CLASSICS 296: Uncertain Times: Sallust and Horace and the Falling Republic (CLASSICS 396)

Course Description

Following the assassinations of Caesar and Cicero (and others), Rome was briefly governed by a triumvirate: Octavian, Mark Antony, Lepidus. But tensions strained their alliance, Lepidus soon dropped out, and Rome felt another civil war coming. "Quo, quo scelesti?" Horace wonders in Epode 7. During the same decade, he also worked on two collections of Satires. Partly before, Sallust produced three works: Catilinarian Conspiracy, War against Jugurtha, and Histories. We will read these works (in selection) before their historical background, looking for connections and correspondences, and studying how they refract their uncertain times and represent the "triumviral literature."