Clitarchus

• a companion of Alexander the Great, of whose life he wrote a history, Cic. Fam. 2, 10, 3; id. Leg. 1, 2, 7; id. Brut. 11, 42; Curt. 9, 5, 21 al.

(Κλείταρχος). A Greek historian, son of the historian Dinon. He flourished about B.C. 300, and was the author of a great work, in at least twelve books, upon Alexander the Great. He was notoriously untrustworthy, and inclined to believe in the marvellous; his style was turgid and highly rhetorical; but his narrative was so interesting that he was the most popular of all the writers on Alexander. The Romans were very fond of his book, which was indeed the main authority for the narratives of Diodorus, Trogus Pompeius, and Q. Curtius. A number of fragments of it still survive.