Sallust is the first Roman historian whose work has survived, and his Bellum Catilinae is an excellent text for students. It provides a riveting narrative of a significant event in an important period of Roman history, the Catilinarian Conspiracy of 63 BC. His literary models were Thucydides and the Elder Cato; nevertheless, his Latin is significantly more straightforward than that of Livy or Tacitus. His work was immensely influential in antiquity, in terms not only of style and expression (Tacitus took him as his principal literary model) but also of political thought (especially for notions of national decline). His moralising endeared him to Christian authors such as Augustine and Jerome; interest in his work even increased during the Middle Ages; and he was the most popular Latin historian in the Renaissance. This edition helps students translate the Latin and appreciate the work and its literary and historical context.
