Consistent with Sallust’s philosophy of history, the Jugurtha is an account of Rome’s war with the Numidian prince, Jugurtha, in the end of the second century BC, which focuses on morality and character as the primary force driving a nation’s history. Sallust accordingly uses all sorts of techniques, such as the collapse chronology and selective attention to detail to bring out what he views as determining moments and characters. Setting this monograph apart from his earlier work, the Catiline, is Sallust’s seemingly new-found interest in describing geography and how the people constituting the subject of his work interact with it. I would suggest that this aspect of his work, as almost every other, exhibits in some cases a selection of detail and in others a distortion of certain historical detail both aimed at constructing the character of the various players at work in his narrative at both the national and individual levels.
My first chapter, therefore, will examine national character as it is constructed by Sallust’s ethnographic discourse. Literary ethnographies were common in the ancient world, and Posidonius, a famous polymath known especially for writing ethnographies, was active in Sallust’s lifetime. Here I will invoke the Hippocratic treatise, Airs, Waters, Places, the earliest surviving work in which the author explicitly relates the land’s formative influence on its inhabitants. In this vein Sallust uses an ethnographic type—the nomad—to construct the national character of the Numidians. Sallust then plays with the ethical implications found in this ethnographic discourse in his construction of the individual’s character.
The second chapter will analyze the narrative itself and how Sallust uses the geography to form the character of individuals. Here I will focus on Sallust’s development of Metellus and Marius as the two major Roman figures in this war. Sallust underlines his account of these two generals in this war by organizing their respective campaigns in a compositional ring. Here I will trace the marked ways in which each interacts with the physical geography of Africa. This will show pointed differences between the way Metellus, Marius, and Jugurtha interact with the land. These differences will progressively fade until Marius, in his last battle, takes the pose which Jugurtha had taken in Metellus’ first battle. I will also note in the second chapter deliberate uses of various common terms which Sallust employs in his prologue. These terms will become relevant to the discussion in the third chapter.
Concluding my examination, the third chapter will discuss the ways in which the devices revealed in the first two chapters might be read as a moralist’s account of this war. Close reading reveals that Sallust outlines a moral perspective in the prologues, which the narrative then illustrates. This observation has extensive ramifications by itself. My work here will be brief, however, as I will confine my discussion to the terms of geographic discourse.