Fifth-Curce

Fifth-Curce (in Latin Quintus Curtius Rufus ) is a Roman historian having undoubtedly lived at 1st century a. J. - C.

Biography

One knows very few things about him. Only an allusion of its text (X, IX, 1-6) which evokes an Roman Emperor saving of the cities at the time of the civil wars from January 24th to 25th 41 enables us to think that he lived under the reign of the emperor Claude

Work

Historical contents

Only one work reached us, through 123 manuscripts, as being that of Fifth-Curce: Historiarum Alexandri Magni Libri , which one generally translates by the History of Alexandre Large the . It acts, indeed, of a biography of Alexandre Large the in Latin. Work counted 10 books of which the two first are lost: they were to tell the life of Alexandre of summer -336, when it reaches the throne of Macedonia, with winter -334, date on which book III opens. The eight remaining books are incomplete.

Language and style

The work of Fifth-Curce resembles more one fictionalized life than with a perfectly objective biography. The author, moreover, known as although he writes more things than he really does not believe about it. Its account is often spoiled by the fables of its predecessors, who were guided by admiration or the execration for the king of Macedonia.

Also the account of Fifth-Curce sins it by several defects:

of the gaps.
of the material errors.
an ignorance of the military tactic, geography and chronology.
an unquestionable taste as regards incredible and marvellous: Fifth-Curce describes the meeting between Alexandre and the queen of Amazones.
a preference for the form, which it privileges in front of the veracity of the facts.

It adopts, in this respect, a moralizing point of view: it shows Alexandre corrupted by the East, then blaming the cruelty of the king and his will to rise with the row of the gods. At the beginning of book III, Alexandre shows heroism, full with a youthful taste for glory. In book X, the king of Macedonia does not resist enivrement of this glory while killing, for example, his more faithful lieutenant, Clitus, after a banquet a little too sprinkled.

This fictionalized life, that Fifth-Curce tells us, is a succession of episodes and tables heroic. The author succeeded like man of letters more than as historian. And if it showed critical spirit, it especially kept the direction of picturesque and exoticism by introducing alive and coloured descriptions which sin by absence of precise details.

See too

Internal bonds

Alexandre Large the

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