The Fall of the Roman Republic: Sallust’s Reading of Thucydides

Abstract

This chapter focuses on one aspect of the main topic of these volumes—Thucydides and political order—as it discusses the Roman historian Sallust (86–35 BC) and his reading of Thucydides in his three historical works bellum Iugurthinum, the coniuratio Catilinae, and the Historiae.¹ Sallust’s writings analyze primarily the internal dissolution of states. Thucydides illustrates such dissolution when he describes the turmoil in Corcyra 427–4 BC and the subsequent spread of civil wars all over Greece. Sallust, inspired by Thucydides, applies a similar model to the demise of the Roman Republic after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC.