Leadership and the Shaping of the Past: Historical Analysis in Sallust and Luke

Abstract

This study elucidates Luke’s analytical strategies for writing history in the book of Acts through comparison with the Roman historian Sallust, focusing on how both authors construct narratives of leadership. Although Sallust and Luke are rarely compared in New Testament scholarship due to conventional boundaries such as language, religion, and historical context, both authors deploy similar interpretive practices drawn from the broader milieu of Greco-Roman historiography. Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae presents Cicero as an ineffective leader who, despite suppressing Catiline’s conspiracy in 63 BCE, could not save Rome from moral decline. Conversely, Luke in the book of Acts, particularly in the Miletus Speech (Acts 20:17–38), depicts Paul as a leader whose tireless pastoral oversight caused the rise of Gentile Christianity across the Roman Empire. This comparative study reveals that Luke, like Sallust, shapes the past not merely by reporting events but by analyzing their significance through interpretive frameworks of leadership.

1. Introduction

Leadership is among the most prevalent themes in the book of Acts and in ancient historiography, yet the techniques Luke uses as an ancient historiographer1 to construct a narrative of leadership are insufficiently explored in New Testament scholarship.2 Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to elucidate Luke’s analytical strategies for writing history through comparison with the Roman historian Sallust. In New Testament scholarship, the historiographies of Sallust and Luke are only occasionally compared to one another (e.g., Palmer 1992; Hilliard et al. 1993), but the comparison is apt in this study because both authors make sense of the past through the lens of leadership, each writing a short-form historical narrative only a few decades later than the events they narrate. Sallust (86–35 BCE), who writes a short history of an armed rebellion against the Roman state, narrates how Cicero (106–43 BCE), the consul of Rome, was involved in the suppression of that conspiracy (Section 2.1). Luke, who writes the first historical narrative of Christian origins, describes Paul’s leadership among the earliest communities of believers in Gentile territory (Section 2.2). Historiography is a humanistic enterprise, and this comparison with Sallust will shed informative light on how Luke traces early Christian history back to human causes, a perspective that complements the emphasis on divine causality that is prominent in Acts studies (e.g., Jervell 1996, p. 106; Squires 1993, p. 184; Marguerat 2004, p. 25; Shauf 2015, p. 275). This study is a “tilted comparison” in so far as I read Sallust at length and on his own terms, but ultimately for the purpose of illuminating Luke’s analytical approach to history (see Engberg-Pedersen 2020). I do not assume that Luke was familiar with Sallust’s writings but do claim that Sallust and Luke shared some interpretive methods from the broader milieu of Greco-Roman historiography.

The thesis of this study is that Luke shares with Sallust interpretive practices and operative premises on how to write about leadership in a historiographical frame. For both authors, writing history is an act of making meaning and shaping the past, not merely reporting what happened but analyzing its significance. Neither Sallust nor Luke, however, offer extensive theoretical remarks on the task of history writing. As a result, I take an etic approach to my investigation of their compositional practices, using second-order terms to identify interpretive techniques that are fundamental to but not explicitly acknowledged by either author (see Robertson 2016). For Sallust and Luke, shaping the past involves developing an operative theory of history and interpreting leadership through that prism, ordering time and causality by identifying and narrating historical change, and making leadership a key framework of historical explanation. Hermeneutical similarities, however, do not guarantee parallel results: Sallust presents Cicero as an ineffective leader, whereas Luke traces the emergence of Gentile Christianity in no small measure back to Paul’s widespread pastoral oversight.

Although Acts has been likened to genres such as the scientific treatise (e.g., Alexander 1993), novel (e.g., Keener 2012), or epic (e.g., MacDonald 2003), most scholars view Acts within the frame of history-writing (see Holladay 2016, pp. 11–13). Scholarship on Acts as history, however, is hardly a monolith. Among the many approaches to reading Acts as history, some scholars argue for the historicity of Luke’s depiction of Paul (e.g., Bruce 1976; Jervell 1984; Wenham 1993; Porter 1999; Grindheim 2014), others caution against over-harmonizing Luke’s portrayal of Paul with data from the apostle’s letters (e.g., Tatum 2009; Marguerat 2013), some debate what type of ancient history (e.g., general history; political history; apologetic history) is the most proximate analogue to Acts (see Mount 2002, pp. 61–67; Shauf 2004, pp. 59–63), others examine the relationship between history and theology in Lukan thought (e.g., Conzelmann [1961] 1982; Shauf 2004), a few analyze Luke’s use of ancient rhetorical strategies (e.g., Rothschild 2004), and still others investigate Luke’s literary purposes for history-writing (e.g., Sterling 1992; Mount 2002; Buitenwerf 2008; Schellenberg 2015; Lüke 2019). I position this study as a contribution to the long line of scholarship on Acts as history, offering a comparative investigation of how Luke and Sallust analyze history and shape the past.

2. History-Writing as an Analytical Task: Authors and Texts

2.1. Sallust

Sallust was a Roman historian in the late-Republican era who wrote the Bellum Catilinae, a short monograph about a conspiracy in 63 BCE to overthrow the Roman state, led by Catiline when Cicero was consul of Rome. Writing roughly two decades after the conspiracy, which was put to rest in no small measure because of Cicero’s leadership (see Tempest 2011, pp. 85–100), Sallust lived in an era defined by decades of civil war and political unrest, including Octavian’s march on Rome and the rise of the Second Triumvirate (see Drummond 1995, pp. 23–50; Ramsey 2007, p. 202; Confora 2007, pp. 59–60). In classical scholarship it is widely accepted that copies of Cicero’s speeches were among Sallust’s source material (Ramsey 2007, p. 9). Particularly in Cicero’s Catilinarian speeches, but also in other addresses such as Pro Sulla, Cicero engages in aggressive self-promotion around his role in the suppression of the conspiracy (see Gildenhard 2010, pp. 196–200; Tempest 2011, pp. 107–111; Hall 2013). Cicero consistently fashions himself as Rome’s hero, claiming such things as having saved Rome from destruction (e.g., Sull. 27–28) and having preserved for Rome an eternal future (e.g., Cat. 4.19–22). Cicero’s leadership claims, then, could be found throughout Sallust’s source material, yet the historian interprets the conspiracy not as the definitive moment when Rome was forever saved but as a key event in its moral decline.

Sallust wrote a narrative that traces Rome’s moral decay and explains political turmoil. Throughout the twentieth century, two waves within Sallustian scholarship interpreted the historian’s works as the products of an analyst. Within the first wave, the classic study is Kurt Latte’s analysis of Sallust’s principles of composition, which explores how Sallust’s works reveal the historian’s understanding of morality and his interpretation of the past (Latte 1935). Toward the end of the twentieth century, Wisemann (1979) and Woodmann (1988) emphasized that historiography has much in common with ancient rhetoric. As a result of these contributions, scholarship today generally recognizes that Sallust’s historiographical task was to construct a story, through which he analyzes the past. Indeed, in his Bellum Catilinae, Sallust positions himself as filling a gap within the tradition of Roman history-writing, complaining that the Romans have no history-writers comparable to the talented authors among the Greeks, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon (Bell. Cat. 8).3 In contrast to Sallust’s Roman predecessors, whom he implies lacked prose style and made no attempt at historiographical analysis, Sallust positions himself as writing an analytical story of Catiline’s conspiracy.

Analysis for Sallust involved evaluating Cicero, whose leadership the historian sometimes interprets in positive terms (Bell. Cat. 31.4–9; 43.1; 41.5; 45.1). For example, after narrating the public exposure of the conspiracy, Sallust fosters a cause-and-effect relationship between Cicero’s role in revealing the plan and Rome’s preservation from danger: “For he [Cicero] rejoiced in the knowledge that the disclosure of the plot had snatched the community from peril” (Bell. Cat. 46.2 [Rolfe]). Sallust, however, differentiates between temporary physical safety from a plot against the state and the long-term effectiveness of Cicero’s leadership. Sallust’s shaping of history, as I will show below, involves contextualizing Cicero within greater historical forces of moral decline, which Cicero was unable to reverse in his consular year (Section 3).

2.2. Luke

Luke is the first author to compose a historical account of Christian origins. Writing towards the end of the first or early second century,4 Luke positions himself as a recipient of tradition, thereby differentiating himself from those who were eye-witnesses of the events he narrates: “… just as they were handed down to us by those who had become eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:2). The book of Acts, the author’s second volume,5 narrates the formation of Christian communities across the Greco-Roman world. Paul is a major character in Luke’s history, which traces the emergence of Christ-believing communities among the Gentiles in no small measure to Paul’s missionary work and pastoral leadership, probably using his letters as sources.6 Regarding Luke’s location of writing, the most likely scenario is that Acts was written from Ephesus. As Christopher Mount indicates, the prominence of Ephesus in the book of Acts—which is not only the location of Paul’s greatest missionary success but is also the community to whom Luke’s Paul hands down his legacy (Acts 20:17–38)—suggests that Luke writes his history from this center of Paulinism.

