In the matter of Sallust, which you refer to me, I will say freely, since you wish me to tell plainly what I do think, that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin historian; which also was the almost uniform opinion of the Ancients.

Your favourite Tacitus has his merits; but the greatest of them, in my judgment, is that he imitated Sallust with all his might.

As far as I can gather from what you write, it appears that the result of my discourse with you personally on this subject has been that you are now nearly of the same mind with me respecting that most admirable writer; and hence it is that you ask me, with reference to what he has said, in the introduction to his _Catilinarian War_--as to the extreme difficulty of writing History, from the obligation that the expressions should be proportional to the deeds--by what method I think a writer of History might attain that perfection.

This, then, is my view: that he who would write of worthy deeds worthily must write with mental endowments and experience of affairs not less than were in the doer of the same, so as to be able with equal mind to comprehend and measure even the greatest of them, and, when he has comprehended them, to relate them distinctly and gravely in pure and chaste speech.

That he should do so in ornate style, I do not much care about; for I want a Historian, not an Orator.