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 disregard of dramatic probability. Sallust has higher merit in this department. The war of Jugurtha and the conspiracy of Catiline were, when Sallust wrote, events of recent memory, and each had been illustrated by striking contrasts of character. According to Plutarch, the employment of shorthand writers to report debates in the Roman Senate began in 63 B.C.; it was certainly well established in the closing years of the Republic. Sallust had some advantages for the presentation of character in a manner at once dramatic and historical, and he seems to have used them well. There is no reason to doubt that Caesar's speech in the debate on the punishment of the conspirators was substantially such as Sallust reports ; and his way of introducing a discourse of Memmius in the Jugurthine War implies that it is true not only to