Sallust

Front Cover
University of California Press, 2002 M06 5 - 381 pages
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.

 

Contents

Life and Scholarship 19031989
vii
Preface
li
The Problem
1
Sallusts Antecedents
5
The Political Scene
16
Sallusts Career
29
From Politics to History
43
The Bellum Catilinae
60
Warfare
138
Politics
157
The Historiae
178
The Time of Writing
214
History and Style
240
The Fame of Sallust
274
The Evolution of Sallusts Style
305
The False Sallust
313

The Credulity of Sallust
83
Caesar and Cato
103
Sallusts Purpose
121

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About the author (2002)

One of the most distinguished Roman historians, Sir Ronald Syme (1903-1989) was Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford University. His books include Tacitus (1958) and The Roman Revolution (1939). In addition to numerous awards and honors, he collected honorary degrees in eleven countries on five continents. Ronald Mellor is Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of several books on Roman history, including The Roman Historians (1999), Tacitus: The Classical Heritage (1995), Tacitus (1993), and From Augustus to Nero: The First Dynasty of Imperial Rome (ed. 1990)

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