author
Sallust
-86–-34
A sharp-eyed Roman historian and politician, he is best known for vivid accounts of political crisis in the final years of the Roman Republic. His surviving works still stand out for their brisk pace, moral seriousness, and eye for corruption and ambition.
3 Audiobooks
Jugurtha
by Sallust
About the author
Born in 86 BCE and traditionally said to have died in 35 or 34 BCE, Sallust was a Roman historian, politician, and public figure from Amiternum in central Italy. He took part in public life during the turbulent last decades of the Roman Republic and later turned to writing history.
He is best known for The Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jugurthine War, along with surviving fragments of his larger Histories. His writing is admired for being concise, dramatic, and deeply interested in how greed, rivalry, and moral decline shaped Roman politics.
Ancient readers and modern scholars alike have seen him as one of Rome’s major historians. Even in short works, he gives a strong sense of personality and conflict, which helps explain why his books remain widely read as both literature and history.