#curtius

[jeannereames]

I see you talk a lot about historiography! What would you consider the most important development of Alexander’s historiography?

What the Hell is Historiography? (And why you should care)

This question and the next one in the queue are both going to be fun for me. 😊

First, some quick definitions for those who are new to me and/or new to reading history:

Historiography = “the history of the histories” (E.g., examination of the sources themselves rather than the subject of them…a topic that typically incites yawns among undergrads but really fires up the rest of us, ha.)

primary sources = the evidence itself—can be texts, art, records, or material evidence. For ancient history, this specifically means the evidence from the time being studied.

secondary sources = writings by historians using the primary evidence, whether meant for a “regular” audience (non-specialists) or academic discussions with citations, footnotes, and bibliography (sometimes referred to as “full scholarly apparatus”).

For ancient history, we also sometimes get a weird middle category…they’re not modern sources but also not from the time under discussion, might even be from centuries after the fact. Consider the medieval Byzantine “encyclopedia” called the Suda (sometimes Suidas), which contains information from now lost ancient sources, finalized c. 900s CE. To give a comparison, imagine some historian a thousand years from now studying Geoffry Chaucer from the 1300s, using an entry about him in some kid’s 1975 World Book Encyclopedia that contains information that had been lost by his day.

This middle category is especially important for Alexander, since even our primary sources all date hundreds of years after his death. Yes, those writers had access to contemporary accounts, but they didn’t just “cut-and-paste.” They editorialized and selected from an array of accounts. Worse, they rarely tell us who they used. FIVE surviving primary Alexander histories remain, but he’s mentioned in a wide (and I do mean wide) array of other surviving texts. Alas this represents maybe a quarter of what was actually written about him in antiquity.

OKAY, so …

The most important historiographic changes in Alexander studies!

I’m going to pick three, or really two-and-a-half, as the last is an extension of the second.

FIRST …decentering Arrian as the “good” source as opposed to the so-called “vulgate” of Diodoros-Curtius-Justin as “bad” sources.

Many earlier Alexander historians (with a few important exceptions [Fritz Schachermeyr]) considered Arrian to be trustworthy, Plutarch moderately trustworthy if short, and the rest varying degrees of junk. W. W. Tarn was especially guilty of this. The prevalence of his view over Schachermeyr’s more negative one owed to his popularity/ease of reading, and the fact he wrote on Alexander for volume 6 of the first edition (1927) of the Cambridge Ancient History, later republished in two volumes with additions (largely in vol. 2) in 1948 and 1956. Thus, and despite being a lawyer (barrister) not a professional historian, his view dominated Alexander studies in the first half of the 20th century (Burn, Rose, etc.)…and even after. Both Mary Renault and Robin Lane Fox (neither of whom were/are professional historians either), as well as N. G. L. Hammond (with qualifications), show Tarn’s more romantic impact well into the middle of the second half of the 20th century. But you could find it in high school and college textbooks into the 1980s.

The first really big shift (especially in English) came with a pair of articles in 1958 by Ernst Badian: “The Eunuch Bagoas,” Classical Quarterly 8, and “Alexander the Great and the Unity of Mankind,” Historia 7. Both demolished Tarn’s historiography. I’ve talked about especially the first before, but it really WAS that monumental, and ushered in a more source-critical approach to Alexander studies. This also happened to coincide with a shift to a more negative portrait of the conqueror in work from the aforementioned Schachermeyr (reissuing his earlier biography in 1973 as Alexander der Grosse: Das Problem seiner Persönlichtenkeit und seines Wirkens) to Peter Green’s original Alexander of Macedon from Thames and Hudson in 1974, reissued in 1991 from Univ. of California-Berkeley. J. R. Hamilton���s 1973 Alexander the Great wasn’t as hostile, but A. B. Bosworth’s 1988 Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great turned back towards a more negative, or at least ambivalent portrait, and his Alexander in the East: The Tragedy of Triumph (1996) was highly critical. I note the latter two as Bosworth wrote the section on Alexander for the much-revised Cambridge Ancient History vol. 6, 1994, which really demonstrates how the narrative on Alexander had changed.

