It was written only twenty years after the ‘war’, in the 40s BCE, by Gaius Sallustius Crispus, or ‘Sallust’, as he is now usually known. A ‘new man’ like Cicero and a friend and ally of Julius Caesar, he had a very mixed political reputation: his period as a Roman governor in North Africa was infamous, even by Roman standards, for corruption and extortion. But despite his not entirely savoury career, or maybe because of it, Sallust’s essay is one of the sharpest pieces of political analysis to survive from the ancient world.