Luke positions himself as a historian in the preface that begins his Gospel, wherein he states that the purpose of his project is to provide a secure account of Christian origins (Luke 1:1–4). Writing under the patronage of one Theophilus, Luke presents his two-volume narrative as an intellectual work that operates according to the standards of historiography (see, e.g., Mount 2002, pp. 60–83; Aune 2003, pp. 138–48). Furthermore, Luke’s claim to provide an orderly narrative of past events in his gospel narrative (Luke 1:4) indicates that he intends for his Gospel and Acts to be read within the frame of history-writing (Wolter 2009, pp. 476–78). The preface that begins Luke’s Gospel sufficiently defines the author’s project in historiographical terms and as a contribution to Greek historiographical literature. Luke’s announcement that his project is an orderly account of the past suggests from its opening lines that his investigations have led him to adopt a coherent understanding of the beginnings of Christianity, which he explicates in his narrative.

For Luke, as with Sallust, writing history was an analytical act of shaping the past. New Testament scholars in recent years have moved away from debates on the historicity of Acts and emphasize that Luke’s historiography was a literary and interpretive enterprise. Daniel Marguerat, for instance, recommends that Acts “must be evaluated according to the point of view of the historian which controls the writing of the narrative, the truth that the author aims to communicate, and the need for identity to which the work of the historian responds” (Marguerat 2004, pp. 6–7). Scott Shauf takes a similar approach, noting that modern theorists of history-writing emphasize the agency of the author who fashions a narrative (Shauf 2004, pp. 66–79). Additionally, Eve-Marie Becker explores how ancient historians craft literary memories as a way of ordering time: “… the gospel writings and Acts are de facto a kind of literature that is carefully designed by individual authors: the early Christian authors conceptualize, interpret, and construct the past in a literary sense as narrative” (Becker 2017, p. 59). In this paper, I will show that Luke makes Paul an agent of historical causality by tracing how his leadership explains the shape of the past and the present, namely, the movement of salvation history and the emergence of Gentile Christianity.

3. Sallust’s Analysis of History

3.1. Tracing Moral Decline

In the preface to his Bellum Catilinae, Sallust announces that he is writing an account of an event that he deems “especially worthy of notice because of the novelty of the crime and the danger arising from it” (Bell. Cat. 4.4 [Rolfe]). Sallust upholds “corrupt public morals” (Bell. Cat. 5.8 [Rolfe]) as the backdrop for Catiline’s conspiracy and as the environment from which Catiline emerged. From the very beginning of his narrative, Sallust invites his readers to consider how this conspiracy represents an outgrowth from and contribution to the moral degeneracy of the Republic. Before narrating the events leading up to and including the conspiracy, Sallust provides a selective overview of Roman history, starting from its idyllic beginnings and continuing with its decline in virtue (Bell. Cat. 6–13). Put simply, Sallust thinks of Roman history as a downward spiral toward corruption and decadence.

Sallust construes causality frequently in his narrative, revealing many operative understandings about how events before, during, and after the conspiracy are connected to one another. Sallust views the Roman defeat of Carthage in 146 BCE as a major turning point toward moral decline:

But when hard work and just action had increased in the Republic, when great kings were defeated in war, uncivilized nations and vast peoples subdued by force, when Carthage, the rival to Roman power, had been eradicated, when all the sea and all the lands were accessible, Fortune began to grow cruel and confuse everything.

(Bell. Cat. 10.1 [Rolfe])

For Sallust, after the sack of Carthage the Romans became complacent and pursued money and power, which in turn led to the emergence of other vices (Bell. Cat. 10.2–12.5). The historian finds that the removal of external threats generated a lack of discipline and decline in virtues (Bell. Cat. 10.1; cf. Bell. Jug. 41.1; Hist. 1.11, 12). Most notably, Sallust associates moral decline with the rise of Catiline, whom the historian presents as a reflection of his times: “He [Catiline] was spurred on, also, by corrupt public morals, which were being exacerbated by two very destructive evils of an opposite character, extravagance and greed” (Bell. Cat. 5.8 [Rolfe, LCL]). To be sure, for Sallust, virtuous people still existed in Rome even during Catiline’s conspiracy, but the historian finds that there are no overarching values that hold Romans together. In this connection, Sallust develops a four-fold theory of history, which is the prism through which he interprets the significance of Cicero’s leadership in 63 BCE.

3.2. Sallust’s Theory of History

The first aspect of Sallust’s theory of history that I will investigate is the problem of confused virtus. Sallust opens his history by defining virtus as a “shining and lasting possession” (Bell. Cat. 1.4 [Rolfe]). By upholding virtus as an eternal possession, Sallust prepares readers to experience in his narrative the disjunction between this ideal and its failure. Indeed, throughout his narrative, Sallust creates the impression that moral decline in Rome confuses the meaning of virtus, making it difficult to identify what truly constitutes excellence. Two of Sallust’s characters attest to this confusion. First, Sallust’s Caesar warns the Senate about the unintended consequences of executing the conspirators: “it is possible for something false to be believed true at another time” (Bell. Cat. 51.36 [Rolfe, LCL]). In context, Sallust’s Caesar refers to violence caused by the Second Triumvirate, which Sallust describes in terms of a failure of proper discernment. Second, Sallust’s Cato complains that his contemporaries are unable to identify “the true names for things” (Bell. Cat. 52.11 [Rolfe]). Sallust, then, has both figures agree on one premise: everyone is subject to disorientation. This fundamental commonality between Sallust’s Caesar and Sallust’s Cato suggests that the historian uses these figures, both of whom possessed virtus (Bell. Cat. 53.6), to create the impression by means of their adjacency that excellence itself is elusive. For Sallust, the moral crisis in Rome generates deep-seated confusion, as reflected by the shared pessimism between Caesar and Cato, whose juxtaposition creates the impression that it is impossible to grasp the meaning of virtus.

Elsewhere his narrative, Sallust explores in more detail the relationship between virtus and the moral crisis in Rome with respect to the idea of confusion in the meaning of words. Sallust describes how the Roman military went from excellent to wicked and speculates that soldiers now plunder their allies “as though to do a wrong were precisely what it means to exercise a power” (Bell. Cat. 12.5 [Rolfe]). Sallust goes on to note how the conspirator C. Manlius denies that he and his comrades are seeking wealth or political control (Bell. Cat. 33.4–5). In light of his previous indication that desire for money and power were plaguing Rome as “the root of all evils” (Bell. Cat. 10.3 [Rolfe]), Sallust presents Manlius as confused about the true nature of his intentions. Sallust attributes a similar distortion in understanding to Catiline himself, who explains in a letter that he is fighting against Rome to preserve his own dignitas (Bell. Cat. 35.4). For Sallust at least, Catiline is not worthy of the respect and admiration that the term dignitas implies, which suggests that the historian depicts Catiline as engaged in a misguided quest for prestige. Furthermore, Sallust states explicitly that manly excellence underwent a distortion (Bell. Cat. 11.3), which he illustrates on two occasions: first, Sallust describes how “men played the woman” (Bell. Cat. 13.3 [Rolfe]); second, Sallust presents Sempronia as a reflection of her times in terms of how she inverts her gender role (Bell. Cat. 25.1) (see Balmaceda 2017, pp. 78–79). Throughout his monograph, Sallust finds that a common problem impacts not only the participants in the conspiracy but also Roman soldiers and citizens more generally: the meanings of words are confused and true virtus is difficult to define. Sallust means for his own narrative to be a space for readers to experience confusion, which suggests that even as the historian depicts such confusion as a sign of moral crisis, he presents himself as perpetuating the problem by writing.

Sallust highlights the problem of confused virtus particularly in a speech that he ascribes to Catiline, wherein the conspirator sets out to inspire his comrades to take up arms (Bell. Cat. 20).7 Sallust’s Catiline frequently invokes values that stem from his own distorted understanding of what constitutes excellence. For example, although Sallust has previously declared that manly excellence no longer exists (cf. Bell. Cat. 11.3), he has Catiline summon his recruits to display manly courage (Bell. Cat. 20.8; cf. Bell. Cat. 20.1; 58.1, 12, 21). Additionally, although Sallust describes Catiline’s supporters as those who prefer the uncertainty of war over the security of peace (Bell. Cat. 17.7), Sallust goes on to have Catiline declare to his band of conspirators that he did not recruit men who are “grasping at uncertainty in place of certainty” (Bell. Cat. 20.2 [Rolfe]). In this way, Sallust depicts Catiline as operating with a confused and naïve understanding of the upcoming revolt. Sallust grants that Catiline truly thought that war was the only way to achieve peace, which functions at once as a comment on Catiline’s distorted understanding and as a negative judgment on the moral state of Rome prior to the conspiracy.

