Le Catilina de Salluste : une histoire du progrès et de la décadence de Rome

The idea that Rome was engaged in a process of moral and political degeneration runs through the literature of the Late RepubliC. Nevertheless, in Sallust, this theory is translated, for the first time, into a history proper of the progress and the decadence of the res publica. This article aims to examine the concrete narrative means by which Sallust constructs his first monograph, the Catilina, as a history of decadence, attributing to this moralising conception of history the status of the central theme of a continuous narrative.