Seit 1923 erscheinen in der Sammlung Tusculum maßgebende Editionen griechischer und lateinischer Werke mit deutscher Übersetzung. Die Originaltexte werden zudem eingeleitet und umfassend kommentiert; nach der neuen Konzeption bieten schließlich thematische Essays tiefere Einblicke in das Werk, seinen historischen Kontext und sein Nachleben. Die hohe wissenschaftliche Qualität der Ausgaben, gepaart mit dem leserfreundlichen Sprachstil der Einführungs- und Kommentarteile, macht jeden Tusculum-Band zu einer fundamentalen Lektüre nicht nur für Studierende, die sich zum ersten Mal einem antiken Autor nähern, und für Wissenschaftler, (...) die spezifische Aspekte eines Werkes vertiefen möchten, sondern für alle, die sich durch vertrauenswürdige Übersetzungen einen Zugang zur Antiken Welt verschaffen wollen. In der Reihe wurden bisher über 270 Titel publiziert, alle erhältlich als Buch und eBook. Dadruch werden bislang vergriffene Titel und Raritäten wieder vollständig verfügbar gemacht. Zusätzlich zu der Buchreihe erscheint bei De Gruyter zum 90-jährigen Jubiläum das eBook-PaketTusculum Online, eine digitale Sammlung aller von 1923 bis 2013 erschienenen Titel -eine gebührende Würdigung eines wichtigen Stücks deutscher Verlagsgeschichte. Mehr Informationen rund um Tusculum erhalten Sie unter: www.degruyter.com/tusculum. (shrink)

This article provides an account of what may reasonably be inferred from Sallust’s historical writing about how he understands civil liberty, what he feels is necessary for it to exist in any given political society, why he feels it is important, and the extent to which he feels it is properly enjoyed by the plebeian citizens of Rome. On the basis of this account, the article revises recent arguments presented by Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and others concerning Sallust’s (...) political thought and how it is related to Aristotelian, republican, ‘neo-Roman’, and liberal traditions of political thought. (shrink)

For decades, a remarkable number of publications have been devoted to the so-called Epistulae ad Caesarem. Most have focused on the question of whether they are authentic or forgeries, and only a few have analysed them as a source for valuable historical evidence. This paper intends to demonstrate that the letters could certainly have been written in the middle of the first century BCE and that Sallust could indeed be the author. The letters, particularly Ep. 2, show that there (...) were alternative political agendas and provide a better understanding of Sallust as a politician and historian, as well as of the political debate surrounding the outbreak of the civil war and Caesar’s rule. (shrink)

That Sallust owed a considerable debt to the writings of Cato the Censor was observed in antiquity, and the observation has often been discussed and expanded on by modern scholars. The ancient references to Sallust's employment of Cato are mainly in the context of his adoption of an archaic style, and specifically Catonian vocabulary. But the choice of Cato as a model had an obvious significance that went beyond the purely stylistic. Sallust's works articulate extreme pessimism at (...) the moral state of late-Republican Rome, and do so partly by contrasting the modern age with a prelapsarian time of near-untrammelled virtue, brought to an end only by the fall of Carthage and the consequent dominance of Roman power, which in turn led to moral corruption. Similarly, Cato famously stood in his own day for moral rectitude—and specifically appealed to past virtue as the standard to which he wished to hold his contemporaries. Sallust, by writing in a Catonian style, aligns himself with that tradition. (shrink)

This essay examines the place of Sallust in Machiavelli's political theory. Such an examination is necessary and fruitful for two basic reasons. First, the interpretative and secondary literature on Machiavelli's classical sources has neglected, with very few exceptions, the influence and role Sallust may have played in the formulation of Machiavelli's thinking. Second, the essay argues that Sallust is important to Machiavelli's attempt to recover republican liberty. At the core of Machiavelli's project to discover 'new modes and (...) orders' is the fundamental Roman republican antithesis between libertas and dominatio. The very critique of dominatio presupposes a conception of libertas without which such a critique would be impossible. Sallust is a useful source for Machiavelli's inquiry into the political, social and military determinants foRA vivere libero e civile. Elements of such a political life are prefigured in Sallust's conception of republican politics, where 'cives cum civibus de virtute certabant' -- that is, where robust competition and healthy conflict express the virtus and the bonae artes of the body politic. In effect, Sallust is important to Machiavelli both as a historian who provides a useful critique of monarchy and despotism, and as a source through which Machiavelli is able to develop his conception of politics in general, and of republican politics in particular. (shrink)

Sallust used Fortuna to. give his story specialized political meaning and to incorporate materials and judgments that extend the purview of his narrative to all of Roman history. Fortuna is a configuration of events that appears at certain moments in a state's existence and presents demands for careful application of intelligence, virtus, animus or ingenium, if things are to proceed well and a new era is to begin . If virtus is not present, fortuna rages and destroys . Admirable (...) men seek gloria through virtus, but also require an historian to reconstruct actions. Fortuna offers men of leisure the opportunity to apply intelligence to a course of events and to write and therefore to create history in a secondary but more lasting sense. (shrink)

