After the Past. Andrew Feldherr. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Andrew Feldherr
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Limited
Серия:
Жанр произведения: История
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781119076728
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has constructed his narrative, how an impression of distance from and proximity to the events described prompts reflection on both author and audience’s engagement with public life. It also presumes an openness about the interpretability of historiography as a genre that may be surprising, especially in light of the way a modern historian like Syme might identify the success of his work with the cogency of the final judgment it offers of the past. The antithesis and ellipses that characterize Sallust’s style also place a special interpretative burden on his readers. Sallust’s antithetical presentation of his subject extends to the inclusion of opposed interpretations of events, like those of the witnesses to Catiline’s defeat. Individual audience members will make different assumptions about whether these alternative voices constitute mere foils to Sallust’s, rival visions the historian expects to be rejected, or whether they are powerful enough to challenge the historian’s own historical representation.

      Whether or not such challenges were intended by the author, and whether, if they were not, they can nevertheless be made part of a reader’s interpretation of the work, are issues that require further choices on the part of the audience. I consider it axiomatic that each reader will negotiate these possibilities differently, seeing for example Catiline as Sallust’s historiographic rival and Caesar as his ally, and for that reason I try to focus my argument on the implications of such decisions rather than treating dissonance and ambiguity as problems to be solved or setting limits to texts’ interpretability.

      Sallust’s condemnation of the morality of his time can appear so vehement and comprehensive as to raise the question of why he writes history at all. If people are as bad as he says, who is there to profit from his exhortations to virtue or to take seriously his criticisms of vice? Conversely, the very fact that he does write has sometimes been taken to affirm that his pessimism had its limits. “It is not that Sallust believes that history has no power. He must do, as he continues to write it.”32 However, in addition to emphasizing the premise that to write history at all is a sign of hope, the “must” in this quotation makes clear that finding such a purpose in Sallust’s work requires a leap of faith on the part of his reader.