It was written by the Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus[1] in the 1st-century AD, but the earliest surviving manuscript comes from the 9th century.

The Historiae survives in 123 codices, or bound manuscripts, all deriving from an original in the second half of the 9th century, Paris, BnF lat.

5716, which was copied during the Carolingian Renaissance for a certain Count Conrad by the scribe Haimo in the Loire region.

[4] Painters such as Paolo Veronese and Charles Le Brun painted scenes from Curtius.

Of lowest rank were clerks whose task it was to collect information about the day's operations and events, probably in the form of written notes.

This information was reported to an officer in charge of keeping the ephemerides, “Day Journal,” a record of the army's doings similar to a ship's log.

For most of Alexander's expedition, the officer was Diodotus of Erythrae, who remained of such low rank that he is only mentioned once anywhere.

The next generation of historians, such as Timagenes and Arrian, were to make extensive use of the Day Journal, as well as of the histories of Callisthenes and Ptolemy.

Callisthenes came to a bad end through his resistance to adopting Persian customs promulgated by Alexander as part of his programme for building a multi-ethnic state.

He did the most also to perpetuate the traditions of the Lyceum, Aristotle's school, building a library and a research center grander than any that had gone before, and personally inviting any peripatetics that he encountered during his maritime hegemony.

On Curtius’ return, a book such as the Historiae unless politically incorrect would have impressed the scholarly Claudius.