Let me hasten to affirm that this essay, despite its title, is not so much about Sallust as it is a way of examining a specific constellation of ideas. I have used his conception of Roman social change because it seems to bring into focus a prudential commonplace rooted in Greek and Roman culture. No doubt Sallust's views had a strong formative effect on subsequent social and political thought, but I shall make no effort to explore and define (...) this influence. I have simply chosen �Sallust's Theorem� as a point of departure, a heuristic device encapsulating and emphasizing an important notion of ancient antecedents which, together with its ramifications, may possibly illuminate a significant and neglected aspect of early modern political thought. (shrink)

This new edition of Sallust, the first critical text for over thirty years, is based on a fresh study and collation of the manuscripts, as well as careful consideration of the indirect tradition. Besides the well-known Catiline and Jugurtha, the volume contains more than seventy of the longer or more interesting fragments of the Histories and also the spurious Epistulae ad Caesarem and Invectivae. These inclusions will prove extremely valuable to students and scholars alike.The works of Sallust, written (...) in the latter half of the first century BC, are commonly studied not only by classicists and ancient historians, but also by students of Latin prose. This new edition should therefore prove a particularly welcome addition to the series of Oxford Classical Texts. (shrink)

Since a problematic passage in Virgil'sAeneid(10.366–7) shows the same influence of Sallust (Cat.58–60) as do the dozen lines preceding and following, it should not be deleted, as has been suggested.

One of Sallust's main points in this preface is that individuals should strive to attaingloria, i.e. should be spoken highly of by others. With this in mind, the commentators seem agreed thatsilentioin the opening sentence must be taken in a passive sense: ‘silentioexpresses not a state in which one says nothing, but a state in which nothing is said about one, i.e. “obscurity”’. The sequence of ideas in the first chapter makes this interpretation seem certain.

In Lucan′s second book, an old man looks back to the atrocities perpetrated in the civil strife of the eighties, chiefly on the return of Marius and Cinna to Rome in late 87 and on that of Sulla in 82 . The episodes that Lucan briefly refers to are all otherwise known, and there seems no particular reason to assume that he is not drawing on Livy as his principal source, as he does for the events of his main narrative, (...) the civil war between Pompey and Caesar. The scholia to the passage may be a different matter. (shrink)

One of Sallust's main points in this preface is that individuals should strive to attain gloria , i.e. should be spoken highly of by others. With this in mind, the commentators seem agreed that silentio in the opening sentence must be taken in a passive sense: ‘silentio expresses not a state in which one says nothing, but a state in which nothing is said about one, i.e. “obscurity”’ . The sequence of ideas in the first chapter makes this interpretation (...) seem certain. (shrink)

The following paper proposes that Sallust offers a conceptualization of civil conflict more in line with the Greek paradigm of stasis than with its Roman counterpart bellum ciuile. In doing so, it argues for the actual coexistence of these two differentiated conceptual strands in the political thought of the Late Republic. To this end, Sallust's corpus is analysed to identify the main threads that articulate civil strife in its multifarious manifestations: how it arises and who its protagonists are (...) or, conversely, how it is kept in check, how it is connected to the human passions that drive ideology, and the violence that stems from the clash between political and familial spheres of influence. The article shows how the pathos of familial drama is what characterizes civil conflict for Sallust, rather than the struggle for legitimacy found in Cicero's narrative. (shrink)

It would be worth knowing whom the historian married. His wife's name might disclose some local tie in the Sabine country; or it might permit a guess about alliances with families at the metropolis, whether ancient in repute or newly risen to influence. Marriage is a normal device for advancement – ‘decus ac robur’. Cicero did well for himself when, about the year 79 B.C., he married Terentia. She was the half-sister of a Fabia, who was a Vestal Virgin. The (...) Fabii are not only noble but patrician, albeit in temporary eclipse. (shrink)

As Fragment 46 of the first book of Sallust's Histories Maurenbrecher prints: Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium cepit per L. Catilinam legatum. This he takes in effect to mean that Lucretius Ofella after the completion of great siege works received reinforcements brought by L. Catiline legate of Sulla. The interpretation depends largely upon his contention that the phrase obsidium cepit is to be taken as equivalent to subsidium cepit, for which he claims the authority, ultimately, of Verrius Flaccus as represented (...) by Festus p. 193M s.v. obsidium. Though opinions may occasionally have differed as to the precise event documented by the fragment, this central assumption seems to have gone unchallenged by historians. Yet it rests upon remarkably insecure foundations. The reading cepit has scant authority and the interpretation of obsidium as subsidium none at all. It is in fact the result of misunderstanding the passage of Festus in which the text is embedded. In Lindsay's edition the Festus entry which is here quoted in full runs as follows: Obsidium tamquam praesidium, subsidium recte dicitur, cuius etiam auctor C. Laelius pro se apud populum : ‘Ut in nobis terra marique simul obsidium facerent.’ Et Sallustius historiarum I : ‘Magnis operibus perfectis obsidium coepit per L. Catilinam legatum.’ Coepit is the reading of the manuscript F, which has been generally accepted, while cepit appears only in the Aldine edition where it may well be an emendation or even an error, there being no obvious independent source which might have provided it. For Maurenbrecher it was merely the ‘correction’ of Corte who produced the earliest roughly chronological arrangement of the fragments of Sallust's Histories. (shrink)