Curtius
Could not find Curtio in Logeion dictionaries.
Curtio Proper-name adjective: neuter dative singular, Proper-name adjective: masculine ablative singular, Proper-name adjective: masculine dative singular, Proper-name adjective: neuter ablative singular of Curtius
- I C. Curtius Postumus, a partisan of Caesar, Cic. Att. 9, 2, a, 3; id. Fam. 2, 16, 7; id. Q. Fr. 2, 5, 3.—
- II Q. Curtius Rufus, the historiographer of Alexander the Great, etc., Plin. Ep. 7, 27, 2; Tac. A. 11, 21.—
- III Curtius Nicia, of Cos, freedman of a Curtius, a friend of Pompey, Cic. Fam. 9, 10, 1 sq.; Suet. Gram. 14.—Hence,
- IV Adj.
- A Lacus Curtius, a place in Rome named after a certain Curtius, Varr. L. L. 5, § 148 Müll.; Liv. 7, 6, 5; Verg. F. 6, 403; also called Lacus Curtii, Suet. Aug. 57; id. Galb. 20; Paul. ex Fest. p. 49, 8 Müll.—
- B Curtius Fons, a fountain, forty Roman miles from Rome, whose waters were conducted thither by Caligula, a part of the Aqua Claudia (v. Claudius, II. B.), Plin. 36, 15, 24, § 122; Front. Aquaed. 13 sq.; Suet. Claud. 20; called also CVRTIA AQVA, Inscr. Orell. 55.
- 1. M. ~, legendarische Romein; om een orakelspreuk te vervullen stortte hij zich in 362 v. Chr. in een spleet in de aarde die op het Forum Romanum was ontstaan; door zijn offerdood wilde hij de goden gunstig stemmen; na zijn opoffering verdween de kloof weer (het zogenoemde lacus Curtius);
- 2. Q. ~ Rufus, Rom. geschiedschrijver ttv. keizer Claudius; schreef een geschiedenis over Alexander de Grote.
1. Mettus or Metius Curtius, a Sabine of the time of Romulus. During the war between the Romans and Sabines, which arose from the rape of the Sabine women, the Sabines had gained possession of the Roman arx. When the Roman army was drawn up between the Palatine and Capitoline hills, two chiefs of the armies, Mettus Curtius on the part of the Sabines, and Hostus Hostilius on that of the Romans, opened the contest, in which the latter was slain. While Curtius was glorying in his victory, Romulus and a band of Romans made an attack upon him. Curtius, who fought on horseback, could not maintain his ground; he was chased by the Romans, and in despair he leaped with his horse into a swamp, which then covered the valley afterwards occupied by the forum. However, he got out of it with difficulty at the bidding of his Sabines. Peace was soon after concluded between the Romans and their neighbours, and the swamp was henceforth called lacus Curtius, to commemorate the event. (Liv. 1.12, &c.; Dionys. A. R. 2.42; Varr. L. L. 5.148; Plut. Romul. 18.) This is the common story about the name of the lacus Curtius; but there are two other traditions, which though they likewise trace it to a person of the name of Curtius, yet refer us to a much later time. According to the first of these, it happened one day that the earth in the forum gave way, sank, and formed a great chasm. All attempts to fill it up were useless, and when at length the aruspices were consulted about it, they declared, that the chasm could not be filled except by throwing into it that on which Rome's greatness was to be based, and that then the state should prosper. When all were hesitating and doubting as to what was meant, a noble youth of the name of M. Curtius came forward, and declaring that Rome possessed no greater treasure than a brave and gallant citizen in arms, he offered himself as the victim demanded, and having mounted his steed in full armour, lie leaped into the abyss, and the earth soon closed over him. This event is assigned to the year B. C. 362. (Liv. 7.6; Varro, l.c.; V. Max. 5.6.2; Plin. Nat. 15.18; Festus, s. v. Curtilacum; Plut. Parallel. Min. 5; Stat. Silv. 1.1, 65, &c.; Augustin, de Civ. Dei, 5.18.) According to the second tradition, the place called lacus Curtius had been struck by lightning, and, at the command of the senate, it was enclosed in the usual manner by the consul C. Curtius Philo, B. C. 445. (Varr. L. L. 5.150.) But that this place was not regarded as a bidental, that is, a sacred spot struck by lightning, seems to be clear from what Pliny (Plin. Nat. 15.18) relates of it. All that we can infer with safety from the ancient traditions respecting the lacus Curtius, is, that a part of the district which subsequently formed the Roman forum, was originally covered by a swamp or a lake, which may have obtained the name of Curtius from some such occurrence as tradition has handed down. This lake was afterwards drained and filled up, but on one occasion after this the ground seems to have sunk, a circumstance which was regarded as an ostentum fatale. In order to avert any evil, and at the same time symbolically to secure the duration of the republic, an altar was erected on the spot, and a regular sacrifice was offered there, which may have given rise to the story about the self-sacrifice of Curtius. (Suet. Aug. 57; Stat. Silv. 1.1.)
