ABSTRACT
The introduction provides a brief overview of Sallust’s life and career and orientation to the political and literary context of the triumviral period, in which the Histories were composed. It also introduces this project’s new reading of “Sallust the historian” as dynamically responding to the present and not, as has often been assumed, reflexively retreating to either past or future. While he no longer held elected office or actively participated in political affairs, this Sallust was by no means isolated from contemporary Rome. The Sallust presented here, on the contrary, is grounded and engaged in the present, using the craft of historiography to respond to what is actually happening around him rather than re-litigating the past or escaping into the hypothetical.
