Reading Sallust in Twelfth-Century Flanders

There can be little doubt that the two short historical tracts of Sallust (C. Sallustius Crispus), Bellum Catilinae (BC) and Bellum Iugurthinum (BJ), quickly attained their prominent place in the Roman educational curriculum because of admiration for language—most notably Sallust’s construction and placement of speeches, his use of rhetorical figures to highlight antitheses or urgency of action, his concision, and his striking use of archaic forms. Aulus Gellius in his Noctes Atticae defends ‘the elegance of Sallust’s speeches and his eagerness to invent or revive words’ (‘elegantia orationis Sallustii uerborumque fingendi et nouandi studium’ [IV.15.1]) against the attacks of some anonymous critics; in the Controversiae of the Elder Seneca we read that (for otherwise busy readers) ‘the speeches of Sallust are read as a sign of respect to his Histories’ (‘orationes Sallustii in honorem historiarum leguntur’ [exc. 3. pr. 8]); while Quintilian himself refers in the Institutio oratoriato...