The second aspect of Sallust’s view of the moral crisis is that Sallust’s ideal for the mind and body is breaking down. Speaking in quasi-philosophical terms, Sallust announces at the beginning of his narrative his theory of intellectual excellence: the rational or spiritual aspect of a person should work together with and control the body (Bell. Cat. 1.2). Erik Gunderson explores Sallust’s ideology of the mind and body and points out that Sallust finds that Catiline’s revolution succeeded in subverting the mind even as it failed to seize political power (Gunderson [2004] 2020). More specifically, Sallust views the triumph of bodily urges over the mind’s ability to harness desire as both a cause and symptom of moral decline. Sallust finds, for instance, that mental excellence (animi virtus) was not valued after the Roman sack of Carthage (Bell. Cat. 2.3) but also describes the triumph of bodily desire as a symbol of the changed nature of the state (Bell. Cat. 13.2–5). Sallust’s Catiline represents the reversal of the historian’s ideal for the mind and body: Sallust notes how Catiline uses both faculties in perverse ways (Bell. Cat. 5.3–4) even as he has Catiline reflect his own thesis that those in power could not overcome their desire for wealth (Bell. Cat. 20.13).

The ambiguity of Sallust’s Catiline with respect to how Sallust traces moral decline by means of his theory of the mind and body is related to how the historian associates his own struggles to maintain this ideal in his literary project. In his preface, Sallust admits that during his political career he struggled to allow his mental faculties to control ambition (Bell. Cat. 3.4) and even gestures toward the fact that his writing project emerges from a desire (libido) that stirred up within him (Bell. Cat. 53.2). Sallust’s reference to his own libido not only recalls previous uses of this word to explicate the breakdown of his theory of mind and body (e.g., Bell. Cat. 13.3), but it clashes with his own definition for history-writing as a purely intellectual endeavor (Bell. Cat. 8.5). Sallust’s autobiographical and theoretical remarks on historiography work together to show that his model for the mind and body fails in the very act of writing. In this way, Sallust depicts himself as subject to the reversal of his own ideal: for Sallust, history-writing is a space to expose problems related to the moral crisis, to illustrate the deficiency of language, and to show that a philosophical model that has generated excellence for centuries is now completely turned around.

The third aspect of Sallust’s view of the moral crisis is that Sallust finds that a breakdown in concordia led to the rise of avarice and other vices. As D.C. Earl has shown, Sallust idealizes the early second century to identify concordia as the most important element of Rome’s political situation and does so in part by suppressing a range of examples of discord prior to the destruction of Carthage in 146 (Earl 1961). Indeed, Sallust indicates that prior to the Roman sack of Carthage, harmony was a defining feature of Roman politics: Sallust uses the word concordia as a causal ablative to show that it was civic harmony that induced different people groups to coalesce in the first place (Bell. Cat. 6.2) and he goes on to say that concordia maxima existed in the past (Bell. Cat. 9.1). In the wake of the destruction of Carthage and the removal of the metus hostilis, Sallust indicates that the introduction of avaritia, which he treats as the polar opposite of concordia, caused a breakdown of harmony. Sallust sees a causal connection between avaritia and lust for money and power among members the military (Bell. Cat. 10.3), which in turn led to cruel and self-interested behavior of soldiers (Bell. Cat. 11.4–8). Later in his monograph, as Sallust narrates Catiline’s revolution, the breakdown of concordia remains in the background (e.g., Bell. Cat. 37.1), thereby rendering the Temple of Concordia an ironic place for Cicero to reveal evidence of the conspiracy (e.g., Bell. Cat. 46.6). For Sallust, one dimension of the moral crisis is the disintegration of concordia, which has its origins in the military but came to define the general political climate.

Sallust poignantly illustrates the breakdown in concordia after he narrates the Senate meeting of 5 December 63 (Section 3.3), when he explores in a synkrisis the virtues and character of Caesar and Cato (Bell. Cat. 53.6–54.6). By the time Sallust wrote, Caesar and Cato represented two different causes and had often come into direct conflict with each other over the course of many years (see van der Blom 2016, pp. 220–23; Drogula 2019, pp. 275–95).8 For Sallust, their opposition represents the absence of concordia and a functioning Republic. According to Sallust, both Caesar and Cato possess virtus even as each man has a different character (Bell. Cat. 53.6). Furthermore, as William W. Batstone shows, Sallust presents the different qualities of Caesar and Cato as in conflict with each other, which makes it impossible for the reader to make coherent judgements about virtue (Batstone 1988). In other words, for Sallust, there is virtus in Rome among individuals, but there is an absence of common values that are necessary for a political body to function. Sallust’s interest in the figures of Caesar and Cato is determined by their opposition to one another, which he upholds as emblematic of the lack of concordia in Rome. As a result, it emerges that Sallust interprets the Senate meeting on 5 December 63 as a time that merely witnessed a semblance of unity in response to Cato’s speech (Bell. Cat. 53.1) and that ultimately failed to bring long-lasting harmony.

The fourth aspect of Sallust’s view of the moral crisis is that Sallust finds that problems only get worse. In other words, for Sallust, the moral crisis repeats itself over the course of time and exacerbates, with the result that Rome is in a downward spiral towards further degeneracy. Sallust hints at the compounding nature of the moral crisis already in his initial description of Catiline, noting that the conspirator is influenced by extravagance and greed, which the historian defines as two mutually conflicting evils (Bell. Cat. 5.8: divorsa inter se). The notion that vice compounds is made explicit when Sallust describes the moral degeneracy of the military after the sack of Carthage: Sallust states that avaritia is “always boundless and insatiable; it is lessened neither by plenty nor want” (Bell. Cat. 11.3 [Rolfe, LCL]). Sallust goes on to describe Catiline (Bell. Cat. 24.2), renegades who stirred up the Roman people (Bell. Cat. 38.4), and an ambiguous future consul (Bell. Cat. 51.36), in terms of their lack of restraint. Sallust even presents Catiline’s conspiracy itself as the second iteration of revolt against the state, coming just a few years after Piso attempted a similar conspiracy (Bell. Cat. 18).

To recap the above analysis of Sallust’s theory of history, the historian views Rome as in a trajectory toward moral decay, particularly in terms of four interrelated factors: confusion around the meaning of virtus, widespread breakdown in the body and mind, general absence of concordia, and the problem of compounding vice. Taken together, the four aspects of Sallust’s theory of the past illuminate the meaning of history for this writer. For Sallust, history is about negative change as time moves forward according to four interlocking and mutually reinforcing aspects of an underlying moral crisis. Sallust depicts the crisis as so wide-ranging that he implicitly indicts everyone, including himself, as contributors to moral decline. Sallust’s analysis of Cicero’s leadership, then, is heavily influenced by his skepticism that a reversal in Rome’s downward trajectory was even possible by the fall of 63 (contra Syme 1964, p. 120). In what follows I will show that Sallust, because of his operative theory of history, finds that Cicero failed as a leader because the moral crisis was too pervasive for anyone to save the Republic.

3.3. Cato the Defender of Liberty

Working within the frame of his four-fold theory of history, Sallust evaluates and interprets the effects of Cicero’s leadership. Interestingly, Cicero is not a major actor in the Bellum Catilinae, which raises the question of where one should turn to investigate Sallust’s view of the consul. The best point of entry is Sallust’s version of Cato’s speech (Bell. Cat. 52), which the historical Cato delivered during a Senate meeting on 5 December 63, called by Cicero to urge the Senate to decide how to punish five conspirators who have been captured (see Cape 1995). The speech is significant because Sallust frames it in a way that reflects some of the main arguments of the written version9 of Cicero’s fourth oration In Catilinam, which the consul delivered during the same meeting. Taking as my point of departure that Sallust knew the contents of Cicero’s speech, a viewpoint that is widely accepted in classical scholarship (Ramsey 2007, p. 9), I explore the significance of the points of contact between Cicero’s speech and Sallust’s version of Cato’s speech on the same occasion. Sallust’s Cicero is not a major actor in the 5 December meeting, which suggests that, for Sallust, Cicero’s leadership was not worthy of historical memory. In this way, even as Sallust reframes to some extent the contents of Cicero’s argumentation, we see that Sallust interprets Cicero’s leadership as inconsequential, meaning the consul failed to save the Republic on that day.

The first step in interpreting Sallust’s version of Cato’s speech is to consider Sallust’s interest in the figure of Cato, which I will describe in historical and literary terms. Regarding historical reasons for Sallust’s interest in Cato, the historian appears to be working with good information that Cato’s speech to the Senate is what convinced its members to vote for execution. In the century after Sallust, Plutarch (Cat. Min. 23.2–3) and Suetonius (Jul. 14.1) trace the Senate’s vote back to the impact of Cato’s address and, in this way, they confirm Sallust’s remark that Cato’s speech tipped the scale in favor of execution (Bell. Cat. 53.1). The extant sources on Cato’s speech to the Senate each focus on different aspects of his address, which precludes a precise reconstruction of its contents. Nevertheless, one major aspect of Cato’s speech that Velleius Paterculus (2.35.3–4) mentions and that Christopher Pelling identifies as historical is that Cato praised Cicero during his remarks (Pelling 2011, p. 169). This aspect of the historical Cato’s speech is important for the study of how Sallust interprets Cicero’s leadership because it raises the possibility that, if Sallust knew of Cato’s praise of the consul, he chose to suppress it. Such a move would be consistent with Sallust’s choice not to afford Cicero a major role in the Senate meeting of 5 December 63 (Section 3.3). Sallust’s interest in Cato, then, stems in part from historical information that his speech influenced the Senate’s decision to execute the conspirators. At the same time, Sallust’s focus on Cato also reflects his judgment that Cicero’s speech had little impact on the result of the proceedings.

