Sallust's Bellum Catilinae

by Geoffrey Steadman

Each page of this volume contains 10-11 lines of Latin from Sallust's Bellum Catilinae, otherwise known as Coniuratio Catilinae, (Axel Ahlberg's 1919 Teubner edition) with all corresponding vocabulary and grammatical notes arranged below. Once readers have memorized the core vocabulary list, they will be able to read the Latin and consult all relevant vocabulary and commentary without turning a page.

158 pages, Paperback

Published August 21, 2017

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always with Geoffrey Steadman a nice edition with helpful notes and vocabulary. The text itself is amazing of course and very rich while being precise and simple in its style. The prologue with its reflections on society and historiography and autobiographical notes is rightfully infamous and interesting. Sallust strikes a good balance between relating historical events and adding his analyses on psychology, ethics and culture. The archaizing Latin he uses adds some flavour, although this leads me to the only real criticism I have: Steadman "modernizes" the Latin in many instances, probably to make it easier to read. So while he gives the archaic -os instead of -us he for example completely eliminates the "quom" that Sallust used instead of "cum". In my opinion these archaisms are too important to Sallust's style and should have been kept in the text. But that's only a minor complaint on this otherwise great reader.

[Oakley C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow...I actually read a full work of classical Latin! Well...actually...I translated it because this is still simply too difficult for me even with Steadman's incredible notes to simply read. I had to put it all down on paper, page by page, and translate. The Vulgate, which I am very slowly reading through, is far, far, far easier and not simply because I am familiar with the text but because it actually (for the most part) is full of nouns and verbs generally conforming to all of the "rules" I read about in the various workbooks I went through.

The only other review here, however, claims that the Sallust style is "simple!" Again, I am still just barely moving through Latin but GOOD LORD! The man HATES to use anything other than a participle, puts his subjects wherever the hell he wants (if he even deigns to include a subject) and deploys a diction which almost ALWAYS utilizes a "third or fourth" down definition of the word (in fact Steadman at times seems to offer the most clueless aid for some terms)...in short, all that crap you learned about "verbs coming at the end" is total garbage. These guys wrote however the hell they felt like it and we have to suffer until we can figure it out.