Q. Curtius Rufus
Curtius Rufus
The Latin historian of Alexander
b. fl. c. 1st century AD
Quintus Curtius Rufus wrote a History of Alexander the Great in ten books, of which books 3–10 survive (with gaps). His dates are uncertain — probably first century AD — and almost nothing else is known about him.
His Alexander is a dramatic, novelistic figure: brilliant, passionate, increasingly corrupted by success and power. Curtius writes vivid, rhetorical Latin prose with a taste for dramatic set-pieces — the siege of Tyre, the battle of Gaugamela, the murder of Clitus, the march through the Gedrosian desert. His history is less reliable than Arrian's but more readable, and it was enormously popular in the Middle Ages.
Works
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1
Historiarum Alexandri Magni prose
A history of Alexander the Great in ten books, of which the first two are lost. Curtius writes vivid, dramatic prose — battles, sieges, court intrigue...