Amongst the ‘Sallusts’ that ‘Sallustian scholars’ had fashioned by the 1960s, D. C. Earl listed ‘the moralist, pure artist, philosopher, imperialist, [and] political propagandist’ (JRS 52 (1962), 276, abbreviated); to Karl Büchner, whose ‘lengthy work’ Earl reviewed politely rather than unfavourably, Sallust appeared to be a ‘politician and … historian’. These two would also occupy Ronald Syme, whose 1964 Sallust is considered the most important English-language contribution of the last century (given that La Penna's Sallustio e la ‘rivoluzione’ Romana appeared in 1968, this was a golden decade for Sallustiani). But the differences were striking: whereas Büchner relied on his literary expertise to pursue an often philosophical interest (e.g. 1982 [2nd edn], 11), Syme mustered his prosopographical astuteness and kept his eye ‘on the political scene within and behind the works’ (A. D. Leeman, Gnomon 39 (1967), 57).
It is a testament to Syme's importance that he is mentioned repeatedly on the first page of Andrew Feldherr's After the Past; but, as becomes clear quickly, rather by way of contrast. For F.'s reading of the monographs — he excludes the Historiae (14) — is informed by theories that were largely developed after Sallust: intertextuality, narratology and the historiographical turn; and it is animated by Sallust's ambiguous role(s) as political participant and historical writer, the temporal distance between which ultimately contributes to his awareness of ‘the historicity of history, of the temporal situatedness of the historian in relation to events’ (3). This awareness ‘fundamentally structures Sallust's representation of the past’ (3), and not the least in the ways that it makes his readers experience that open space between event and word (hence the title After the Past): if history is contingent, so is historiography, so is its reception. F.'s Sallust is a hermeneut who wants his readers to participate in his hermeneutics.
Following the Introduction, which is primarily concerned with the narratological dimension (and develops J. Grethlein's Experience and Teleology in Ancient Historiography (2013), emphasising the audience's involvement in balancing these two poles), F. approaches Sallust and his readers in six chapters that cover familiar topics — but in this new perspective and with unusual evidentiary supplements. Ch. 1 contrasts the general philosophical beginning with the particular descriptive ending of the Cat. and illuminatingly juxtaposes the latter with the conventions and themes of three of Brutus’ lost works, i.e. a historical epitome, an epideictic life, a philosophical treatise on uirtus (25), while exploring various conceptions of historiography and similarities between Brutus and Catiline. Ch. 2 revisits the uneasy relationship between history and rhetoric, in part via a detailed discussion of A. J. Woodman's Rhetoric in Classical Historiography (1988). Here F. deepens our understanding of Sallust's dialogue with Cicero's historiographical theory and suggests that Sallust wants his readers to scrutinise (71) the (rhetorical) writing in the writing of history and, furthermore, renegotiates the boundary in neg/otium, when he highlights the complexity and consequences of historical writing. Ch. 3 studies misericordia and inuidia in the Cat., moving from Caesar's inhibition of emotions (Cat. 51.1) through Polybius’ discussion of the role of pity in historiography to Sallust's thematic and programmatic (116) use thereof to alert his readers, once more, to its ambiguity and ambiguous effects on historical agents, the historian and the readers themselves (‘ambiguous’ may well be the word that describes Sallust best, in F.'s opinion). The function of inuidia is studied especially in the context of Fulvia's revelation of the conspiracy, which leads to a parallelisation of her to Sallust (134). Ch. 4 discusses how Sallust ‘constructs an ongoing contest with tragedy in his work’ (137) and how his readers would have responded to his tragic elements. F. focuses on ‘three characteristics of tragedy’ (140): its ‘emphasis on changes of condition’, its foreignness and facilitation of exchange (between cultures) and ‘its accentuation of history's connection with truth’. Adherbal resembles Medea, Jugurtha is both a ‘dangerous foreigner’ and one whose downfall provokes Roman reflection on their own precariousness (151) and Sulla, tragically, ‘conflates final victory with the beginning of the end of Rome’ (162). Few will deny tragic elements in the BJ; but F.'s interpretations are complicated by the blurry line between our modern concept of ‘tragic’ and the Roman one — which he acknowledges (139 n. 6) but does not entirely maintain. Nor am I convinced that fortuna, as an ‘analogue to Greek tyche’ (145), ‘like tragedy … emerges in Roman historiography as a borrowed idea’ (146), given how complex were the concept and the deity in Rome and beyond (D. Miano, Fortuna: Deity and Concept in Archaic and Republican Italy (2018), esp. 3–14): would a contemporary really have thought of capricious Fortuna as foreign? Ch. 5 deals with facets of Sallust's ‘imaginary geography’, whereby he alerts his readers to the ‘tension’ between ‘universalizing moral claims’ and representations of events in ‘particular places and times’ (169). At the Muthul river, space is represented so as to symbolise Jugurtha's intentions; where Caesar's Gallia is neatly surveyed, Africa appears in ‘[i]ts infinite subdividability’ (177); and the present absence of Carthage in the African ‘chronoscape’ invites reflection on impermanence and historical patterns. Ch. 6 focuses on how Sallust draws attention to his histories as written texts, so when the readings of Bomilcar's conspiratorial letter (BJ 70–32) become a way of Sallust's ‘mak[ing] his audience aware of the fundamental doubleness of his own record of the past’ (223). The historian's stylistic hallmark, brevitas, rather unsuitable for oral delivery (Quint. 4.2.45), is a constant reminder of the text in writing, as is the inclusion of a version of Lentulus’ letter; and however much Sallust's Marius rails against (historical) texts, his virtus lives on in the historian's writing. The epilogue completes the Sallustian temporality, addressing the fascinating topic of Sallust's future.
After the Past is not for the faint of mind; and there is — at least for this reader — the occasional round too many along the hermeneutical circle. But F.'s interpretation, supported by an admirable engagement with the secondary literature, offers nuance and fresh perspectives; and it succeeds in making Sallust come alive in his two alluring works, as raw and quizzical, open and challenging — even if the lines between the two hermeneuts, the ancient, the modern, are blurry. Then again, aren't they always?
