CURTIUS RUFUS AND THE ‘HISTORIAE ALEXANDRI’

Abstract

THE question of the date when C'urtius' history of Alexander the Great was written has long been debated and cannot be said to have been settled.l Two things are certain: the author lived under a .Princeps, and he wrote while the Parthian Empire was still in existence, therefore before A.D. 227. In one passage he mentions that the Parthians now rule all who live beyond the Euphrates and Tigris rivers (as far as the Mare Rubrum).2 So it is virtually certain that he wrote before the time of the Seven, who claimed Mesopotamia as a Roman province; highly probable that he antedated Marcus Aurelius, who set up a Roman protectorate there; and probably safe to put him before Trajan, who made the decisive break with the traditional acceptance of the Euphrates as the frontier between the two Empires. The general consensus of modern opinion is that Curtius' date falls within the first hundred odd years of the Principate, from Augustus to Vespasian. The question is whether it is possible to determine more narrowly within those limits the time when the Historire Alexandri was composed. Cuttius' book is not mentioned by any surviving ancient authority. Evidence of date has been looked for in references to men bearing all or part of the name which is given to the writer in some of the manuscripts,-Q. Curtius Rufus; in parallels between the Historite and the works of other writers; and in general considerations relating to the style, language and content of the book. But it is found that these things lack certainty and precision as temporal indices. The main clues, in fact, are provided by a passage near the end of the work, when the writer digresses briefly to comment on the circumstances of his own time: