Sallust

Gaius Sallustius Crispus (86 – c. 35 BC) was a Roman historian, born at Amiternum in the Sabine country. He entered public life as a quaestor and tribune of the plebs, was expelled from the Senate in 50 BC, and then sided with Julius Caesar in the civil war. Caesar restored him to the Senate, and he served as praetor and as governor of the new province of Africa Nova, where he was later accused of extortion. He retired from politics after Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC.

In retirement he wrote the first monographs of Roman history. The Conspiracy of Catiline, on the plot of 63 BC, and The Jugurthine War, on Rome’s war against the Numidian king (112–105 BC), were followed by the Histories, which survive only in fragments. Sallust modelled his terse, archaic and pointed prose on Thucydides and Cato the Elder, and he made moral decline and political corruption his great themes.

This archive carries both surviving monographs, The Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jugurthine War, in the English translation of the Rev. John Selby Watson (Bohn’s Classical Library, 1852). Watson’s preface, life of Sallust, argument summaries and notes are left out.