Further Reading

The only book in English which is devoted to Sallust and his work is Sir Ronald Syme’s Sallust, first published in 1964 and reissued in 2002 with a new Foreword by R. Mellor (University of California Press). There are very helpful commentaries by J. T. Ramsey (Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae, American Philological Association/Oxford University Press, rev. edn, 2007) and G. M. Paul (A Historical Commentary on Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum, Francis Cairns, 1984): both (especially the former) are aimed at readers who know Latin. On the Histories there is P. McGushin, Sallust: The Histories, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 1992-4). For a historical study of the Catilinarian conspiracy in particular see A. Drummond, Law, Politics and Power. Sallust and the Execution of the Catilinarian Conspirators (Steiner, 1995).

The history of the Roman republic’s last years has attracted an extraordinary amount of scholarly attention. The classic account remains R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford University Press, 1939), but it is not for the general reader; a more accessible narrative will be found in J. A. Crook, A. Lintott and E. Rawson (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, Vol. 9 (2nd edn; Cambridge University Press, 1994); there are helpful introductory essays in T. P. Wiseman (ed.), Roman Political Life 90 B.C.-A.D. 69 (Exeter University Press, 1985); and note most recently J. Osgood, Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

For studies of the major figures of the period see A. Keaveney, Sulla, the Last Republican (2nd edn; Routledge, 2005); T. F. Carney, A Biography of Caius Marius (2nd edn; Argonaut, 1970); R. Seager, Pompey the Great: A Political Biography (2nd edn; Blackwell, 2002); M. Gelzer, Caesar: Politician and Statesman (Blackwell, 1968); Z. Yavetz, Julius Caesar and his Public Image (Thames & Hudson, 1983); T. N. Mitchell, Cicero: The Ascending Years (Yale University Press, 1979), and Cicero: the Senior Statesman (Yale University Press, 1991). Note also P. O. Spann, Quintus Sertorius and the Legacy of Sulla (University of Arkansas Press, 1987), and B. C. McGing, The Foreign Policy of Mithridates VI Eupator, King of Pontus (Brill, 1986).

There is important material in P. A. Brunt, The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (Oxford University Press, 1988); other studies include M. Beard and M. Crawford, Rome in the Late Republic (2nd edn; Duckworth, 1999); P. A. Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic (Chatto & Windus, 1971); D. C. Earl, The Moral and Political Tradition of Rome (Thames & Hudson, 1967); D. F. Epstein, Personal Enmity in Roman Politics 218-43 BC (Croom Helm, 1987); F. Millar, Rome, the Greek World and the East, Vol. 1: The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution (University of North Carolina Press, 2002); A. W. Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford University Press, 1999), and Violence in Republican Rome (2nd edn; Oxford University Press, 1999); and R. Seager (ed.), The Crisis of the Roman Republic (Heffer, 1969).

Though Sallust is discussed in the numerous books devoted to classical (or Roman) historiography (or historians), many of these books are out of date and - misleadingly, in my view - treat their subject according to the criteria of modern historical writing. For a different perspective see T. P. Wiseman, Clio’s Cosmetics (Leicester University Press, 1979), and C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman, Latin Historians (Oxford University Press, 1997). Two recent compendia are J. Marincola (ed.), A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (Blackwell, 2007), and A. Feldherr (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Roman Historiography (Cambridge University Press, 2008).