SALLUSTIO. - A Neoplatonic philosopher of the school of Pergamo, who lived in the fourth century A.D. He dissuaded the emperor Giuliano, whose friend he was, from putting Christians to death (Teodoreto, Hist., III, 2), but, like him, he was a staunch defender of paganism.
His work On the Gods and the World, Plotino (v.), Porfirio (v.), Proclo (v.), is
one of the last apologies for the fundamental motifs of thought and religious tradition, written for the people in a simple and unadorned form. It cannot be said that its purpose is openly polemical; yet, in its defence of the ideal grounds of polytheism alongside the metaphysical value of monotheism, as well as of the preparatory function of fables and myths, in the insistence with which it emphasizes the moral precepts of tradition and defends the divinity and eternity of the universe, one cannot fail to perceive the presence of a set of issues aroused no longer by a taste for academic exercises, but by the pressures of a living conflict.