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In classical antiquity the debate arose about what was more important: human actions or their recreation in writing, in the form of history. Sallust perhaps stands out above the rest in this debate. The dichotomy between ‘agere historiam’ and ‘scribere historiam’, which serves the historian to justify his work by placing it at the same level or even above the protagonist of events, became a recurring literary topic in later historiography, and particularly in Renaissance Neolatin istoriography. Underlying this debate is the concept of ‘industria’, as an activity opposed to inaction, a concept assiduously repeated in the prefaces of Renaissance historiography, to reflect, in line with Sallust, the importance of the historian’s work as a transmitter from past events to future generations, with all its practical and pedagogical implications. We analyze the presence of the word ‘industria’ in the prefaces of some Neo-Latin historians, namely Poggio Bracciolini, Sánchez de Arévalo or Arnoul Le Ferron.

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