Regarding literary reasons that account for Sallust’s interest in Cato, there is evidence that by the time Sallust wrote his monograph, Cato already enjoyed a solid reputation for steadfastly adhering to Stoic moral principles, for the severity with which he applied these principles, and for being a champion of the traditional Republican institutions that were dissolving within his lifetime. Scholars trace Cato’s reception as a rigid Stoic and defender of liberty to two main causes. The first is Cato’s efforts to control his own reception which, as Henriette van der Blom emphasizes, was largely achieved through his own oratory (van der Blom 2016, pp. 204–47). In her study that examines how Cato shaped his public image, van der Blom notes how the year 63 was a particularly productive time for Cato’s self-presentation. Van der Blom emphasizes the role of Cato’s oratory in his reception by investigating examples of Cato’s tendency toward drama, his stubbornness in the face of opposition, and his willingness to contradict his own Stoic principles when it was politically expedient to do so. In addition to his oratory (see Stem 2005), Cato’s suicide in 46, which was interpreted as a philosophical statement about liberty (Drogula 2019, pp. 1–10), had a major impact on his reception. In this connection, Plutarch has Cato declare his refusal to live under Caesar’s reign, which precipitated his suicide: “‘For if,’ said he, ‘I were willing to be saved by the grace of Caesar, I ought to go to him in person and see him alone; but I am unwilling to be under obligations to the tyrant for his illegal acts” (Cat. Min. 66.2 [Perrin]). Like other writers from antiquity, Plutarch depicts Cato’s life and death in idyllic terms (Means and Dickison 1974, pp. 210–15; Drogula 2019, p. 7), which suggests that already in the early imperial era, Cato was a symbol of the lost Republic.

In addition to Cato’s own actions, the second factor that contributed to his reception was conscious efforts by his sympathizers to eulogize him and the cause he represented. The evidence, which comes primarily from Cicero, suggests that initiatives to memorialize Cato with written tributes started shortly after his death in 46. After Caesar defeated Pompey and made himself dictator in Rome, Cicero first considered writing a eulogy called Cato, and he implies in a letter to Atticus in May of 46 that his idea for this project is polemically motivated: Cicero makes it clear that his vision for his Cato is that it would frustrate those who sympathize with Caesar (Att. 12.4.1; see also Orat. 35; Att. 13.27.2). In this same letter, Cicero isolates three aspects of Cato’s life that he finds particularly praiseworthy: Cato’s oratory, his moral steadfastness, and his suicide, the latter of which Cicero intends to include in his eulogy (Att. 12.4.1). Evidence from Cicero further suggests that he completed his Cato by the summer of 46 (Att. 12.5) and that two other champions of Cato’s cause, Brutus (Att. 13.46.2) and Fablus Gallus (Fam. 7.24.2), composed similar eulogies (see Pelling 2011, p. 169; Tempest 2017, pp. 71–74). By May of 45, Caesar read and responded to Cicero’s work with a catalogue of attacks on Cato, which he delivered to Cicero in a pamphlet written by Hirtius (Att. 12.40.1; 12.41.4; 12.44.1; 12.45.2). The efforts of Cicero and others, in addition to the counter-efforts by Caesar and Hirtius, constitute a major factor in the early reception of Cato as a Stoic defender of liberty, a trend that continued into the first century CE (e.g., Seneca, Ep. Mor. 104.30–31; Tacitus, Ann. 16.22).

For Sallust, Cato’s significance lies not just in what he said on 5 December 63, but in what he symbolized in the years following his death: Cato represents a failed cause and an unachievable ideal. Sallust’s focus on Cato and suppression of Cicero, the self-proclaimed savior of the Republic, is suggestive of his view that the latter failed to preserve Rome from destruction. As I will show below, the contents of Sallust’s version of Cato’s speech reveals how the historian evaluates the significance not only of Cato but also of Cicero, who also adhered to a particular set of traditional values that were in competition with other ideals for the future of Rome in the final decades of the Republic.

3.4. Cicero’s Words in Cato’s Speech

What does Sallust’s version of Cato’s speech say about the ways in which the historian interprets Cicero’s leadership? On the one hand, as mentioned above, Sallust’s choice to emphasize actors other than Cicero suggests that Sallust displaces Cicero’s leadership from the center of Rome’s resistance to Catiline, including with respect to the crucial meeting to decide how to punish the conspirators. On the other hand, Cicero’s argumentation as reflected in his fourth oration In Catilinam is frequently alluded to in Sallust’s version of Cato’s speech. As sources for his version of Cato’s speech, it may be that Sallust had access to a copy of Cato’s actual address. Nevertheless, although Plutarch notes that Cicero ordered that Cato’s address be preserved by multiple clerks in the Senate house (Cat. Min. 23.1), no manuscripts of this speech survive, and Sallust gives no indication that he as a historian utilized a copy of the version produced by the original witnesses. Sallust, however, likely had access to a written version of Cicero’s fourth oration In Catilinam, which means the historian was aware of the contents of Cicero’s argumentation to execute the conspirators. As I will demonstrate below, Sallust’s version of Cato’s address resembles Cicero’s fourth oration In Catilinam in six ways, the cumulative effect of which suggests that Sallust reproduces elements of Cicero’s argumentation while suppressing his role as a leader.

The first point of contact between Sallust’s Cato and Cicero is that both speak of the execution of the conspirators as a preventative measure. In this connection, both Sallust’s Cato and Cicero implore the Senate to look to the future to ensure that by their decision such an uprising never happens again (Bell. Cat. 52.3–4; Cat. 4.19). When Cicero issues this call in the written version of his speech, he appeals to what he claims is the unprecedented unity of the Roman people, to his role as consul and leader of all loyal citizens, and to the prosperous future that Rome can experience if they successfully defeat a common enemy. By contrast, Sallust’s Cato speaks exclusively of the dangers to be avoided and makes no reference to unity or to the role of any leader in rallying citizens together against Catiline. Although Sallust’s Cato repeats Cicero’s argument that the conspirators should be executed as a preventative measure, Sallust is careful to avoid any hint of Cicero’s leadership claims that he as consul can lead Rome through crisis.

The second point of contact between Sallust’s Cato and Cicero is that both indicate to the Senate that the survival of the res publica is at stake. In this way, both Sallust’s Cato and Cicero magnify the importance of voting to execute the conspirators (Bell. Cat. 52.10; Cat. 4.3–4). Sallust’s Cato and Cicero mobilize images of the possible destruction of Rome for emotional pathos and both place the conspirators in a wholly different category from most citizens, declaring those who have been captured to be “enemies” (hostes) who threaten the very existence of the Republic (Bell. Cat. 52.10; Cat. 4.15; cf. Cat. 4.10). Yet, despite these fundamental similarities, both speeches differ according to the literary aims of each author. Sallust’s Cato says that the survival of Rome is more important than its moral decline, which he explicitly finds to be the root of the conspiracy (Bell. Cat. 52.19–23). For Cicero, ensuring the preservation of the Republic is a concern that is far more exigent than extending boundaries or waging war against foreign enemies, since Rome is amid a civil war (Cat. 4.21–22). Although Sallust’s Cato and Cicero share the rhetorical device of heightening the significance of the Senate’s decision, Cicero focuses to a much greater extent on the conspirators as deviant citizens to rally the Romans behind his leadership, whereas Sallust avoids any indication that Cicero or Cato achieved any form long-lasting unity.

The third point of contact between Sallust’s Cato and Cicero is that both argue that any attempt to be lenient with the arrested conspirators will backfire. Accordingly, both Sallust’s Cato and Cicero attempt to predict the negative results of agreeing with Caesar’s comparatively mild proposal to keep the conspirators in prison. In this connection, each one makes some effort to redefine traditional understandings of various terminologies related to compassion. Sallust’s Cato complains that infighting has led to distortions of language, which culminates with his warning that misunderstanding what truly constitutes compassion could produce disastrous effects:

It is precisely because squandering the goods of others is called generosity, and recklessness in wrongdoing is called courage, that the republic has been placed in a crisis… but let those men not be prodigal of our blood, and in sparing a few scoundrels bring ruin upon all good men.

