In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.3 (2001) 447-451 [Access article in PDF] Elizabeth Baynham. Alexander the Great: The Unique History of Quintus Curtius. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998. xiv + 237 pp. Cloth, $39.50. This is a well-organized book that is abreast of recent scholarship and contributes to our understanding of Q. Curtius Rufus and his History of Alexander as a work of literature. (...) Baynham tells us that her primary objective is an analysis of Curtius' historical methods and arrangements of his material and an evaluation of his chief themes. Her introductory chapter sketches the influence of Curtius' History in the Middle Ages and Renaissance and gives a brief synopsis of scholarship in the field. A chapter entitled "Roman Curtius" attempts to place the author and his work into the broader framework of Roman literature, with a particular focus on his language and themes and the influences that shaped these. A lengthy chapter on sources and historical methods reviews Curtius' place within the tradition of ancient historians of Alexander the Great. The three most original chapters explore the motifs of fortuna and regnum in Curtius' portrait of [End Page 447] Alexander. The book concludes with an appendix surveying the debate over the date of Curtius' History of Alexander. Baynham considers at length the current "consensus" view that the work was written under Claudius but ultimately decides that a date under Vespasian is "most likely." The index, unfortunately, is too brief to be very helpful: following up on Baynham's discussion of the idea of regnum in Curtius, the reader must look up eighteen undifferentiated references to libertas. The absence of an index of passages discussed is a serious omission, which detracts significantly from the book's usefulness.Despite Baynham's assertion of the "apathy" and "hostility" of twentieth-century Curtian study (5), Curtius Rufus (as she points out elsewhere) has not lacked for attention in recent decades. J. E. Atkinson's A Commentary on Q. Curtius Rufus' Historiae Alexandri Magni (Amsterdam 1980, 1994) is supplemented by his survey of scholarship on Curtius (ANRW 2.34.4 [1997]: 3447-83). For those without Latin, there is a Penguin translation by John Yardley. At the other end of the scale, there is Jean Therasse, Quintus Curtius Rufus Index Verborum (1976). Some of this work is admittedly excessive and unproductive. The Loeb edition by J. C. Rolfe (1946), for example, is still available and offers a better translation than Yardley. More significantly, it is not clear how much is gained by lengthy commentaries on passages of Curtius, particularly in the face of A. B. Bosworth's Historical Commentary on Arrian's History of Alexander (1980, 1995) and P. A. Brunt's Loeb edition of Arrian (1976, 1983), which offers such extensive notes that it might well be called a commentary. Of necessity, historical commentators on Arrian and Curtius traverse much of the same ground. Moreover, all this attention to Curtius as a historian has not--perhaps cannot--reverse the commonsense judgment that Arrian is the better and more reliable source.In a sense, the attention of historians has diminished our understanding of Curtius' History of Alexander. Rather than approaching the work as a whole, they ransack Curtius for isolated statements and anecdotes to bolster their own view of particular incidents in Alexander's career. This is poor methodology and poor history. It would be a signal achievement of Baynham's book if it could direct more attention to Curtius by literary scholars. It is in this area that interesting work on Curtius has been done in the last two decades: for example, Werner Rutz's "Zur Erzahlungskunst des Q. Curtius Rufus," ANRW 32.4 (1986): 2329-57, Francesca Minissale's Curzio Rufo: Un romaziere della storia (1983), and H. Currie's "Quintus Curtius Rufus: The Historian as Novelist?" Groningen Colloquia on the Novel 3 (1990): 63-77.Curtius' History of Alexander is a text that might lend itself well to the approaches of genre study and narrative technique. It is disappointing that Baynham does not do more in this direction... (shrink)

The reference to a novum sidus in Quintus Curtius’ book 10, commonly applied to the comet seen at the end of Nero’s reign, could be related to Claudius as well. Both Claudius and Caligula were named “star”, and they sought to appear as the beginners of a new cycle in the history of Rome. Claudius’ ludi saeculares allegedly meant the starting point of a new time for Rome. Other facets of Claudius’ censorship, as the enlargement of the pomerium (...) or the Emperor’s assumption of the title pater patriae, could be interpreted in a similar sense. Likewise, Caligula’s death may have been understood as the end of a period in the history of Rome. Thus, Curtius’ “new star” could be applied to Claudius, and not necessarily to Vespasian. (shrink)

