SOURCE: de Blois, Lukas. “The Perception of Expansion in the Works of Sallust.” Latomus 47, no. 3 (1988): 603-19.

In the following essay, de Blois examines Sallust's works to see how he perceived the effects of Roman expansion, noting his moralizing approach, his view of social reality, and his ideas about the process of history.

Res … quae ab exiguis profecta initiis eo creuerit ut iam magnitudine laboret sua …

(Livy I, Praef. 4).

Modern scholars regard Roman expansion in the last two centuries of the republic (c. 220-30 B.C.) as one of the main causes of the civil wars in the first century B.C.¹. By 300 B.C., if we may believe Starr and Finley, Rome was no longer a simple agrarian state, and from that time onwards a spectacular growth set in². The Roman territory expanded, the urbs Roma became a large city with a mixed population, the number of the...