Alfons Kurfess's edition of the monographs provides selected
testimonia (pp. xxii-xxxi); they include (for the biographical details) Asconius's commentary on Cicero's
Pro Milone, the
Bellum Africanum, Suetonius, Aulus Gellius, Dio Cassius, Appian, pseudo-Acron on Horace, and Orosius. Information from what purports to be an invective against Sallust by Cicero (probably false and of Augustan date) is not reliable. These references and the autobiographical comments Sallust makes in the proems to his works provide a rather sketchy outline of his political and military career.
Sallust was born in, or at any rate hailed from, Amiternum, a town in the mountainous Sabine region north and west of Rome; the year was 87 B.C. (Jerome) or 86 B.C. (Chronicon Paschale). Nothing further is known of his early life, but presumably he was educated at Rome. He states that already in his youth he was (like many) eagerly drawn to a political career (Cat. 3.3: sed ego adulescentulus initio sicuti plerique studio ad rem publicam latus sum). That career could have begun as usual with a quaestorship (there is no attestation), for which 55 B.C. is a possible year, or, as Sir Ronald Syme says in Sallust (1964), Sallust could have entered the Senate when he became tribune of the plebians in 52 B.C.
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