increase the number of
Caesar's partisans. When, in B. C. 49, Caesar established his right by
force of arms, Sallust went over to him, and was restored not only to his
seat in the senate, but was advanced to the praetorship in the year B. C.
47. Sallust served, both before and during his year of office, in the
capacity of a lieutenant in Caesar's armies. He also accompanied him
to Africa in the war against the Pompeian party there, and after its
successful termination, was left behind as proconsul of Numidia, which
was made a Roman province. In the discharge of his duties, he is said to
have indulged in extorting money from the new subjects of Rome. He was
accused, but acquitted. This is the historical statement of Dion Cassius;
but a hostile writer of doubtful authority mentions that, by paying
12,000 pieces of gold to Caesar (perhaps as damages for the injury done),
he purchased his acquittal.

Hereupon Sallust withdrew from public life, to devote his leisure to
literature, and the composition of works on the history of his native
country; for, as after the murder of Caesar, in B. C. 44, the republic
was again delivered over to a state of military despotism, peaceful
advice was deprived of its influence. It need hardly be mentioned that
Sallust, as he had qualified himself for the highest political career,
and the great offices of the republic, must have been possessed of an
independent property; but the statement, that he afterwards gave himself
up to a life of luxury--that he purchased a villa at Tibur, which had
formerly belonged to Caesar--and that he possessed a splendid mansion,
with a garden laid out with elegant plantations and appropriate
buildings, at Rome, near the Colline gate--is founded on the equivocal
authority of a writer of a late period, who was hostile to him. It is