author
Sallust
-86–-34
A sharp-eyed chronicler of the Roman Republic’s final decades, this classical historian wrote with unusual force about ambition, corruption, and political collapse. His surviving works still feel strikingly modern in the way they connect private character with public crisis.
3 Audiobooks
Jugurtha
by Sallust
About the author
Born around 86 BCE, Gaius Sallustius Crispus was a Roman politician and historian from Amiternum in central Italy. He became an ally of Julius Caesar during the bitter political struggles of the late Republic, and his public career included service as a tribune and later as governor of Africa Nova.
After politics, he turned to writing the historical works that made his name last. He is the earliest Latin historian whose major writings survive, and he is best known for The Conspiracy of Catiline, The Jugurthine War, and fragments of his Histories.
Sallust’s writing is admired for being compact, dramatic, and morally serious. Again and again, he focused on greed, rivalry, and the decay of civic virtue, which gives his portraits of Rome’s leaders and factions a lasting edge.