All this led to an unfortunate kick-back among Alexander fans who wanted their hero Alexander. They clung/still cling to Arrian (and Plutarch) as “good,” and the rest as varying degrees of bad. Some prefer Tarn’s view of the mighty conqueror/World unifier/Brotherhood-of-Mankind proponent, including that He Absolutely Could Not Have Been Queer. Conversely, others are all over the romance of him and Hephaistion, or Bagoas (often owing to Renault or Renault-via-Oliver Stone), but still like the squeaky-nice-chivalrous Alexander of Plutarch and Arrian.

They are very much still around. Quite a few of the former group freaked out over the recent Netflix thing, trotting out Plutarch (and Arrian) to Prove He Wasn’t Queer, and dismissing anything in, say, Curtius or Diodoros as “junk” history. But I also run into it on the other side, with those who get really caught up in all the romance and can’t stand the idea of a vicious Alexander.

It's not necessary to agree with Badian’s (or Green’s or Schachermeyr’s) highly negative Alexander to recognize the importance of looking at all the sources more carefully. Justin is unusually problematic, but each of the other four had a method, and a rationale. And weaknesses. Yes, even Arrian. Arrian clearly trusted Ptolemy to a degree Curtius didn’t. For both of them, it centered on the fact he was a king. I’m going to go with Curtius on this one, frankly.

Alexander is one of the most malleable famous figures in history. He’s portrayed more ways than you can shake a stick at—positive, negative, in-between—and used for political and moral messaging from even before his death in Babylon right up to modern Tik-Tok vids.

He might have been annoyed that Julius Caesar is better known than he is, in the West, but hands-down, he’s better known worldwide thanks to the Alexander Romance in its many permutations. And he, more than Caesar, gets replicated in other semi-mythical heroes. (Arthur, anybody?)

Alfred Heuss referred to him as a wineskin (or bottle)—schlauch, in German—into which subsequent generations poured their own ideas. (“Alexander  der  Große  und  die politische Ideologie  des Altertums,” Antike und Abendland 4, 1954.) If that might be overstating it a bit, he’s not wrong.

Who Alexander was thus depends heavily on who was (and is) writing about him.

And that’s why nuanced historiography with regard to the Alexander sources is so important. It’s also why there will never be a pop presentation that doesn’t infuriate at least a portion of his fanbase. That fanbase can’t agree on who he was because the sources that tell them about him couldn’t agree either.

SECOND …scholarship has moved away from an attempt to find the “real” Alexander towards understanding the stories inside our surviving histories and their themes. A biography of Alexander is next to impossible (although it doesn’t stop most of us from trying, ha). It’s more like a “search” for Alexander, and any decent history of his career will begin with the sources. And their problems.

This also extends to events. I find myself falling in the middle between some of my colleagues who genuinely believe we can get back to “what happened,” and those who sorta throw up their hands and settle on “what story the sources are telling us, and why.” Classic Libra. 😉

As frustrating as it may sound, I’m afraid “it depends” is the order of the day, or of the instance, at least. Some things are easier to get back to than others, and we must be ready to acknowledge that even things reported in several sources may not have happened at all. Or at least, were quite radically different from how it was later reported. (Thinking of proskynesis here.) Sometimes our sources are simply irreconcilable…and we should let them be. (Thinking of the Battle of Granikos here.)

THIRD/SECOND-AND-A-HALF …a growing awareness of just how much Roman-era attitudes overlay and muddy our sources, even those writing in Greek. It would be SO nice to have just one Hellenistic-era history. I’d even take Kleitarchos! But I’d love Marsyas, or Ptolemy. Why? Both were Macedonians. Even our surviving philhellenic authors such as Plutarch impose Greek readings and morals on Macedonian society.

So, let’s add Roman views on top of Greek views on top of Macedonian realities in a period of extremely fast mutation (Philip and Alexander both). What a muddle! In fact, one of the real advantages of a source such as Curtius is that his sources seem to have known a thing or three about both Achaemenid Persia and also Macedonian custom. He sometimes says something like, “Macedonian custom was….” We don’t know if he’s right, but it’s not something we find much in other histories—even Arrian who used Ptolemy. (Curtius may also have used Ptolemy, btw.)

In any case, as a result of more care given to the themes of the historians, a growing sensitivity to Roman milieu for all of them has altered our perceptions of our sources.

These are, to me, the major and most significant shifts in Alexander historiography from the late 1800s to the early 2100s.