Within the narrative fora.d.32, Tacitus recreates a spirited speech delivered before the Senate by theequesMarcus Terentius (Ann. 6.8), defending himself retrospectively for having been a ‘friend’ of Sejanus. This speech, the only extended speech inoratio rectato feature inAnnalsBook 6, is historiographically rich and suggestive.This article first analyses the speech as a compelling piece of oratory in its own right. It then explores the provocative mirroring of another important speech in Curtius Rufus (7.1.19–40). This is where the general Amyntas, (...) defending himself before Alexander the Great against charges of participation in an alleged conspiracy, refuses to deny his friendship with the conspirator Philotas (now dead). Scholars have rightly acknowledged the significant intertextuality of these two speeches in Curtius Rufus and Tacitus. Yet the interest in this mirroring between Amyntas and Terentius has overshadowed another important intertext. This article demonstrates how Tacitus also engages with a programmatic moment from the opening of Virgil'sAeneidwhen Aeolus is cajoled by Juno to unleash a devastating storm. Terentius wittily casts Tiberius as a powerful divinity whose whims had to be obeyed and himself as a helpless Aeolus doing his will.This article demonstrates that the two passages from Virgil and Curtius Rufus underpinning Terentius’ speech work together powerfully, challenging Tacitus’ readers to reflect on the difficulties of ‘speaking to power’ and on the compromises involved for men like Terentius in negotiating the complex political realities of the imperial system. (shrink)

The text of Quintus Curtius benefited greatly from Conrad Müller's edition of 1954 . In particular, his thorough investigation of Curtius' rhythms enabled him to settle many hitherto doubtful points. Problems remain, unsolved or undetected. In Curtius, as in other prose texts, scribal omissions are a prolific source of corruption, sometimes productive of interpolation. Most of the following notes postulate corruptions of this type.

The cultural politics of Catholic restoration under Mary Tudor have been as crucial to the historical legacy of Thomas More as More's image was to the regime's own historical self-presentation. Not only did the Marian period see the first reappearance in print of many of More's writings after twenty years, the overwhelming presence of More's figure and work in official Catholic discourse, especially from 1556 onwards, also generated many instances of implicit Morean echoes pervading a great variety of Marian literary (...) texts and genres. This essay analyses a number of such hidden presences of More within classical translations of the period, from John Brende's History of Quintus Curtius, which was issued almost simultaneously with the 1553 Marian edition of More's Dialogue of Comfort, to George Colvile's Boethius and Nicholas Grimald's De officiis, whose appearance coincided with the preparation of More's English Workes for print. As it emerges, such implicit echoes and allusions to More's life and writings not only reshaped the classical works themselves, both updating them and enriching them with additional cultural and political significations; above all they helped to invest the program of Marian religious restoration with the credentials of classical learning promoted by the early Tudor humanists. (shrink)

This article aims to give a survey of preparations conducted by Spartan king Agis III before he commenced his war against Macedonians. Based on the remaining narrative sources, mostly Arrian, Diodorus, Curtius Rufus and Justin, the author gives an account of king Agis’ doings up until the very beginning of his war. The author argues also why is that a real, full open war, not a "rebellion" as it is dubbed in some of the literature. Author gives his (...) opinion about the beginning of the preparations for the open war and concludes that they began in November 333 BC, at latest. This article also tackles the question of mercenaries which Agis took after the Battle of Issus. Due to the uncertainty of the sources themselves it can be concluded at best that Agis hired a great number of them after Issus. (shrink)

The figure of Alexander inevitably dominates the history of his reign. Our extant sources are centrally focussed upon the king himself. Accordingly it is his own military actions which receive the fullest documentation. Appointments to satrapies and satrapal armies are carefully noted because he made them, but the achievements of the appointees are passed over in silence. The great victories of Antigonus which secured Asia Minor in 323 BC are only known from two casual references in Curtius Rufus, (...) and in general all the multifarious activities in the empire disappear from recorded history except in so far as they impinge upon court life in the shape of reports to Alexander and administrative decisions made by him. Moreover, the sources we possess originate either from high officers of Alexander's court, such as Ptolemy and Nearchus, or from Greek historians like Callisthenes and Cleitarchus, whose aims were literary or propagandist and whose interests were firmly anchored in court life. Inevitably Alexander bestrides that narrow world like a colossus and monopolises the historical picture. But even the figure of Alexander is far from fully fleshed. No contemporary history survives, and for continuous narratives of the reign we are dependent upon late derivative writers who saw Alexander through the filter of centuries of rhetoric and philosophy. The king had long been a stock example of many contradictory traits; he was at once the conqueror and the civiliser, the tyrant and the enlightened king. Cicero and Seneca saw him as the type of unbridled license, Arrian as the paradigm of moderation. The result is that the sources present a series of irreconcilable caricatures of Alexander but no uniform or coherent picture. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of veracity in ancient historiography. It contests some recent views that the criteria of truth in historical writing were comparable to the standards of forensic rhetoric. Against this I contend that the historians of antiquity did follow their sources with commendable fi delity, superimposing a layer of comment but not adding independent material. To illustrate the point I examine the techniques of the Alexander historian, Q. Curtius Rufus, comparing his treatment of events with (...) a range of other sources that reflect the same tradition. The results can be paralleled in early modern historiography, in the dispute between J. G. Droysen and K. W. Krüger on the character of Callisthenes of Olynthus. Both operate with the same material, but give it different “spins” according to their political perspectives. There is error and hyperbole, but no deliberate fiction. (shrink)

