indeed certain that there existed at Rome _horti Sallustiani_, in
which Augustus frequently resided, and which were afterwards in the
possession of the Roman emperors; but it is doubtful as to whether they
had been acquired and laid out by our historian, or by his nephew, a
Roman eques, and particular favourite of Augustus. The statement that
Sallust married Terentia, the divorced wife of Cicero, is still more
doubtful, and probably altogether fictitious.[1] There is, however, a
statement of a contemporary, the learned friend of Cicero, M. Varro,
which cannot be doubted--that in his earlier years Sallust, in the midst
of the party-strife at Rome, kept up an illicit intercourse with the
wife of Milo; but how much the hostility of party may have had to do with
such a report, cannot be decided. In his writings, Sallust expresses
a strong disgust of the luxurious mode of life, and the avarice and
prodigality, of his contemporaries; and there can be no doubt that these
repeated expressions of a stern morality excited both his contemporaries
and subsequent writers to hunt up and divulge any moral foibles in his
life and character, especially as in his compositions he struck into a
new path, by abandoning the ordinary style, and artificially reviving the
ancient style of composition.

[1] This strange account is found in Hieronymus's first work against
Jovinianus, towards the end; and it becomes still more strange by the
addition, that Terentia was married a third time to the orator
Messalla Corvinus (who was consul with Augustus, B. C. 91):--_Illa_
(Terentia) _interim conjunx egregia, et quae de fontibus Tullianis
hauserat sapientiam, nupsit Sallustio, inimico ejus, et tertio
Messallae Corvino: et quasi per quosdam gradus eloquentiae devoluta
est._ It almost appears as if in this tradition it had been
intended to mark three phases in the style of Roman oratory, for
Sallust was twenty years younger than Cicero, and Messalla nearly