Patricia J. Osmond & Robert W. Ulery, Jr., “Constantius Felicius Durantinus and the Renaissance Origins of Anti-Sallustian Criticism,” IJCT 1.3 (1994-1995), pp. 29-56.

In the nineteenth century Sallust's Bellum Catilinae was sharply criticized for its alleged unfairness towards Cicero and bias in favor of Caesar. This article reveals the antecedents of such charges in a little-known work of the early sixteenth-century, the De coniuratione Catilinae liber, composed by the Italian humanist Constanzo Felici of Castel Durante and dedicated to Leo X. Felici's new version of Sallust's monograph was a product of the Ciceronian movement and, despite his appeals to principles of historical objectivity, the author was chiefly concerned with enhancing Cicero's role in the events of 63 B.C., promoting the cult of Ciceronian rhetoric, and celebrating the Medici pope. The subsequent diffusion of Felici's opusculum in northern Europe, as well as in Counter-Reformation Italy, also reveals the links between anti-Sallustianism and conservative ideologies.