(Bell. Cat. 52.11–12 [Rolfe])

Sallust’s Cato’s argument is that any attempt to be compassionate will lead to disaster. Later in his speech, Sallust’s Cato warns that “gentleness” (mansuetudo) and “compassion” (misericordia) would redound to “misery” (miseria) and thereby implies that executing the conspirators is ultimately the gentler and more compassionate course of action (Bell. Cat. 52.27). Similarly, Cicero questions what constitutes the milder course of action, but he makes claims about the true nature of his dispositions instead of focusing on distortions of language. For Cicero, the urgency of the moment causes words to take on different meanings. Cicero contends that an action that may appear to be “cruel” (crudelis) is the “milder one” (multo leniorem) and, since he is motivated by the preservation of the Republic, it is “humanity” (humanitas) and “compassion” (misericordia) that drives his push toward severe punishment (Cat. 4.11). Cicero is particularly concerned to provide alternative understandings of crudelitas and misericordia: Cicero contends that, with respect to the issue of how to punish the conspirators, crudelitas is defined by inaction and misericordia in terms of inflicting the harshest penalty (Cat. 4.13). Although Sallust’s Cato and Cicero both imply there is confusion about the true meanings of important terms and that such confusion could lead to unintended disaster, they trace the origin of misunderstanding to different factors: for Sallust’s Cato such mistaken judgments stem from moral problems from long ago, whereas for Cicero it comes from a failure to grasp the need to act in the interest of national security.

The fourth point of contact between Sallust’s Cato and Cicero is that both are dismissive of the arguments previously lodged by Caesar. In terms of the order of who spoke on 5 December 63, Cicero gave remarks immediately after Caesar spoke in favor of imprisoning the conspirators (Plutarch, Cic. 21.2), whereas Cato, as a junior Senator, spoke toward the end (Bell. Cat. 52.1; Plutarch, Cic. 21.3; Cat. Min. 23.3). Evidence from Sallust and Cicero suggests that the historical Caesar based his argument in part upon his view of the afterlife, that death is not a punishment at all but rather an escape from difficulty (Bell. Cat. 52.12; Cat. 4.7). Although neither Sallust’s Cato nor Cicero respond to the substance of Caesar’s position on the afterlife, they both rebut Caesar’s proposal by denying that it will be effective: Sallust’s Cato insinuates that this course of action would not put conspiracy to rest (Bell. Cat. 52.13–14) and Cicero says it would place a heavy burden on the towns throughout Italy (Cat. 4.7). Furthermore, Sallust’s Cato gestures toward the possibility that the other Senators should be suspicious of Caesar for his recommendation of leniency (Bell. Cat. 52.16). Although Cicero does not attack Caesar in this way, both Sallust’s Cato and Cicero lodge rational arguments to convince the Senate that accepting Caesar’s recommendation would redound to no tangible benefit for Rome.

The fifth point of contact between Sallust’s Cato and Cicero is that both urge the Senate to make a quick decision on what to do with the captured conspirators. In Cicero’s case, urging the Senate to come to an agreement was the reason he called this meeting in the first place (Cat. 4.6). In a context where Cicero explicitly upholds himself as the leader of the Roman people, he appeals to the unity of all citizens and to the power of the Senate to ensure the survival of the Republic (Cat. 4.18). By contrast, Sallust’s Cato offers negative argumentation, rebuking the Senate for inaction (Bell. Cat. 52.28–29). Despite these differences, Sallust’s Cato and Cicero share some key terms that are employed in similar ways: in both addresses, the speaker claims their lives depend upon the right decision, just as both speakers attempt to frighten the Senate with thoughts of the loss of freedom (libertas). Sallust’s Cato and Cicero both use fauces to emphasize the impending danger posed by Catiline and to prompt the Senate to act:

Catiline with his army is at our throats [faucibus]; other foes are within the city walls and even in the very heart of the City.

(Bell. Cat. 52.35 [Rolfe])

Again and again, I know, he gazes back at this city in his anguish that his prey has been snatched from his jaws [faucibus].

(Cat. 2.2 [MacDonald])

In another instance, both Sallust’s Cato and Cicero describe imminent danger using similar language:

The leader of the enemy with his army looms over us [supra caput est].

(Bell. Cat. 52.24 [Rolfe])

They have not deserted but have been posted by him on the look-out and in ambush, and have been hanging over our heads [in capite atque].

(Mur. 79 [MacDonald])

Furthermore, like Cicero, Sallust’s Cato empowers the Senate to ensure the survival of Rome, but Sallust’s Cato weaves declining morality into his argumentation (Bell. Cat. 52.4–6) and mentions nothing of the positive vision of unity from Cicero’s speech.

The sixth point of contact between Sallust’s Cato and Cicero is that both speakers bolster their case for a severe punishment by invoking precedents, where execution has previously been regarded as the best course of action for lesser crimes. Sallust’s Cato reminds the Senate that A. Manlius Torquatus had his own son killed for taking unauthorized military action, which he states is a lesser crime in comparison to conspiracy (Bell. Cat. 52.30–31). Cicero lodges the same type of argument, but with reference to Lucius Caesar, who recently said that he himself should be killed for crimes not as severe as sedition (Cat. 4.13). Cicero also notes how Caesar’s grandfather and son have been executed for lesser crimes. Both speakers make a similar point using similar logic: since the death penalty has been used before for comparatively insignificant matters, it should be employed now to punish a major crime against the state.

The above catalogue of conceptual and terminological overlaps shows Sallust’s Cato and Cicero recommend the death penalty on 5 December 63, using similar lines of argumentation. What do these similarities say about Sallust’s interpretation of Cicero’s leadership during the conspiracy? Sallust utilized Cicero’s fourth oration In Catilinam as a source in the construction of Cato’s address. First, Sallust treats the contents of Cicero’s speech sympathetically, presenting its key points on the lips of a legendary figure and, by implication, as legitimate arguments. Second, by reproducing the heart of Cicero’s argumentation by means of Cato, Sallust keeps the very idea of Cicero’s leadership out of this crucial debate. In my analysis above, I have noted various points where Sallust suppresses the notion that Cicero rallies the Roman people behind his leadership and points where Sallust avoids any hint that the Roman people constitute a unified entity. The aspects of Cicero’s speech that Sallust excludes are just as important as the ones he includes. Sallust downplays Cicero’s leadership by consistently suppressing its fundamental claims, which reveals the historian’s thinking that Cicero failed to inspire unity among the Roman people.

3.5. Synthesis: Sallust’s Analysis of Cicero’s Leadership

How does Sallust interpret Cicero’s leadership? Sallust’s decision to foreground Cato rather than Cicero is highly significant, as Cato had become by the time of writing a well-known symbol of the lost Republic. Cato was recognized as embodying the values and political order that Rome’s moral crisis had destroyed. In his construction of Cato’s speech, Sallust reproduced some of the key arguments from Cicero’s fourth oration In Catilinam while suppressing Cicero’s various leadership claims. This suggests that Sallust treats the contents of Cicero’s argumentation somewhat sympathetically, at the very least accepting that Cicero made some good points. Nevertheless, Sallust operates with a theory of history wherein Rome is in the midst of tangled web of declining morality: confused virtus, the triumph of body over mind, lack of concordia, and increasing vice. Sallust suppressed Cicero’s vision of unity against a common enemy because he finds that the problem in Rome is so deep-seated that everyone, including Cicero, unknowingly participates in the promotion of decadence. As a result, Sallust downplays Cicero’s leadership because he was destined to fail. For Sallust, the fact that Cicero was instrumental in ending the armed rebellion constitutes failure because the moral crisis continues and is manifest in further political instability when the historian wrote his monograph.

4. Luke’s Analysis of History

4.1. Luke’s Paul as a Departing Leader of Israel

In contrast to Sallust’s Cicero, who is a minor character in the Bellum Catilinae, Luke puts Paul’s leadership on full display in his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, which is the key text for his analysis of Paul’s leadership (Acts 20:17–38). There are two reasons why I have selected this passage, also known as the Miletus Speech, as the focus text for the Lukan Paul. I selected the Miletus Speech because, in this passage, Luke reveals how he wants Paul to be remembered (Dibelius [1956] 1999, pp. 155–59; Lüdemann 1987, p. 227; Johnson 1992, p. 366; Fitzmyer 2008, p. 675). Additionally, Luke’s Paul appears as a leadership figure, reflecting upon and summarizing the defining features of his missionary and pastoral activity. In short, the Miletus Speech defines a Pauline legacy of leadership.

Leadership as a major theme emerges in the speech itself and in the surrounding context. As Christopher Mount observes, except for the prefaces that begin both the Gospel and Acts (Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1), the Miletus Speech contains the only other direct bridge between the events of the narrative and the situation of the implied readers (Mount 2002, p. 100). Luke’s Paul declares to the elders: “And now I commend you to God and to the message of his grace, a message that is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). In this connection, the audience of the farewell address are elders (πρεσβύτεροι), whom Luke depicts as ecclesiastical functionaries in Ephesus (Acts 20:17). Luke’s Paul, then, passes on a heritage of leadership, which the elders are to continue in subsequent generations. Luke similarly depicts Paul as a leader in the speech’s immediate context. Prior to arriving in Miletus, Luke’s Paul encourages believers throughout Greece (Acts 20:1–2) and leads a gathering of believers in Troas (Acts 20:7–12). Put simply, the major theme of Acts 20 is Paul as a leader (Roloff 1988, pp. 294–308), meaning the theme of leadership emerges as a natural prism through which to investigate the Lukan Paul in the Miletus Speech.

