Sallust and the monograph

by 1974- Royston, Tina Teresa

This thesis examines the Bellum Catilinae of Sallust in an effort to understand the significance of the monograph in Roman historiography and how Sallust utilized the format to create an effective work of history. This text occupies a significant and unique place in Roman historiography, because Sallust’s Roman predecessors chose, for the most part, to compose their histories annalistically. For his initial works, however, Sallust chose to compose monographs, the first of which was the Bellum Catilinae. This choice of subgenre was novel and innovative given the prevalence of annalistic writing at Rome. Sallust’s use of the format, therefore, is all the more deliberate and significant.