Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Amiternum, 1 October 86 BC – Rome, 34 BC) was a Roman historian, politician, and senator, regarded as one of the most important historians of Latinitas.
Coming from a plebeian family connected to the municipal nobility, he pursued the cursus honorum in Rome, becoming first quaestor, then tribune of the plebs, and finally senator of the res publica.
After being expelled from the Senate for moral unworthiness, he took part in the civil war of 49 BC between Julius Caesar and Pompey, siding with the former.
After Pompey’s defeat, Caesar rewarded his loyalty by granting him the praetorship and appointing him governor of the province of Africa Nova.
Following Caesar’s death, Sallust retired from political life and devoted himself to the composition of important historical works: the two monographs De Catilinae coniuratione (43 BC) and Bellum Iugurthinum (40 BC), and above all the Historiae, an annalistic work in five books, begun in 39 BC, left unfinished and unfortunately surviving only in fragments, but representing his most ambitious and significant historiographical project.
The Historiae demonstrate Sallust’s intention to narrate the history of Rome from 78 BC, the year of Sulla’s death — the point at which the Historiae of Lucius Cornelius Sisenna had ended, and of which Sallust intended to become the continuator — until 67 BC, the year of Pompey’s victorious campaign against the pirates.
It was a period marked by strong political tensions, latent civil wars, and the progressive weakening of republican institutions.
At the centre of the narrative are not only events, but above all the moral and political crisis of the Roman State, the instability of power balances, and the difficulties of governance affecting the Republic.
Book IV of the Historiae, in particular, is situated in the most advanced phase of this crisis of the late Roman Republic, amidst the political and military tensions that also involved the provinces and peripheral regions of Italy and the Mediterranean.
Sallust, however, never limits himself to a dry chronicle: he frequently interrupts the narrative with geographical, ethnographical, or reflective digressions, which serve to orient the reader in space, clarify the setting of events, and confer greater cultural and symbolic depth upon the historical account.
The following passage, connected to the context of the pirate wars faced by Pompey or to the servile war waged against Spartacus, belongs precisely to a geographical digression concerning Southern Italy and Sicily.
Scilla, in particular, becomes for Sallust an essential geographical reference within the historical scenario under consideration: he recognizes in this place a high strategic value, both from a military and commercial perspective within the Mediterranean context, but also a strong charge of mythical and symbolic suggestions.

[19] {23.M} All Italy, confined within narrow limits, is divided into two promontories, Bruttium and Sallentinum.
[20] {24.M} Italy is flat and soft. [21] {25.M} Inclining toward Sicily, the very jaws no longer open for more than thirty-five miles.
because of its low level or torn apart by its narrowness. Yet the softer nature of Italy makes it so curved that the ruggedness and height of Sicily repel the tide.
[23] {27.M} The natives call Scilla a rock sheer above the sea, resembling the famous form seen from afar. And in the fable they have given it a monstrous appearance, as though it were the shape of a dog with joined heads, because they seem to represent the waves breaking there and barking.
[24] {28.M} The dizzying sea of Charybdis, which, perhaps swallowing shipwrecks cast ashore, draws with hidden whirlpools sixty thousand Tauromenians to its shores, where shattered wreckage emerges from the depths. [25] {29.M} The promontory of Pelorus is in Sicily, so called after Hannibal’s governor, who was buried there.

This digression serves to help the reader understand how decisive the space of the Strait between Italy and Sicily was during the historical period under discussion, marked by Rome’s great internal and maritime tensions, such as Pompey’s pirate wars or, more generally, the issue of communications with Sicily during the time of Spartacus’ revolt.
The historian describes the extreme tip of Italy, where the land seems almost to come to an end and the continent bends toward Sicily, separated by a stretch of sea that is as short as it is treacherous.
This is not a neutral description: the landscape, in Sallust’s words, reflects a profound tension, a natural fragility that seems to mirror that of human history.
Italy, he observes, narrows as it descends southward until it divides into two promontories, Bruttium and Sallentinum. It is a “flat and soft” land, more yielding and less rugged than the Sicily that stands opposite it.
From this arises the idea, shared by many ancient authors, that the two lands were once united and that the more fragile part of Italy later gave way, creating the stretch of sea that now separates them.
The strait dividing Italy and Sicily is therefore not merely a geographical boundary, but the sign of a primordial rupture, of a balance broken by the force of nature.
Within this setting, Sallust introduces Scilla, which represents the true focal point of the description.
Scilla is presented not only as a mythical figure, but first and foremost as a real place: a rock sheer above the sea, known to the local inhabitants and feared by sailors.
Precisely because it is a fixed, visible, and dangerous point, it assumes a central role both geographically and historically.
It is there that the sea becomes most treacherous, and it is there that the obligatory passage concentrates risks and fears.
The myth arises from this reality: the shape of the rock and the sound of the waves crashing against it, resembling a bark, transformed Scilla into a monster in the poetic tradition.
Sallust, however, does not dwell on the fantastic element, but traces it back to its concrete origin, showing how the mythical narrative serves to give a face to a natural danger.
In the context of the pirate or servile wars, Scilla thus becomes a key location: to control or cross that space meant to dominate one of the crucial passages of the Mediterranean.
Alongside Scilla appears Charybdis, the marine whirlpool on the Sicilian side of the strait.
Here too the mythical account is traced back to a real phenomenon: the eddies that swallow and cast wreckage back onto the shores. The reference to the Tauromenians (inhabitants of present-day Taormina) serves to emphasize the scale and force of the currents in this stretch of sea, renowned throughout the Mediterranean.
Finally, Sallust mentions Cape Pelorus on the opposite side of the strait, linking it to the historical memory of Hannibal, thereby completing the geographical and mythical framework of a sea passage feared since antiquity.
In this way, in Book IV of the Historiae, Sallust intertwines history, geography, and mythical tradition.
The mention of Scilla is not a simple ornament, but contributes to giving concreteness to the space in which men and events move, showing how places, especially borderlands, preserve together the memory of nature, myth, and history.

Giuseppe Ribuffo