In my study of Sallust, I found that Sallust interpreted Cicero through the lens of moral decline. To the extent that Luke analyzes Paul’s significance, he does so within the frame of his own historiographical scheme. Luke’s scheme and his placement of Paul within it become discernable through consideration of the micro-genre of the Miletus Speech. Most Lukan scholars read the Miletus Speech as either a “testament” (e.g., Holladay 2016, pp. 394–400) or a “farewell address” (e.g., Walton 2000, p. 55). In favor of the latter option, the Miletus Speech is situated in a portion of the narrative of Acts where the theme of “farewell” looms in the background (Acts 20:1; 21:5–7) and the speech itself anticipates a future without Paul (Acts 20:25, 29). The Miletus Speech is followed by two emotional farewell scenes, with the elders in Ephesus (Acts 20:36–38) and believers in Tyre bidding goodbye to Paul (Acts 21:5–6). Paul’s imminent and permanent absence are major themes in the Miletus Speech and its surrounding context, which suggests that Luke means for this oration to be read as a farewell address.

The speech’s formal features are also suggestive of a farewell address. Steve Walton has examined a range of formal features scholars generally identify as typical of ancient farewell addresses, many of which are found in the Miletus Speech (Walton 2000, pp. 55–66): the speaker’s reflection on his own conduct (Acts 20:18–21), an announcement of death (Acts 20:22–25), paraenesis (e.g., Acts 20:35), and grief (Acts 20:38). William S. Kurz isolates two “forms” of the farewell address in the ancient world, “Greco-Roman” and the “biblical” speeches, and finds that “in tone, content, and style” the Miletus Speech has “more in common with biblical than with secular farewell addresses” (Kurz 1985, p. 261). More specifically, Kurz isolates the following features of the Miletus Speech that are also recurring in biblical farewell addresses: the summoning of successors (Acts 20:17), the speaker’s appeal to his own example (Acts 20:35), his declaration that he has faithfully fulfilled his responsibilities (Acts 20:26–27), references to one’s impending death (Acts 20:25), and warnings about the future (Acts 20:29–30). Although Kurz is right not to overstate the differences between “Greco-Roman” and “biblical” farewell addresses, I agree that the Miletus Speech bears a special affinity with farewell addresses in the Bible.

The Miletus Speech resembles biblical farewell addresses not only in formal features but also in content. Crucially, Luke’s Paul speaks as a divinely appointed leader of God’s people, just as major figures in the history of Israel do. In the Bible, the speaker’s divine appointment is not always explicit in the speech itself (cf. 1 Chr 28:4) but is often clear from the very beginning of the story of a particular figure: this is the case for Moses (Exod 3), Joshua (Num 27:15–23), Samuel (1 Sam 3) and David (1 Sam 16:13; cf. 1 Sam 10:6; 11:6), and, eventually, for Paul (Acts 9:1–25). Correspondingly, just as some biblical farewell addresses emphasize the divine appointment of the speaker’s successor (Deut 31:3; 1 Sam 12:13; 1 Chr 28:5–7, 10, 19), Paul notes that the Ephesian elders have been appointed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28). Paul’s prophetic warning about threats to the church in Acts 20:29–30 recalls the prophetic motifs that characterize some biblical addresses, such as Jacob’s announcement of what will happen “in days to come” (Gen 49:1), Samuel’s demonstration of power (1 Sam 12:17–18), and Tobit’s confidence in predictions of Israel’s exile and return (Tob 14:4–7). Luke’s Paul bears two major similarities to the figures who issue farewell speeches at various points in Israel’s history: biblical leaders receive their authority by means of divine appointment and conduct themselves as prophets (see Johnson 1992, pp. 354–68).

The Miletus Speech is also characteristic of biblical farewell addresses in terms of literary function, namely, that of a leader transferring authority to his successors. While transferring authority also occurs in non-biblical, Greco-Roman farewell addresses (Homer, Il. 6.400–7.3; Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10.16–22), it is particularly characteristic of those in the Bible. Transferring authority is the purpose of God’s charge to Moses and Joshua (Deut 31:14–23), of Samuel’s acknowledgment that God made Saul king (1 Sam 12:13), of David’s last instructions to Solomon (1 Kings 2:2–4), and of David’s acknowledgment that Solomon has received a kingship (1 Chr 28:11–25). Even though Joshua’s farewell address does not appoint a specific successor (Josh 23:1–24:28), the notion of a transfer of authority is still in the background as Israel moves into an era of many individual rulers (cf. Judg 2:6–10). The two farewell speeches from the Jewish Apocrypha, which were part of Luke’s Greek Bible, also denote lines of succession: Mattathias designates Simeon as counselor and Judah as ruler (1 Macc 2:65–66) and Tobit commands his son to take the family to Media (Tob 14:3–4, 9). In the Miletus Speech, Paul’s charge to the elders to be shepherds of the church, wherein he emphasizes the future problems they will face (Acts 20:28–30), is Luke’s way of having Paul transfer authority to the next generation of leaders.

The micro-genre of the Miletus Speech as a biblical farewell address suggests that Luke depicts Paul as a departing leader of Israel. By depicting Paul in this way, Luke frames Paul as part of the same stream of moving time that began in the Bible, with the result that Luke’s Paul and his Gentile mission are a continuation of the story of Israel. In crafting Paul’s farewell address after the biblical model, Luke reveals his interpretation of the historical significance of Paul’s leadership. The historian situates Paul in a long chain of Israelite leaders, which implies that Luke’s Paul is a major actor in the biblical story of Israel. By transferring authority to the Ephesian elders, Luke’s Paul is the connection between the Israelite past and present (Section 4.2). In other words, Luke upholds Paul’s leadership not only as another phase in the long history of Israelite leadership, but a major transition point: after Paul, leadership of God’s people is carried out at the local level by ecclesiastical functionaries (Acts 20:32). In contrast to how Sallust declines to depict Cicero as a major historical actor, Luke assigns Paul’s leadership a central role in his historiographical scheme, which is the continuation of the story of Israel into the era of Gentile Christianity.

4.2. Luke’s Theory of History

In my investigation of Sallust, I found that the historian downplays Cicero’s leadership because he interprets the past through the lens of a well-developed theory of history, wherein moral decline is so pervasive and deep-rooted that no single leader could save Rome (Section 3.2). In this section, I investigate whether Luke as a historian also operates with a theory of history. Following my finding above that Luke models Paul as an Israelite leader (Section 4.1), I show that Luke’s theory of history is that the spread of the gospel is a continuation of Israel’s story. In what follows, I elucidate Luke’s theory of history as a set-up to my investigation of how Paul fits into his interpretation of the past (Section 4.3).

Luke maintains deliberate yet ambiguous connections between Gentile believers and their Israelite heritage (see Wilson 1983, pp. 103–17; Jervell [1972] 2002, pp. 133–52; Marguerat 2004, pp. 65–84). In two instances, when offering narrative commentary on Paul’s missionary journeys, Luke implies the ultimate significance of these travels lies in the conversion of Gentiles:

After they had arrived and gathered the community together, they announced all the things that God had done with them, and that he opened to the Gentiles a door of faith.

(Acts 14:21)

And the following day, Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. After he had greeted them, he explained to them one by one the things God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.

(Acts 21:18–19)

However, throughout his accounts of Paul’s missionary journeys, Luke often reports that the missionization of the Gentiles occurs in connection to Jews or Judaism. For example, Luke consistently depicts Paul’s converts as Gentiles who were worshipping with Jews in synagogues and often emphasizes that a high number of Jews accepted the gospel (Acts 13:43; 14:1; 17:12; 21:20) (Jervell [1972] 2002, pp. 44–49). Luke also maintains connections with Israel in an official sense: Luke depicts the Jewish leadership in Jerusalem as exercising jurisdiction over events pertaining to Gentiles. For instance, Luke’s Paul is relatively silent during his meeting with the “apostles and elders” in Jerusalem (cf. Acts 15:12), but delivers the decision made by these leaders to various cities throughout Galatia (Acts 16:4–5), which implies that Luke’s Paul operates in the shadow of Jerusalem’s authority (cf. Acts 21:17–26). To the extent that Luke tells of the emergence of believers among the Gentiles, he does so with a degree of caution, frequently maintaining connections with the Jewish people and its leadership.

The connections that Luke maintains with the Israelite heritage reflect his theory of history, which is that the spread of the gospel among the Gentiles continues the story of Israel. The first indication that Luke operates with such a theory is found in the oracle of the prophet Simeon (Luke 2:25–35), which is situated toward the end of the Birth Narratives, wherein Luke “portrays the world into which the Christian message is introduced” (Tyson 1992, p. 53). Although Jesus is born into an unambiguously Jewish context, Luke makes it clear that Jesus, as the embodiment of God’s salvation (σωτήριον) (Luke 2:30), will be a “light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32). Over the course of Luke’s Gospel and Acts, salvation is a concept that undergoes transformation, beginning with Jesus as the incarnation of salvation (cf. Luke 2:11; 2:30; 3:6) and ending with Jesus as the object of Paul’s proclamation. Luke ends his narrative by having Paul announce to the Jews in Rome: “Let it be known to you today that this salvation [σωτήριον] of God has been sent to the Gentiles” (Acts 28:28). In Luke and Acts, “salvation” is a moving concept in that it crosses geographical and ethnic boundaries in accordance with biblical prophecy (e.g., Acts 13:47; 15:16–17; 28:26–27). For Luke, a historical event is one that contributes to the story of Israel by extending God’s salvation to the Gentiles.