La spécialisation sans l'universalisme est aveugle mais l'universalisme sans la spécialisation est inconsistant. Pour avoir su concilier l'une avec l'autre, l'ouvrage de E. R. Curtius sur "La littérature européenne et le Moyen âge latin" demeure l'une des sources fondamentales de la réflexion littéraire contemporaine. Il le doit tout d'abord à la rigueur d'une méthode dont l'intransigeante précision ne le cède en rien à celle des sciences de la nature car pour Curtius "la philologie démontre à l'aide des textes, (...) tout comme la géométrie démontre à l'aide des figures." C'est dire que dans cette œuvre l'étude des faits littéraires n'est altérée par aucun présupposé doctrinal étranger à son objet. Il le doit surtout à, l'ampleur de la perspective adoptée qui, de Virgile à Dante et de Vico à Goethe, reconstitue magistralement l'unité de la tradition culturelle latine. (shrink)

This paper responds to Tugendhat's well-known and influential critique of Heidegger's concept of truth with the resources of Heidegger's texts, in particular §44 of Being and Time. To start with, Tugendhat's primary critical argument is reconstructed. It is held to consist firstly in the charge of ambiguity against Heidegger's formulations of his concept of truth and secondly in the claim that Heidegger's concept of truth is incompatible with an adequate concept of falsehood. It is shown that the supposedly ambiguous meanings (...) are, on the one hand, in fact clearly distinguished by Heidegger and, on the other, that they merely amount to different extensions of the same meaning of truth. It is then shown how this concept of truth is indeed compatible with an adequate, albeit post-metaphysical, concept of falsehood. Finally, the grounds of falsehood in the untruth of the existential of Verfallen are pursued and further objections are dismissed. (shrink)

God's point of view to the people and the powers at a time when injustice, deceit, malfeasance, and crushing the poor and the oppressed was prominent--much like today! The prophets spoke courageously and emphatically about God's profound and unrelenting concern and compassion for human beings. Much influenced by the theology of prophecy developed by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, this book discusses the nature, meaning, and relevance of ethical prophecy at a time when democracy--in the United States of America and elsewhere--is (...) under vicious assault from the religious and secular right and authoritarian politicians who openly flirt with and support murderous dictators, sexism, homophobia, racial bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred of Muslims both in word and practice. An examination of the contributions of eight powerful personalities from the period of American slavery through the post-civil rights era--Angelina Grimké, Ida B. Wells, Abraham J. Heschel, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Óscar Romero, and Alice Walker--offers a recipe for addressing this state of affairs. (shrink)

As one of the earliest Western physics teachers, Richard Rufus of Cornwall helped transform Western natural philosophy in the 13th century. But despite the importance of Rufus's works, they were effectively lost for 500 years, and the Physics commentary is the first complete work of his ever to be printed. Rufus taught at the Universities of Paris and Oxford from 1231 to 1256, at the very time when exposure to Aristotle's libri naturales was revolutionizing the academic curriculum; (...) indeed Rufus gave the earliest surviving lectures on physics and metaphysics. Rufus's challenges to the views of Aristotle and the commentator Averroes proved to be enormously influential: his accounts of projectile motion, the place of the heavens, and creation, were to be taken up by the likes of Franciscus de Marchia, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. (shrink)

As one of the earliest Western physics teachers, Richard Rufus of Cornwall helped transform Western natural philosophy in the 13th century. But despite the importance of Rufus's works, they were effectively lost for 500 years, and the Physics commentary is the first complete work of his ever to be printed. Rufus taught at the Universities of Paris and Oxford from 1231 to 1256, at the very time when exposure to Aristotle's ibri naturales was revolutionizing the academic curriculum; (...) indeed Rufus gave the earliest surviving lectures on physics and metaphysics. Rufus not only expounded the views of Aristotle and the commentator Averroes, but he also challenged them, and this lively discussion proved to be enormously influential. Rufus rejected Aristotle's theory of projectile motion, and this rival view was later adopted by Franciscus de Marchia. His revised account of the place of the heavens was taken up by Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas; and his defence of creation, still considered a cogent reply to Aristotle's claims for a beginningless universe, was to be embraced by both Bacon and Bonaventure. Professor Wood's meticulous edition sheds light on that Crucial period when the medieval West for the first time acquired a comprehensive scientific account of the cosmos. (shrink)

Rufus Duits ABSTRACT: The so-called ‘central problem’ of internalism has been formulated like this: one cannot concurrently maintain the following three philosophical positions without inconsistency: internalism about practical reason, moral rationalism, and moral absolutism. Since internalism about practical reason is the most controversial of these, the suggestion is that it is the one that is best...

This book describes the shape of a Christian ethic that arises from a conversation between contemporary accounts of natural law theory, and virtue ethics. The ethic that emerges from this conversation seeks to resolve the tensions in Christian ethics between creation and eschatology, narrative and natural law, and objectivity and relativity. Black moves from this analytic foundation to conclude that worship lies at the heart of a theologically grounded ethic whose central concern is the flourishing of the whole human person (...) in community with both one another and God. (shrink)