[ofgreatart]

'this term of great art, which seems to me to be necessary to qualify Proust.' (Robert-Ernst Curtius)

Marcel Proust: "I became aware of the tangible reality of Wagner's work again when I revisited these insistent and fleeting themes that visit an act, only to depart and return, sometimes distant, drowsy, almost detached, yet at other times, while remaining vague, so urgent and so close, so internal, so organic, so visceral that it seems less a reprise of a motif than of a neuralgia." (French text)

Photo: Kristen Stewart reads Marcel Proust

Robert-Ernst Curtius: "What did we experience at our first encounter with Proust's books? The sudden surprise of touching something unknown; of feeling a new substance whose structure eluded us. We felt disoriented and compelled to engage in a mode of expression for which none of the habits of our mind were prepared. Strange encounter. Initially bewildered, then intrigued, and finally captivated, we soon found ourselves drawn in by a mysterious allure. Barely having entered this unexplored territory, we were charmed, then conquered, and something of our most intimate life was changed. Like Ulysses' companions in the land of the Lotus-eaters, we had tasted a fruit that made us forget the past of our mind and removed the desire to return to our former nourishment. Intoxicated by our discovery, we couldn't distinguish whether it was a new form of art or a new plan of life that was presenting itself to us. But upon regaining our composure, retracing the path through analysis, we recognized this very impossibility of distinguishing between aesthetic emotion and the upheaval of our entire being as the infallible sign of the revelation of a great work of art.

I would like to give full significance to this term of great art, which seems to me to be necessary to qualify Proust. Certainly, there is no lack of fine, engaging, and powerful works in contemporary production. But do almost all of them not seem to have their starting point in transmitted literary forms—either continuing them or taking them in the opposite direction, which is just another way of depending on them? But alongside this production grafted onto earlier literature, the steady growth of which would be sufficient to attest to its somewhat secondary quality, there are few works that arise as if outside the literary concerns of the time; they do not seem called upon by the "moment" or motivated by an artistic movement; they differ profoundly from usual literature but without any sense of a desire to differ. These works, which do not depend so much on literature as literature will not depend on them, born from the original effort of a powerful mind focused on life itself, are the ones I was thinking of when using the term great art.

In Marcel Proust's work, the creative power presents a spectacle all the more admirable in that it has been exercised upon the richest literary and intellectual culture, which, in a less powerful mind, could have posed an obstacle to such a fresh realization by either paralyzing it or leading it astray into delightful yet bookish alexandrines. Proust's art, instead of being hindered by the treasures of his literary memory, manages instead to highlight them or, furthermore, to render them anew to us. He knows how to blend spontaneous life with the entire inheritance of the past. In handling it, he maintains direct and immediate contact with the elusively fleeting material from which our life is woven. Proust presents himself to it with a sensitivity that seems untouched by any prior contact—otherwise, how would it succeed in capturing nuances of reality that had previously eluded us? The slightest layer of transmitted experience or habit that would have intervened between them and the receiving apparatus would have acted as a barrier, preventing them from being inscribed there. But this sensitivity is accompanied by a mind nourished by the richest and most diverse tradition—and one that lives in familiarity with Ruskin as well as Saint-Simon. It is from the encounter of two things that seem to exclude each other— the most freshly spontaneous sensitivity and the most culturally laden intelligence— (but which, in him, by penetrating each other, mutually lend support) that Proust's art derives its new and moving beauty.

In a more general sense, the profound originality of the great artist who has just passed away is revealed in this, that attitudes of the mind that we are accustomed to consider as distinct penetrate each other in him to the point of forming a homogeneous whole. Intelligence does not merely overlay emotion but becomes one with it. Feeling and analysis do not appear as two opposed terms between which a relationship can be established. Art will be life, and vice versa. Lastly, thought in Proust never gives the impression of being a foreign and external element. One can consider separately in his work psychology, poetry, science, observation, emotion. But it will always involve an artificial isolation that distorts the truth. All these elements that analysis attempts to separate form in him not a mixture, not even a fusion, but the blossoming of an identical, primordial, and indivisible experience. By pushing the analysis further, I believe one would be led to understand this profound unity that is perceived beneath the delightful complexity of his work as the externalization of the creative impulse from which it originates. His art arises from this unified and total vision that constitutes the life of the mind at its principle and in its fullness. In Proust, I can never dissociate beauty from truth. The profound and purifying emotion suggested by the evocation of the mysteries of life; the intimate contentment caused by highlighting the infinitely small aspects of our existence; the happiness felt in the revelation of its unsuspected richness; the introduction to a deeper inner life—these are the gifts we receive from Proust's art, but bathed in the same atmosphere and melted into a single harmony.

