De Catilinae Coniuratione

De Catilinae coniuratione

The Invectives of Sallust and Cicero

This work covers the history of the text of the invectives of Sallust against Cicero and of Cicero against Sallust. Though these speeches seem unsophisticated to some, they are in fact of considerable importance. The question of the authenticity of both invectives, especially of the invective against Cicero, considered in the book diachronically, has long troubled scholars, commencing with Quintilian’s quotation from the text as though it were authentic. This dispute continues down to our own time. In all probability, both invectives are a product of the rhetorical schools of Rome, as students at such schools might have been set the task of writing a speech against Cicero imitating Sallust, or of responding to Sallust in the style of Cicero. Thus, we possess a sample of rhetorical school exercises, preserved due to their similarities to the prototypes on which they were modelled. The work covers: the full manuscript tradition of the text and also the history of the changes which arose during its transmission, the history of the printed text and the text itself with an apparatus criticus and also a translation. This work should be of interest to classicists, philologists interested in the history of medieval and renaissance texts, and also to those erudite readers concerned with rhetorical style and the functioning of the rhetorical schools of Rome.

Sallust's Bellum Catilinae

In his Bellum Catilinae, C. Sallustius Crispus or Sallust (86-35/34 B.C.) recounts the dramatic events of 63 B.C., when a disgruntled and impoverished nobleman, L. Sergius Catilina, turned to armed revolution after two electoral defeats. Among his followers were a group of heavily indebted young aristocrats, the Roman poor, and a military force in the north of Italy. With his trademark archaizing style, Sallust skillfully captures the drama of the times, including an early morning attempt to assassinate the consul Cicero and two emotionally charged speeches, by Julius Caesar and Cato the Younger, in a senatorial debate over the fate of the arrested conspirators. Sallust wrote while the Roman Republic was being transformed into an empire during the turbulent first century B.C. The Bellum Catilinae is well-suited for second-year or advanced Latin study and provides a fitting introduction to the richness of Latin literature, while also pointing the way to a critical investigation of late-Republican government and historiography. Ramsey's introduction and commentary bring the text to life for Latin students. This new edition (updated since the 2007 printing) includes two maps and two city plans, an updated and now annotated bibliography, a list of divergences from the 1991 Oxford Classical Text of Sallust, and revisions in the introduction and commentary.