title: Quintus Curtius: History of Alexander, Volume I, Books 1-5 (Loeb Classical Library No. 368)
author: Quintus Curtius
description: John Carew Rolfe (18591943) taught at Cornell, Harvard, and the Universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
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  THE HISTORY OF ALEXANDER
  
  
  
  
  
  ADVISORY EDITOR: BETTY RADICE
  
  
  
  
  
  QUINTUS CURTIUS RUFUS, the Roman
  
  
  historian, wrote the only life in Latin of Alexander the Great. The _History_
  
  
  originally consisted of ten books, of which, unfortunately, the first and
  second are
  
  
  entirely lost. The author’s identity and the date of composition of this
  
  
  work have been the subject of great debate. However, the evidence of recent
  years
  
  
  suggests he was a soldier and politician who rose from obscurity to a
  senatorial
  
  
  career under Tiberius (AD 14–37). But the fall of the
  
  
  emperor’s chief minister, Sejanus, brought his political career
  
  
  temporarily to an end. Thus he turned to writing, and in the ten years between
  the
  
  
  fall of Sejanus and the accession of Claudius (AD 41) he composed the
  
  
  great part of the _History of Alexander,_ which he completed in the
  
  
  emperor’s early years. He later obtain