It is a new era in the history of the great French novel that begins with Proust. Solely to better delineate his originality and without aiming at a judgment at this moment, which is one of homage to a great deceased, one can nevertheless say that he surpasses Flaubert in intelligence as he surpasses Balzac in literary qualities and Stendhal in the understanding of life and beauty. Therefore, he must be regarded as the founder of a realm that he shares with no other.

To our intelligence as well as to our admiration, he imposes himself as a master among the greatest.

He is among the three or four names in contemporary French literature that are already or will be European names. Rooted in the most authentic French soil, he nevertheless far exceeds the boundaries that some seem eager to set for the French spirit. He has expanded the domain of the human soul; he has embellished all our lives. Allied with the great classical lineage of his homeland, he has nevertheless strayed from the confines of a too timid classicism. He has given himself free rein without conforming to a pre-established aesthetic. Here again, he has shown himself to be a creator. With the freedom permitted by mastery, he has annexed to the French tradition domains hitherto left fallow.

Emerging at a time when intellectual Germany was turning away from manifestations of the French spirit to focus more exclusively on its own heritage, he made us feel once again—speaking on behalf of a few, until others may come to know and offer their testimony—that today, as in the past, there are treasures common to the nations of our divided and troubled Europe."

ROBERT-ERNST CURTIUS

Tribute to Marcel Proust, La Nouvelle Revue Française, 1923

VIDEO:

'He who this love into my heart had breathed, whose will had placed the Wälsung at my side, true only to him, thy word did I defy.'

(German: 'Der diese Liebe mir in's Herz gehaucht, dem Willen, der dem Wälsung mich gesellt, ihm innig vertraut, trotzt' ich deinem Gebot.')

Brünnhilde: Gwyneth Jones Wotan: Donald McIntyre Die Walküre The Ring of the Nibelung (Der Ring des Nibelungen) Bayreuth 1979, Patrice Chéreau / Pierre Boulez

Photo: Kristen Stewart reads Marcel Proust (On the Road, Walter Salles)

[the-book-ferret]

We live in a world of green that grows from seeds, but what happens before there are seeds?

[illustratus]

Marcus Curtius by François Gérard

[idollete]

oiiii, besties!!! queria compartilhar minha felicidade do dia: fui na bienal e comprei três livrinhos e um chaveiro de hello kitty 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓 minha mãe disse que eu tenho vinte anos com a cabeça de cinco mas ela não entende que i'm just a girl afeeeer 🎀💋🍰💌🐇🌷 plus que eu tô me sentindo a mais mais de tão bonitinha que tô hoje tipo eu me beijaria ? e um gostosinho curtiu minha foto no story awn own ele tem o antebraço fechado de tatuagem awn own a vida é bela demaaaaaaaaaaais

[chemblrish]

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY REARRANGEMENT REACTIONS

[foxeslostones]

˛ㅤ⠀ ⋆ ㅤ⠀⌗ ㅤ⠀𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 ㅤ⠀› ㅤ⠀escolha uma frase daqui, aqui, aqui, aqui ou aqui + M para um starter com a @damselnstress ou A para um starter com a @talesofcreation ! limite de 05 para cada.

[cheolcam]

juro esse ngc de ver os curtido das pessoas é uma benção

[beadickel]

Essa é a minha coleção de CDs do MGMT até agora. MGMT é a minha banda favorita de todos os tempos, e não consigo me conter de alegria com essa nova fase que está começando na banda...

Obrigada por sempre me acompanhar nos fones de ouvido, nos momentos bons e ruins, com suas músicas mágicas. Eu amo vocês! 💗

[jeannereames]

I found your blog recently and I can't stop reading it! it's amazing really :) also sorry if i have any mistake, english is not my first language.

I wanted to ask something: Were Alexander's generals jealous of Hephaestion because of his relationship with Alexander? I imagine that in some way they did feel something like that, but is there any conclusive evidence that says how they feel about it?

Macedonian officers were a bunch of sharks, with Alexander as the Great White

My header is the tl;dr version.

