The crisis of exemplarity and the role of history in Sallust

I argue that Sallust (86-c.35 BCE), failed politician turned historian, sees the connection between Roman past and present, as it had earlier been perpetuated through the imitation of positive exempla and avoidance of negative, as being irreparably severed. I offer a reinterpretation of programmatic statements in his second monograph, the Bellum Jugurthinum (4.4-8), arguing against the common opinion that Sallust is linking the usefulness of his historical projects to the exemplary power of the imagines, wax masks of notable ancestors. This interpretation ignores that Sallust immediately reports that the exemplary system has collapsed. Based on a full reading of the passage, it is clear that Sallust sees contemporary neglect of historical values as related to the breakdown of the Roman Republic. I show this is applicable not just to the Jugurtha, but to the Bellum Catilinae and the Histories as well, permeating all aspects of Sallust's work.;Through a close reading of all three writings, I find that Sallust constructs a world in which, after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE, mainstream Romans are unable to maintain continuity with the ancestral ways by imitating the exempla of the past. Furthermore, the ethical destabilization of the period did not allow for the creation of new exemplars, instead offering ambiguous anti-exempla, unsuitable for imitation or avoidance. Finally, when individuals claims to be in continuity with the moral past or capable of becoming a future exempla, Sallust emphasizes their failure and hypocrisy.;Sallust does not offer any plan for how decline might be reversed. Instead, he seems to function as a doctor writing the post-mortem of the Republic, charting the symptoms of its terminal disease. The only way that one might be able to get close to the ancestral ways seems to be by removing oneself from the Roman world and becoming an outsider, just as Sallust did.