New Classicists (May 2020)
Curtius Rufus’ Roman reading of the proskynesis debate. Theatricality of power and free eloquence in the Histories of Alexander the Great
Abstract
At an unknown date in the first century AD, the historian Quintus Curtius Rufus wrote the Histories of Alexander the Great. It is the only Roman historiographical work that has foreign history as its main subject. However, Alexander the Great had always been a very famous figure in Roman cultural memory, and can even be called, as Spencer (2002) puts it, a “Roman cultural myth”. He was the role model of several Republican generals and emperors , the subject of many moral exempla and declamation exercises: he found his way into all forms of literature, thus showing that Romans came to cast their hopes and fears about monarchy and empire into this nearly legendary character. Alexander was indeed a perfectly relevant case for a “study on power” : in the Histories, the Macedonian king, from being a good and moderate ruler tolerating libertas according to the customs established by his fathers, becomes a tyrant, corrupted by the East and Fortune. Through the portrayal of Alexander’s reign, Curtius thus wrote a discourse on monarchy. To articulate his reflection, Curtius focuses in particular on the relationship between power and speech. Oratory was indeed a central part of Roman culture and underwent profound changes when the Republic was replaced by the Principate, as is famously discussed in Tacitus’ Dialogue of the orators. This topic is investigated in the passage I focus on, the debate on the king’s deification in book 8 of the Histories, also known as “proskynesis debate”.
