C. Sallustius Crispus, Rome's first great historian, entered public life in the crisis of Rome's external expansion and internal revolution; he retired from that public life to write history that survived, in part, the fall of the Empire and achieved a fame that remained virtually intact through the Renaissance. In antiquity Sallust was considered on a par with Thucydides, and during the Renaissance he was seen as a worthy member of a quadriga of Roman historians, with Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus. He was distinguished for the distinctive voice and style he established for himself, an historiographical art of immediate appeal and a moral/political passion that both enlivens the narrative and helps to justify inclusion in the canon.

No ancient biography of Sallust survives (although Q. Asconius Pedianus is said by an ancient commentator on Horace to have written one), and the many testimonia are not always trustworthy...