Preface

‘Of course there is nothing inherently superior about a translation which is made directly from the original language.’ These words were written very recently by a distinguished Professor of Classics at Oxford. To illustrate his point he referred to a celebrated twentieth-century poet whose ‘ignorance of their original languages never inhibited him from translating poets who wrote in Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Serbo-Croat, German, Spanish or Portuguese’. Some readers may wonder how one can ‘translate’ a language without knowing it; but the answer appears to be that such ‘translators’ simply rewrite in their own words one or more of the English translations which are already available. This is not a doctrine or a practice to which I subscribe: whatever the resulting product of such a process may be, it is not a translation, and to pretend otherwise is simply to collude in the fraudulent misuse of language which now corrupts every aspect of modern life. Readers of this new translation of Sallust may like to know from the start that it is indeed ‘made directly from the original language’.

In the middle of the last century, when it was taken for granted that classical scholars would know Latin and Greek and that a degree in Classics would involve the study of the classical languages, the general fashion was to translate classical texts into a modern and readable English idiom. But times and fashions change. Contemporary readers of translated classical texts are more diverse than forty or fifty years ago, and their requirements are different. In those days it was no doubt acceptable for a translator to memorize half a page of a Greek or Latin text and then to produce a fluent, if not necessarily exact, English translation from memory. At least one Penguin Classic was indeed produced in this way. But those who study classical civilization or ancient history at university, and who know no ancient language, constitute a significant proportion of those who now read translated classical texts, and they require a more scholarly and accurate product than is possible by this eccentric method. I have kept these potential readers firmly in mind, while not, I hope, alienating those who simply desire to read about some of the more famous episodes of Roman republican history as narrated by the first Roman historian of whom complete works have survived.

My translation of Sallust keeps closer to the original Latin than do the other translations which are currently available. I have gone some way in attempting to reproduce Sallust’s word order and sentence structure, in the hope that readers will get at least some idea of the ‘feel’ of the original Latin; and as a general rule I have tried to avoid producing an ‘edited’ translation, relegating explanatory matter to endnotes. Nevertheless, whenever adherence to Sallust’s Latin seemed incompatible with readability, I usually decided in favour of the latter.

I am extremely grateful to those whom I have consulted on individual points or who have kindly agreed to offer me comments or suggestions on the Introduction or translation or both: P. J. E. Kershaw, C. S. Kraus, C. B. Krebs, J. F. Lazenby, J. E. Lendon, D. S. Levene, D. P. Nelis, J. J. Paterson, C. B. R. Pelling, Z. Stamatopoulou and T. P. Wiseman. I owe an especial debt of gratitude to Robin Seager, who is certainly not to be blamed for any errors that may remain. But my greatest debt, as usual, is to Ronald Martin, who has subjected the entire book to his critical gaze and provided me with copious corrections and observations.

If readers detect any mistakes or misconceptions, especially in the translation, I hope most sincerely that they will bring them to my attention.