Luke shares with Sallust a fundamental similarity around the practice of historical construction: each author has an operative theory of history that serves as the prism through which they interpret the past. In this connection, each historian’s theory is ultimately about change. For Sallust, history is about negative change from the idyllic past to the moral decline of the present. Since the moral crisis is self-perpetuating, even Cicero’s defeat of Catiline in 63 BCE did nothing to thwart the greater problems facing Rome. By contrast, history for Luke is about positive change, as God’s salvation is proclaimed throughout the Greco-Roman world and eventually in the heart of empire. Unlike Sallust, who diminishes Cicero, Luke amplifies Paul’s leadership and makes Paul an agent of historical causality to explain the progress of God’s salvation among the Gentiles. In what follows, I return to the Miletus Speech to investigate Luke’s depiction of Paul’s leadership and how Luke understands Paul as a conduit of historical change.

4.3. Leadership as Protective Oversight

Luke’s Paul charges the next generation of leaders to protect God’s people: “Keep watch over yourselves and over the entirety of the flock, among whom the Holy Spirit appointed you to be overseers, to shepherd the community of the Lord, which he acquired through his own blood” (Acts 20:28). Luke’s Paul calls on the Ephesian elders to look after “the flock” (τὸ ποίμνιον), which is a common metaphor for God’s people in the Hebrew Bible (e.g., Ps 94:7; Isa 40:11; Jer 13:17; 23:2–3; Ezek 34:8, 10) and among the New Testament authors (Luke 12:32; 1 Pet 5:2; cf. John 21:16). In this connection, the metaphor of shepherding was common in Luke’s time and denotes watching over and caring for God’s people (e.g., Matt 2:6; John 21:16; 1 Pet 5:2; Rev 7:17; cf. Jer 23:1–4; Zech 10:3). Luke’s Paul specifies the exigencies that require future leaders to be vigilant, saying that the community of the Lord is vulnerable to threats from both outsiders and insiders:

I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in to you, not sparing the flock. Even from your own midst men will rise, speaking distorted things to draw away the disciples after them.

(Acts 20:29–30)

Regarding threats from outsiders, Luke’s Paul foresees the arrival of “savage wolves” whose behavior he describes in two highly generalized ways. First, Luke’s Paul makes it clear that the wolves will be an intrusive presence among God’s people. Second, although the specific activities of the outsiders are undefined, he describes their behavior in an unambiguously negative sense, leaving readers with the impression that the conduct of the wolves will redound to adverse consequences for the flock. Regarding threats from insiders, Luke’s Paul hones his focus on the warnings about insiders becoming false teachers,10 although the extent to which the deviant insiders are influenced by the wolves from outside is far from clear. To synthesize, Luke’s Paul summons the Ephesian elders to a ministry of oversight (Acts 20:28: επίσκοπος) and protective care, defining their leadership responsibilities in terms of safeguarding God’s people from external and internal threats to their community, with a particular focus on the problem of false teaching.

Luke’s Paul defines the leadership tasks of the Ephesian elders in a way that resembles other early Christian writings. For example, the author of 1 Peter describes leaders as moral authorities who ensure good order and look after the well-being of local communities (1 Pet 5:1–5). The letters of Ignatius attest to a similar understanding of localized leadership. In the early second century, Ignatius outlined his ecclesiastical visions in a series of letters, wherein he developed a concept of the primacy of the office of overseer (ἐπίσκοπος). For Ignatius, the overseer is essential to the well-being of local communities: Ignatius calls on the various communities to whom he writes to view the overseer as a model for imitation (e.g., Eph. 1.3; 20.2; Phild. 7.2; Pol. 1.3) and to submit to his authority (e.g., Mag. 13.1–2; Trall. 2.2), both of which redound to harmony (e.g., Eph. 4.1–2), good order (e.g., Mag. 7.1; Trall. 3.1; Smyrn. 8), and the absence of false teachings (e.g., Eph. 6.2). By having Paul summon the Ephesian elders to a ministry of protective oversight, Luke reflects in a historiographical frame the ways other Christian authors theorize the role of local leaders.

Luke also shares with other authors the specific concern that errant teachings represent an acute threat to the well-being of local communities. Throughout his letters, Ignatius is constantly on guard against heresy (αἵρεσις), which he understands as a way of thinking and living that deviates from the truth of Christianity (e.g., Eph. 6.2; Trall. 6.1). Notably, Ignatius describes false teachings as a force of destruction (e.g., Phild. 3.3; 6.2). The Pastoral Epistles reveal a similar understanding of the interrelationship between local leadership and protection from false teaching. In these letters, Timothy and Titus are told to protect their communities from false teachers (1 Tim 1:3–5; 4:6; 6:3–5; 2 Tim 1:13; 2:15; Tit 2:7–8), whose influence is also described as a force of destruction (1 Tim 4:1–5; 2 Tim 3:1–9, 13).

In historicizing Paul’s leadership, Luke reflects key aspects of the intellectual context in which he writes: false teachings are destructive and it is the task of the local leader to protect believers from this type of threat. Unlike Sallust, who downplayed Cicero’s leadership, Luke upholds Paul as the prime exemplar of a leadership value shared by his co-religionists. In writing history, then, Luke passes down a Pauline heritage of leadership, making Paul a point of orientation for future leaders. In the next section, I will show that Luke’s primary concern is not to define the content of sound doctrine, but rather to uphold Paul’s legacy in terms of his tireless efforts to protect God’s people in the face of acute threats.

4.4. Fashioning Paul’s Legacy

Luke’s Paul models constant efforts of protective oversight, which the next generation of leaders is to emulate: “Therefore, keep alert, remembering that for three years, night and day, I did not cease instructing each and every one of you, with tears” (Acts 20:31). In this statement, Luke defines the future ministry of the elders as an act of remembrance of Paul. For Luke, an essential element of the Pauline legacy is Paul’s constant effort to stamp out false teaching, and thereby to protect communities from this dire threat. By depicting Paul as summoning the Ephesian elders to “remember” him through their ministries of protective oversight, Luke provides a lens through which to understand Paul’s commendation of the elders (Acts 20:32); Luke’s Paul passes down a legacy of leadership, which the Ephesian elders are to continue by leading their communities in the same way that Paul led them.

The mandate of protective oversight that Luke’s Paul gives to the elders represents the culmination of the way Luke has depicted Paul throughout his narrative. In Acts, Luke’s Paul routinely conducts pastoral visits, returning to communities that he founded during his missionary travels. Throughout these scenes, Luke employs a dynamic vocabulary of pastoral care, the cumulative effect of which gives readers the impression that protective oversight is a defining feature of Paul’s missionary work. As I will show below, Luke depicts the scope of Paul’s protective oversight throughout the Greco-Roman world as extensive. Luke interprets the significance of Paul’s leadership by exploring the wide sphere of his presence and influence, to the point where communities of believers among the Gentiles and communities of believers under Paul’s leadership appear as one and the same. In this way, Luke makes Paul an agent of historical causality, tracing the emergence of believing communities among the Gentiles in large part back to Paul’s tireless efforts to protect his communities from threats.

The first pastoral visit scene is in Acts 14:21–23, wherein Paul and Barnabas returned to various cities where they founded communities of believers during their so-called first missionary journey.11 Although Luke indicated in his account of Paul’s first missionary journey that Paul successfully generated converts (Acts 13:48–49; 14:1, 21), it is only in his account of Paul’s return visits that these “disciples” transition from being an amorphous body of new believers into an organized social group (see Johnson 1992, pp. 252–57). The major clue that such transformation takes place is in Acts 14:23, when Luke’s Paul installs elders (πρεσβύτεροι) as local leaders in each community (cf. Acts 11:30; 15:2, 4, 6, 22, 23; 16:4; 20:28; 21:18). Luke has Paul and Barnabas entrust the elders in these new communities to the Lord, and his use of the verb παρατίθημι not only anticipates Paul’s bestowal of authority upon the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:32), but also reflects a similar use of the same verb in the Pastoral Epistles, wherein the apostle entrusts his doctrinal legacy to his successor (1 Tim 1:18; 2 Tim 2:2). Luke is clear that it is Paul and Barnabas who select the elders for their leadership tasks: although the mode by which they do this is unspecified, what is most important for Luke is that Paul and Barnabas alone conduct the process of selection. In other words, although the new communities in south Galatia have their own local functionaries, Luke depicts these communities as unequivocally Pauline, who have Paul as their ultimate leader.

