Sallust, Jugurtha 31 in a Pamphlet War of 1708–09*

Abstract

In Stuart and early Hanoverian England, Sallust7s work was drawn upon in diametri cally opposed ways. On the one hand, authoritarian governments using extreme meas ures to repress jacobite rebellion could draw on his De Coniuratione Catilinae to give classical precedents for their actions. On the other hand, the civic humanist 'republican' tradition, represented especially by followers of Machiavelli and James Harrington, could point to the emphasis in his works on liberty and on concord between plebs and nobles. The True Patriot's Speech to the People of Rome; From Sallust was a politically ex plosive expression of this latter tradition but has been hitherto ignored. This paper ex amines how the pamphlet and responses to it exploit classical history in a debate over liberty, corruption and concentration of powers. It explores the political context in 1708, and how the pamphlet situates Sallust as a civic humanist, rather than an anti-jacobite authoritarian. The replies to The True Patriot's Speech do not just attack it politically, but contest the legitimacy of its appropriation of a classical text, and themselves attempt to deploy classical learning against it. The pamphlet and these replies give a fascinating demonstration of the potency of classical history. A transcription of this pamphlet is given in the appendix.