of the words and thoughts of the author. Wherever a Latin grammar is referred to by Gram., the reader will understand that it is the Grammar of Dr. Schmitz, which forms part of this series.

The accompanying map is only an attempt, the place of which, we trust, will soon be supplied by a better one. For the present, we cannot help remarking that British scholars have rather neglected that part of comparative geography which is connected with the expedition of Alexander the Great. Every Englishman must feel an interest in studying the campaigns of Alexander, for they were made in countries where in recent times British valour has won such brilliant victories.

INTRODUCTION.

THE work 'De Gestis Alexandri Magni, regis Macedonum,' is ascribed in the manuscripts to an author of the name of Q. Curtius Rufus. The first two books are lost, and the work, as it has come down to us, begins with the third. This accident has deprived us of the preface, which the author had unquestionably prefixed to his work, and in which he probably also gave some account of himself and his circumstances. In addition to this, it so happens that no other ancient author makes mention of this Latin work on the life of Alexandera circumstance which occurs also in the case of the 'Astronomica' of the poet Manilius, and the 'Historia Romana' of Velleius Paterculus. We cannot, therefore, say with any certainty who this Q. Curtius Rufus, mentioned on the title-page, really was, or at what time the book was written. In the work itself, however, we find some allusions to the time at which the author wrote: two passages which may admit of an extended period-namely, iv. 20, where it is stated that Tyre, after its fall under Alexander, was in the enjoyment of peaceful tranquillity, under the protection of Roman clemency, by which everything was refreshing and renovating itself during the blessings of a long peace; and iv. 45, where the author, in speaking of the Parthians, says, that they, having immigrated from Scythia, now occupied the country which at the time of the Persian monarchy was inhabited by the Parthyaei. From this passage, however, we can only infer that the work was written previous to the year A.D. 226; for in that year the Parthian power in Asia was destroyed by the rising of the new Persian Empire. Little, indeed, can be gathered from these allusions concerning the period at which this history of Curtius was written; but there is a third passage (x. 28) which throws more light upon the question; for there the author explains how, after the death of Alexander, when so many were competing for the succession, civil war arose among the Macedonian people, whereby the Empire broke to pieces, which, under the dominion of one, might have continued to flourish. And to this lamentable event the following remark is annexed: In consequence of this, the Roman people acknowledge with justice that they owe their prosperity to their princeps, who in the night which had nearly been the night of death to the state, rose as a

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new star to give light again to the darkened universe, when the discordant members of the whole were in restless commotion without a leader. He extinguished the firebrand of civil war; he sheathed the swords, and dispersed the storm by sudden light.' The author closes this eulogy on the princeps with the hope that if envy can but be kept away, the descendants of the same house will last for ever, or at least for a very long period. We believe that this princeps, to whom the Roman Empire was indebted for a much happier fate than the Macedonian Empire experienced, was no other than Augustus, who put an end to the disturbances and civil wars which arose in consequence of the sudden death of Cæsar; and who, through the unity of his government, gave new strength and prosperity to the Empire. We of course understand the passage figuratively, when the author speaks of the night which enveloped the universe, and the rising of a new star; but we believe he was led to make use of this figurative expression by the extraordinary phenomenon, that during the whole of the year in which Cæsar was murdered, the sun appeared to have lost his splendour, and a dreary mist hung over the country-a phenomenon which is attested by contemporary authors. We are especially induced to entertain the opinion, that Augustus must be understood by the simple expression, 'that the Roman people owed that happiness to their princeps,' because this designation was new in the case of Augustus, and was made use of by him with especial predilection, whereas it became necessary to employ much stronger expres sions of veneration with the subsequent emperors. Moreover, the simple appellation free from all flattery, 'the descendants of the same house,' alludes to a succession consisting of several younger members of the family, as Augustus actually possessed, particularly in his two eldest grandchildren, Gaius and Lucius Cæsar. We therefore come to the conclusion that Curtius wrote his history of Alexander some years before the Christian era, but at the latest in the year of the birth of our Saviour; for the two above-named adopted sons of the princeps died in the years 2 and 4 after Christ, whereupon the stepson of Augustus, Tiberius Claudius Nero, was appointed his successor: the latter was then in the mature age of manhood, and if he had been mentioned, he would have been indicated in a more significant manner.