We know at least Krateros was jealous of Hephaistion; the sources tell us as much. Alexander even invented a cute little way of dealing with it, calling Hephaistion Philalexandros (Alexander loving or friend-of-Alexander) while Krateros was Philobasileus (king loving or friend-of-the-king). Hephaistion also appears to have tangled with Eumenes, although Eumenes tangled with a lot of people, from what I can tell. And, at least earlier in the campaign, Hephaistion and Krateros might have been, if not friends, at least friendly. But once Hephaistion rose in importance, he was in Krateros’s way.

Basically, all the fellows in Alexander’s orbit were in competition for Alexander’s affection, just as they’d later be in competition for Alexander’s empire after he died (the Era of the Successors or Diadochi).

Remember, in the ancient (pre-Christian) world, humility was not a virtue, and a GOOD person helped his friends and hurt his enemies. None of this “turn the other cheek” business, or “When they go low, we go high.” When they went low, you were expected to cut their throat as they bent.

That said, Curtius (Rufus) at least paints a picture of Hephaistion as someone careful in how he exercised his influence. In Curtius’s introduction of him in his history, he says Hephaistion had more freedom to upbraid the king than anybody else, but exercised it as if given by Alexander, not taken by himself. Elsewhere, Curtius calls him charming. In contrast, Plutarch (or at least Plutarch’s sources) paint a less flattering picture. I think which view modern historians accept depends on which primary source we trust more (or read first). 😉

Only in Plutarch do we find the episode of him pulling swords with Krateros. Curtius doesn’t mention it, nor does Diodoros or Arrian (Justin is too brief). But Diodoros does give the Philalexandros/Philobasileus line (when he recounts H.’s death). Diodoros also records a probably spurious letter Hephaistion supposedly wrote to Olympias, telling her to stop quarreling with him in her correspondence with Alexander. This is not a real letter and may owe to another incident where Alexander was reading a letter from her while sitting next to Hephaistion—who apparently leaned in to read with him. Alexander didn’t stop him but put his seal ring on his lips. I suspect Hephaistion regularly read his mail, but this time people happened to be watching.

Most of the quarrels related about Hephaistion appear to occur later—once his importance at the court had risen. And whatever you read in other historians (Green, Heckel, Anson, Cartledge, Worthington), he doesn’t appear to have been any more quarrelsome than anybody else—and maybe less, if Curtius can be trusted.

But basically, yes, sure, the person loved best by Alexander would be the natural target of others’ envy.

[pleasingnight]

So like. Cic. Fam 7.23.4 introduces Licinia, sister of a Cassius; there is a house in Rome next to Cicero's that belongs to Cassius and is inhabited by Licinia; Licinia's husband Dexius is gone to Spain.

We are not sure which Cassius owns the house, but we do know from the same letter that he is friends with Nicias, whom Shackleton Bailey identifies as Curtius Nicias of Cos: grammarian, Epicurean, friend and client of Dolabella. Cassius may be our Gaius Cassius Longinus or his younger brother Lucius.

Licinia's husband Dexius is otherwise unattested. It seems an obscure marriage for a half-sister of Cassius, and it needs an explanation. Nevertheless, I am very tempted to bring up Decius, proscribed and killed in 43 bce according to Appian (App. BC 4.27). I suspect they might be the same person.

[Note. Shackleton Bailey: "Manutius proposed Crasso ( i.e. M. Licinius Crassus , son of the ' Triumvir ' ) <;in place of Cassio>". This particular Crassus does not make sense: even if the unattested daughter of the triumvir existed, how likely was she to marry a no-name Dexius while her brothers married the daughters of Metellus Scipio and Metellus Creticus? Furthermore, by Shackleton Bailey's dating of the letter to 46 bce, M. Licinius Crassus the younger is long dead. Some other Crassus might make sense, but I do not think we have a suitable one at the time.]

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Benjamin Robert after Haydon - Marcus Curtius.

[illustratus]

The Sacrifice of Marcus Curtius by Luigi Garzi

[fabiansteinhauer]

[electric-rabbits]

I'm just once again thinking about how people from outside of Brasil will never experience the epic rises and falls of Sprinterkombi.

The original video is from @/meandyz on tiktok and it's all i've been thinking about this week

[aliennasaprincess]

To be sure, every conceptual attempt to circumscribe the essence of great art is a makeshift.

Ernst Robert Curtius, European literature and the latin middle ages