Provides a unique and accessible understanding of Sallust and his influence on writing the history of Rome Gaius Sallustius Crispus (‘Sallust’, 86-35 BCE) is the earliest Roman historian from whom any works survive. His two extant writings chronicle crucial moments of a political, social, and ethical revolution with profound consequences for his own life and those of his audience. After the Past: Sallust on History and Writing History examines what it meant to write the history of contentious events—Catiline’s famous rebellion in 63 BCE and the war waged against the North African king Jugurtha fifty years earlier—while their effects were still so vividly felt. One of the first book-length treatments of Sallust in over fifty years, the text offers a comprehensive reading of Sallust’s works using the tools of narratology and intertextual analysis to reveal the changing functions of historiography at the end of the Roman Republic. Author Andrew Feldherr’s comprehensive approach examines the literary strategies used by Sallust and many of the most interesting and significant aspects of the historian’s accomplishment while advancing the study of historiography as a literary form, reconsidering its relationship to rival genres such as rhetoric and tragedy. Pursuing a focused and distinctive scholarly argument, this book: Provides a comprehensive approach to Sallust’s extant works Explores how Sallust helped his readers to reflect on their own relationship with their tumultuous past Contributes to understanding Roman conceptualizations of space and of writing Challenges the core assumption that literary historiography of the time period is essentially rhetorical nature After the Past: Sallust on History and Writing History is an accessible and useful resource for students of Latin literature and Roman history from the advanced undergraduate through professional levels, and for all those with an interest in historiography as a literary genre in Greco-Roman antiquity and in the literary history of the late Republic and triumviral period.

With this classic book, Sir Ronald Syme became the first historian of the twentieth century to place Sallust—whom Tacitus called the most brilliant Roman historian—in his social, political, and literary context. Scholars had considered Sallust to be a mere political hack or pamphleteer, but Syme's text makes important connections between the politics of the Republic and the literary achievement of the author to show Sallust as a historian unbiased by partisanship. In a new foreword, Ronald Mellor delivers one of the most thorough biographical essays of Sir Ronald Syme in English. He both places the book in the context of Syme's other works and details the progression of Sallustian studies since and as a result of Syme's work.

Sallust (86-35 BC) was a historian of major importance, writing at the time of the late Roman Republic. This is the first ever full-length commentary and English translation of one of his major works, the Histories, covering the years 78-67 BC, one of the least well-documented periods of theera. The translation is based on a text freshly examined for the first time since the original edition of 1891-3, and also includes newly discovered material.

The only surviving works from one of the world's earliest historians, in important new translations Sallust's first published work, Catiline's War, contains the memorable history of the year 63, including his thoughts on Catiline, a Roman politician who made an ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Roman Republic. In The Jugurthine War, Sallust dwells upon the feebleness of the Senate and aristocracy, having collected materials and compiled notes for this work during his governorship of Numidia.

In his Bellum Catilinae, C. Sallustius Crispus or Sallust (86-35/34 B.C.) recounts the dramatic events of 63 B.C., when a disgruntled and impoverished nobleman, L. Sergius Catilina, turned to armed revolution after two electoral defeats. Among his followers were a group of heavily indebted young aristocrats, the Roman poor, and a military force in the north of Italy. With his trademark archaizing style, Sallust skillfully captures the drama of the times, including an early morning attempt to assassinate the consul Cicero and two emotionally charged speeches, by Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger, in a senatorial debate over the fate of the arrested conspirators. Sallust wrote while the Roman Republic was being transformed into an empire during the turbulent first century B.C. The Bellum Catilinae is well-suited for second-year or advanced Latin study and provides a fitting introduction to the richness of Latin literature, while also pointing the way to a critical investigation of late-Republican government and historiography. Ramsey's introduction and commentary bring the text to life for Latin students. This new edition (updated since the 2007 printing) includes two maps and two city plans, an updated and now annotated bibliography, a list of divergences from the 1991 Oxford Classical Text of Sallust, and revisions in the introduction and commentary.

The Histories of Sallust (86–35 BCE), while fragmentary, provide invaluable information about a crucial period of history from 78 to around 67 BCE. In this volume, John T. Ramsey has freshly edited the Histories and the two pseudo-Sallustian Letters to Caesar, completing the Loeb Classical Library edition of his works.