We meet with two persons in Roman authors who bear the name Curtius Rufus: first, the rhetorician Q. Curtius Rufus, in the index to the work of Suetonius, 'De Claris Rhetoribus.' This work treats, in an introductory chapter, of the lives of the most eminent teachers of Latin eloquence, and afterwards each separate rhetorician is treated of in a separate chapter. Of this work, however, we have only the beginning. The introduction and the lives of

the five most ancient rhetoricians are all that have come down to us: the continuation, which, according to the index, should contain the lives of eleven rhetoricians, particularly No. 6, that of L. Caestius Pius, No. 7, that of M. Porcius Latro, No. 8, that of Q. Curtius Rufus, &c. &c., is lost, and no other notice of this rhetorician exists. A second person of this name is the consular Curtius Rufus mentioned in Pliny, Epist. vii. 27, and especially in Tacitus, Ann. xi. 20. It is related of him that he rose from the humblest station, through the support of his patrons and his own energetic eloquence, to the dignity of a senator; and Tiberius himself (who reigned from the year A. D. 14 to 37) promoted him to the praetorship, and afterwards even made him consul (namely, suffectus); and in the year A. D. 47 he received the insignia triumphalia as commander of the Roman army on the Upper Rhine; and at last was made proconsul of Africathe highest honour a Roman statesman could attain under the emperors; in which office he died at an advanced age, probably in the year A. D. 52. It is unknown whether these two men named Curtius Rufus were related or not: we might have known had Tacitus, in the above-mentioned passage, expressed himself with less reserve respecting the origin of the consular, as he says the common opinion that he was the son of a gladiator was wrong, but that he himself was ashamed to state the truth. The question now is, whether either of them was the author of the life of Alexander. It has been even asserted by some that they were one and the same person, and that the rhetorician Q. Curtius Rufus, after spending a life devoted to literature, engaged in the service of the state; but we cannot possibly admit this, as the transition from the one to the other is so rare an occurrence, that Tacitus and Pliny, who give a tolerably detailed account of the consular, would necessarily have mentioned this circumstance. We, moreover, have little doubt that if a Roman consular had written such a work, either in the earlier years of his literary life, or in the leisure of a more advanced age, frequent mention would have been made of it by contemporary authors. We therefore believe that the first-mentioned Q. Curtius Rufus is the author of the following work: and if we have proved above that the Roman princeps, who is praised in the work as the preserver of the Roman Empire, is Augustus, and that Curtius wrote at a time when the house of Augustus still contained some promising young men, we may add that the best period of the rhetorician coincides with the time of the firmly-established sovereignty of Augustus; that is, about the year of the birth of Christ. M. Porcius Latro is the immediate predecessor of Curtius in the list of rhetoricians, whose lives Suetonius wrote, and he died, according to Hieronymus in

his Chronicon,' Olymp. 194, 1; that is, about 4 or 3 B. c.; so that we are justified in connecting the best period of our author with the year in which his predecessor in the list died. It is possible, indeed, that the consular, whose real origin Tacitus conceals from a feeling of modesty, was an illegitimate son of the rhetorician. Those scholars who suppose the author of the life of Alexander to be either the rhetorician mentioned by Suetonius, or the consular described by Tacitus. -as well as those who consider the eulogy on the Roman princeps, x. 28, to refer to Augustus, or Claudius, or Vespasian, or even, which is still less possible, to Trajan-agree with us in the opinion that the Latin language in the work of Curtius is worthy of all praise. We ourselves recognise in it the perfection of Roman literature, on account of the perfect accuracy in the appropriate use of separate words, and in the syntactical combination of words into clauses and sentences. There is only one point in which a slight deviation from the classical prose of Cicero and Cæsar may be observed; namely, that sometimes the expressions which were formerly used only in poetry are here introduced into prose- such as aevum for vita or aetas, juventa for juventus, saevus for crudelis, immanis; the frequent and thereby weakened use of ingens, and of linquere for relinquere; also the joining passive verbs with the dative instead of using the preposition ab. The frequent use of ceterum for sed, in which, however, Sallust had preceded Curtius, is likewise a slight deviation from the earlier language. Other deviations, such as the absolute use of the participle perfect passive for instance, audito for quum auditum esset, with a sentence following; the use of the participle future active in connection with a hypothetical sentence-for instance, viii. 11, acinacem strinxit percussurus uxorem, nisi prohibitus esset, should be considered rather as examples of a judicious development of the language than as defects, since brevity and precision of expression are thereby promoted. The speeches, in particular, which Curtius, agreeably to the custom of the ancients and the example of other historians, interweaves into his history, are distinguished for their energetic eloquence, and for the appropriateness in the characters of the speakers; from which circumstance we may infer the rhetorical activity of the author, and his intention to produce a work with specimens of his skill. He had in this respect, and indeed in the whole composition of his history, a model in the Greek work of Clitarchus, a celebrated historian, who lived soon after the death of Alexander, and was much praised by the ancients for his rhetorical powers, though he was suspected of credulity, especially in his description of the wonders of far distant countries. The same defects, accordingly, are found in our Latin author; but it must be