T HE QUESTION of the date at which Q. Curtius Rufus wrote his Historiae Alexandri Magni Macedonis is one that has long been debated yet never conclusively settled. Since there is extant no ancient reference either to such a history or to a Quintus Curtius Rufus as the author of a work on Alexander, any attempt to date it must rest on internal evidence. Unfortunately, little in the way of such evidence is forthcoming. Indeed, only once in the surviving parts of the Historiae Alexandri does the author make any specific reference to the historical circumstances in which the work was written. An imperial panegyric, interjected at 10.9.1-7 to contrast the violent dissolution of Alexander's world-kingdom after its creator's death with the felicity enjoyed in Curtius' day by the Roman commonwealth, establishes the principate of Augustus as a terminus ante quem non. Although the panegyric clearly celebrates a princeps whose accession had narrowly averted or even actually terminated a civil war, the precise nature of the intestine strife alluded to still escapes-thanks to the fog of Curtian rhetoric-incontrovertible definition. If it was an actual civil war, then the subject of the panegyric could be Augustus himself, Vespasian, Septimius Severus, or Constantine the Great-or, indeed, any one of a number of lesser emperors who, in the third century, momentarily pacified the empire. If, on the other hand, Curtius is eulogizing a princeps whose accession averted the outbreak of an impending civil war, then the emperor in question could be Claudius, Galba, or again some ephemeral thirdcentury emperor, such as Gordian III. But despite the fact that all of these emperors (and several others besides) have, at one time or another, been proposed as candidates for identification with the princeps of Curtius' panegyric,' only four-Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian, and Septimius