Salustio y la ambigüedad de la historia: Las postulaciones histórico-filosóficas de los prólogos de Bellium Catilinae y Bellium Iugurthinum

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to describe the philosophical principIes underlying Sallust's interpretation of the tension in Roman politics during the transition to the Empire. Certain ideas of Cato are restated and used by Sallust to build a philosophy of history, as it becomes explicit, mainly, in the Prologues to BellumCatilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum. Far from offering a systematic explanation of the historical world, this Sallustian philosophy of history implies an ideological indetermination, which is especially expressed in the redefinition of the traditional idea of virtus, a clear symptom of the general crisis of values characteristic of that periodo