Interesantisimo libro con dos historias que Sallust vivio en su epoca.

La conspiracion de Cataline y la rebelion de Jugurthine.

Es interesante como de diferente seria la historia si cualquiera de estos eventos hubiera ocurrido de otra manera. Cataline no estuvo tan lejos de ganar sus batallas, otros lo hicieron antes y otros lo harian despues.

De la misma manera, Roma podia haber decidido evitar la guerra con Jugurthine o el podia no haberla forzado, con lo que quiza hoy toda esa zona (Argelia) seria bastante distinta. ( )

Sallust is surely one of the most fascinating fellows of the ancient world. Here's a taste of his biography: he attacked Cicero in 52 (failed), was kicked out of the senate in 50. He backed Caesar (smart), but when Caesar sent him to help Antonius, he, well, failed. Two years later he was sent to deal with a mutiny and, as you can probably guess, failed. His punishment for repeated failure was being made a governor in 46. One year later, enormously rich, he quit. In 44 he was tried for extortion (acquitted). Having failed so egregiously at literally everything (but consistently failing up) he thought he'd take up history writing, and became one of the most influential historians and stylists of the ancient world. We all know someone like Sallust, the type of person who could beat their bosses with a lead pipe and be given a promotion the next day.

Luckily, Sallust really was a pretty good writer. Batstone's translation smooths off the extreme difficulty of Sallust's style, but keeps the pithiness (compare: every other historian before Sallust, all of whom wrote eighteen thousand volume monsters; Tacitus apparently learned from Sallust). The two major histories (I exclude The Histories, since they're in here for completeness and scholarly respectability; I can't imagine too many people reading those fragments with pleasure) each include fascinating philosophical prologues and a wonderful old-man odor of crankiness. The people are always far more interesting in Sallust's depiction than they are in, e.g., Cicero; Catiline seems like a pretty reasonable guy gone wrong, as does Jugurtha. And in general it's nice to read a Roman who doesn't have time for the pretensions of the aristocrats of the senate. The comparison with today casts an interesting light on all the neoclassical buildings that dot America's administrative districts.

Also, this is a very good edition if, like me, you don't know that much about the events Sallust is writing about. Batstone has encouraged me to read more about the late Republic, which is the best thing one can say about an editor/translator. ( )

A conspiracy to overthrow the Roman Republic is exposed by the prosecutor Cicero. It made Cicero's career. You must know quite a bit of how Roman government had been run in order to follow the tortuous path of discovering the culprits and bringing them to justice. Our system is far more efficient. ( )

Sallust had a long political career, siding with the populists, who would eventually become the triumvirate of Caesar, Crassus, and Pompey. In many ways, Sallust's history resembles Caesar's memoirs twenty years later, but Caesar's biases are much more difficult to ferret out. If Sallust had been a more clever man, we might have taken his word for it and entered his works as pure history, but his bias is so evident that we can almost fill out the rest of the story by it's absence.

There are fairly self-evident motivations for the men Sallust presents as incorrigible villains, and we may also compare his view of history to Cicero's; for even though they were of like opinion, Cicero tends to be more equitable in his explanations.

This difference between the two authors rather perfectly encapsulates the difference between them as men, and the central point of their disagreement. Cicero was a pacifier, a placator, but one of enough skill and vigor to change his opponent's course in the midst of deference. We might expect him to be in perfect agreement with Ben Franklin who, when once asked for advice by Thomas Jefferson, is supposed to have said "never disagree with anyone".

Sallust, on the other hand, was an incurable idealist. We are treated to long passages on the particular moral qualities a man ought to have and how Sallust's opponents lack them and how Sallust's friends all have them. There is a constant sense of injustice being perpetrated throughout the politic sphere, but it is always by Sallust's political and ideological enemies.

Though the reader rarely doubts such depravity and greed went on, Sallust's self righteous displays of humble innocence strike as false. His history is not informed enough to serve us--indeed, it is filled with errors in dates, places, and people. But neither is his rhetoric so impressive that it saves his tract from being more than the lamentations of a man who retired to complain for posterity's sake.

As a historical view, he is useful, but moreso within the context of other writers. ( )