Publisher's Synopsis
Sallust (86-c.35 BC) was a Roman historian and politician from an Italian plebeian family. He was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines and was a popularis, an opponent of the old Roman aristocracy, throughout his career, and later a partisan of Julius Caesar. He is the earliest known Roman historian with surviving works to his name, of which Catiline's War (about the conspiracy in 63 BC of L Sergius Catilina), The Jugurthine War (about Rome's war against the Numidian King Jugurtha from 111-105 BC), and the Histories (of which only fragments survive), are still extant. Sallust was primarily influenced by the Greek historian Thucydides and amassed great (and ill-gotten) wealth from his governorship of Africa. The Conspiracy of Catiline, his first published work, was probably written between 44-40 BC and in this, and in his monograph The Jugurthine War, his priority is to use history as a vehicle for his judgment on the slow destruction of Roman morality and politics. Reprinted from an edition of 1848 in the original Latin, edited and with notes and an introduction by the German classical scholar Karl Gottlob Zumpt which have been translated into English.