Luke’s Paul also exercises protective oversight in the subsequent pastoral visit scenes throughout the book of Acts. The next pastoral visit scene is in Acts 15:36–41, which follows Luke’s account of the Jerusalem meeting (cf. Acts 15:1–35). In this visit scene, Luke’s Paul takes the initiative to return to communities he founded with the explicit purpose of checking on their well-being: “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, to see how they are doing” (Acts 15:36). Two features of Acts 15:36–41 suggest that Luke narrates these visits to increase the numerical abundance and wide geographic distribution of Pauline communities. First, by visiting Syria and Cilicia, Luke’s Paul executes pastoral care in communities that he did not establish. In the narrative of Acts, the disciples in Damascus (Acts 9:19) and the church in Antioch (Acts 11:19–26) came into being before Paul started on mission, yet these groups of believers now fall within the scope of Paul’s influence. Second Luke’s Paul declares his intention to return to communities “in every city,” which suggests that Luke assigns to Paul leadership prerogatives in any location where there are believers. For Luke, because of Paul’s pastoral work, all communities of Gentile believers are Pauline communities.

Luke reports the next series of pastoral visits in Acts 16:4–5, where Paul and his co-workers travel throughout various cities and deliver to local communities the decision the apostles and elders reached at the meeting in Jerusalem (cf. Acts 15:22–29). Compared to the other visits of Paul that Luke reports in Acts, this scene stands out because Luke emphasizes the authority of the leaders in Jerusalem (cf. Acts 21:17–26). Three features of this scene contribute to the picture of Paul as a leader who exercises protective oversight with widespread geographical authority. First, Luke’s reference to “the cities” into which Paul travelled is productively vague, making it difficult to limit the scope of Paul’s pastoral activity to specific locations. Second, within the Lukan writings, τὰ δόγματα always denotes an official decision from authorities (Luke 2:1; Acts 17:7), which suggests that one of Paul’s major roles in carrying out this series of visits is to ensure that his communities adhere to the proper teaching established in Jerusalem. Third, the result of Paul’s delivery of the decision is that his communities experienced growth in both a qualitative and quantitative sense.12 Regarding qualitative growth, Luke’s remark that the communities “were being strengthened in faith” represents yet another reference to increased firmness in one’s religious commitment (cf. Acts 14:22; 15:41). Regarding quantitative growth, Luke notes that after Paul’s delivery of the decision, the communities “were increasing in number daily.” Within the context of the book of Acts, Luke’s report of the growth of churches in the Gentile world parallels his numerous references to similar growth in and around Jerusalem (Acts 2:41, 47; 6:7; 9:31; 12:24). Put simply, Luke depicts Paul’s influence as increasing to such an extent that Pauline communities among the Gentiles are a counterpart to the church in Jerusalem.

Luke reports the next series of pastoral visits in Acts 18:23, when he notes that Paul traveled through “the region of Galatia and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.” Although Luke has already reported a Pauline mission with return visits to the cities of the southern part of Galatia (cf. Acts 14:21–23), his use of the word χώρα denotes vast stretches of territory (cf. Acts 12:20; 13:49; 26:20), which implies that Pauline communities now cover the entirety of the large province of Galatia. Interestingly, prior to this visit report, Luke noted that Paul and his team merely “passed through” Phrygia and Galatia and he stated explicitly that no missionary activity occurred during their transit: “… because we were prevented by the Holy Spirit from speaking the word in Asia” (Acts 16:6). Luke’s report of Paul’s pastoral visits in Acts 18:23, then, is another instance where Luke’s Paul visits communities he did not establish. In other words, Luke’s Paul is a leader of believers of unknown origin, meaning Gentile communities are once again defined as Pauline communities (see Mount 2002, pp. 113–18).

Luke’s report of Paul’s final pastoral visit in Acts 20:7–12 includes himself as a participant in the narrative (cf. Acts 20:5–6). The location of this visit is Troas, the significance of which is seen in comparison with Acts 16:8–10. In the earlier text, Luke does not report any missionary activity of Paul in Troas but notes that Paul received a vision in that city, which ultimately carried his mission forward to Europe. By reporting a pastoral visit in Troas, Luke’s Paul once again conducts pastoral visits to cities where he has not generated converts. Luke’s decision to narrow a seven-day visit (Acts 20:6) down to a single community gathering reflects his interest in highlighting Paul’s presence and influence as a leader in that city. Luke’s report of Paul in Troas is consistent with his overall purpose in peppering pastoral visit scenes throughout the book of Acts: Luke situates all believers throughout the Greco-Roman world under the purview of Paul’s leadership.

4.5. Synthesis: Luke’s Analysis of Paul’s Leadership

In Luke’s analysis of history, Gentile Christianity emerges because of Paul’s tireless efforts to hold new and vulnerable communities of believers together. In other words, Gentile Christianity exists in no small measure because of Paul’s protective oversight throughout the Greco-Roman world. Luke’s Paul is the figurehead of Christianity among the Gentiles, and the historian shows that Paul engages in pastoral work across a wide geographical expanse, superimposing Paul’s leadership overall all Gentile communities, including those he did not establish. Luke knows, for example, that believers were present in Ephesus before Paul’s arrival there (Acts 18:24–28; 19:1–6) but nevertheless finds that Paul’s pastoral work is of far greater historical significance. For Luke, the history of Israel continues into the time of Paul, whose protective oversight among the Gentiles marks a critical chapter in the story of God’s people. Paul’s farewell address, however, marks the end of the era of his leadership, and future leaders are to continue Paul’s legacy by emulating his continuous endeavor to ensure the well-being of believing communities. History is very future-oriented in the book of Acts: Luke draws moral lessons from the past about what constitutes effective leadership and calls on those in future generations to be leaders like Paul.

5. Conclusions

In this study, I compared Sallust and Luke in terms of how they analyze leadership in a historiographical frame. Although the historians exhibit different interpretive outcomes, this comparative study reveals common practices in how ancient historians construct narratives of leadership. Historians in antiquity report facts but also analyze the shape of the past through narrative with literary devices. Writing history is an interpretive act, and historians not only address the question of what happened, but also why and how things happened. Ordering time and construing causality are as central to Luke’s history of early Christianity as they are to Sallust’s history of Catiline’s rebellion. I locate Luke in the same literary sphere as Sallust in that both are analytical historiographers. In this study, I have identified three analytical practices that cut across traditional dividing lines such as language, religion, and historical context, all of which tend to discourage direct comparisons between Sallust and Luke in New Testament scholarship.

First, both authors shape the past through the lens of their own theories of history. For Sallust, there is no transcendent solution to the moral crisis, which is self-perpetuating. As a result, Cicero loses all agency in the ways that truly matter for Sallust. Although Cicero had a major role in thwarting the conspiracy by exposing the plots against Rome, Sallust views Cicero’s leadership as ineffective in the long run because he looks at the past through the prism of moral decline and political turmoil that continued well past the revolt of Catiline. By contrast, Luke’s theory of history is that the spread of the gospel among the Gentiles is the continuation of Israel’s story. The pursuit of historical truth in both Sallust and Luke occurs within interpretive frameworks imposed by the author shaping the past. Historiography of the birth of a religious movement, written by one of its participants, is no less analytical than a historical account of a major political event. Method and hermeneutics determine outcomes for both authors, yet Sallust and Luke both analyze how and why history unfolds and show how the past explains the present.

Second, for both authors history is about change. Sallust’s historiography tells of negative change as the Republic spirals into further moral decay. By contrast, Luke’s historiography tells of positive change as God’s salvation spreads across the Roman Empire, in no small measure because of Paul’s missionary and pastoral work. Sallust and Luke order time by identifying how the past is about change and arranging a narrative that explains why such change occurred. Identifying and tracing historical developments also has implications for the moral lessons that both authors draw from the past. Sallust is wholly pessimistic, since even virtuous individuals cannot overcome systematic moral decay. For Luke, the past provides lessons on leadership for those who live in the post-Pauline era. Luke upholds Paul’s tireless efforts of protective oversight as a point of orientation for future leaders and summons them to participate the story of Israel by following his example. Historiography for Luke is a space to define how time ahead should look, and the moral lessons he adduces impose a sense of challenge for the future.

Third, for Sallust and Luke leadership is not biography but a structuring principle through which historians shape the past. Leadership implies agency, occurs in public, and makes abstract causality visible. For Sallust, Cicero’s failed leadership is both a symptom and further cause of the moral crisis. In his narrative, Cicero parallels Catiline, whose rebellion is emblematic of decades of moral decline and pushes Rome into further decay. For Sallust, Catiline’s conspiracy and Cicero’s failure are products of systemic forces that exceed any individual’s capacity to reverse. In Acts, God drives history forward, but God works through human leaders as communities are established across the Greco-Roman world. Luke’s perspective is that Paul’s leadership causes change: Paul’s initiative and efforts are as relevant to the shape of the past as God’s active involvement in human affairs. For both Sallust and Luke, good leadership is essential for positive outcomes, but effective leaders alone cannot bring about meaningful and long-lasting change. Sallust credits Cicero for bringing about temporary physical safety but finds that the consul was ultimately ineffective because of everyone’s role in the moral crisis. Luke finds that Paul is responsible for the rise of Gentile Christianity and that it is essential for future leaders to follow his example and continue his legacy.