Success Quote by Sallust

A Roman historian praising failure sounds like a contradiction only if you forget what Rome did to moral language: it turned virtue into a political weapon. Sallust’s line is less a Hallmark sentiment than a hard-edged diagnosis of a republic rotting from the inside. In his histories of conspiracy and civil conflict, “foul and conquer” isn’t an abstract sin; it’s the operating system of late-Republic power, where bribery, spectacle, and violence routinely outperformed any high-minded appeal to the common good.

The intent is prophylactic. Sallust is trying to shame an elite audience that still wants the prestige of mos maiorum (ancestral virtue) while practicing the tactics of strongmen. By framing the choice as fair failure versus foul victory, he yokes success itself to suspicion: if you “conquer” by dirty means, you haven’t proven strength so much as exposed decay. The subtext is political realism in moral clothing: the short-term win purchased through corruption compounds into long-term instability, because it teaches everyone else that rules are ornamental.

Rhetorically, the sentence works because it flips Rome’s obsession with triumph on its head. Conquest was the civic currency; Sallust devalues it, elevating process over outcome. That’s not naivete. It’s an attempt to rescue legitimacy when institutions are losing their grip. “Better to fail” becomes a warning: a society that can’t tolerate honorable loss will soon normalize dishonorable rule.