2. Curtius, an accuser, was killed in the time of the proscription of Sulla, or perhaps even before, by C. Marius, near the lake Servilius. (Cic. pro Sext. Rose. 32; Senec. de Provid. 3.)
3. C. Curtius, probably a son of the preceding, lost his property during the proscription of Sulla, and went into exile. Subsequently, however, he was allowed to return through the mediation of Cicero, with whom he had been acquainted from early youth. In B. C. 45 Caesar made him a member of the senate. In the same year, Caesar distributed lands among his veterans in Italy; and Curtius, who had spent the little property he had saved in purchasing an estate near Volaterrae, and was now in danger of losing it again, applied to Cicero to interfere on his behalf. Cicero accordingly wrote a letter to Q. Valerius Orca, the legate of Caesar, who superintended the distribution of land among the veterans, and requested him to spare the property of Curtius, since the loss of it would render it impossible for him to maintain the dignity of a senator. (Cic. Fam. 13.5.)
4. P. Curtius, a brother of Q. Salassus, was beheaded in Spain by the command of Cn. Pompeius (the son of the Great), in the presence of the whole army, B. C. 45, for he had formed a secret understanding with some Spaniards that Cn. Pompeius, if he should come to a certain town for the sake of getting provisions, should be apprehended and delivered up into the hands of Caesar. (Cic. Fam. 6.18.)
5. Q. Curtius, a friend of Verres, is called judex quaestionis, concerning which nothing further is known. (Cic. in Verr. 1.61.)
6. Q. Curtius, a good and well-educated young man, brought in B. C. 54 the charge of ambitus against C. Memmius, who was then a candidate for the consulship. (Cic. ad Qu. Fr. 3.2.) We possess several coins on which the name of Q. Curtius appears, together with that of M. Silanus and Cn. Domitius. The types of these coins differ from those which we usually meet with on Roman coins; and Eckhel (Doctr. Num. v. p. 200) conjectures, that those three men were perhaps triumvirs for the establishment of some colony, and that their coins were struck at a distance from Rome.
7. Curtius, a Roman eques, who once, while dining with Augustus, availed himself of a joke and threw a fish, which was standing on the table, out of the window. (Macr. 2.4.) Some writers suppose, though without any apparent reason, that he is the same as the Curtius Atticus who lived in the reign of Tiberius. [Atticus, Curtius.] [L.S]
[Atticus, p. 413,a.]
[Lupus.]
[Montanus.]
[Rufus.]
One of the most distinguished classicists and philologists of the present century, born at Lübeck, April 16th, 1820. He pursued his studies at Bonn and Berlin, teaching for a time at the latter place and at Dresden. In 1849, he was made Professor Extraordinarius of Classical Philology at Prague, becoming in 1851 Professor Ordinarius. From Prague he was called in 1854 to a like chair at Kiel, and in 1862 to Leipzig. He died August 12th, 1885.
Curtius was the last and one of the greatest of the “old school” of classical philologists, and formulated in their final expression their etymological views. He was also profoundly learned in Greek, and in this department wrote a number of standard works: the Griechische Schulgrammatik (1852), which reached its fifteenth (German) edition in 1882, and has been translated into English in Dr. W. Smith's series in England, and forms the basis of Prof. Hadley's Greek Grammar in this country; also his Erläuterungen to the foregoing (1863, 3d ed. 1875) Eng. trans. (1870); the Grundzüge der Griechischen Etymologie (1858; 5th ed. in collaboration with Windisch, 1879), translated into English by Wilkins and England (1875-76); and Das Verbum der Griechischen Sprache (1873-76)—a very elaborate piece of work—translated by Wilkins and England (1880). Besides these important publications, he also put forth a treatise De Nominum Graecorum Formatione (1842); Die Sprachvergleichung in ihrem Verhältniss zur klassischen Philologie (1845); Sprachvergleichende Beiträge zur griechischen und lateinischen Grammatik (1846); Philologie und Sprachwissenschaft (1862); Zur Chronologie der indo-germanischen Sprachforschung (1867; 2d ed. 1873); Zur Kritik der neuesten Sprachforschung (1885); and in conjunction with Brugmann, G. Meyer, Fick, Windisch, and others, Studien zur griech. und lat. Grammatik, 10 vols. (1868-77). The ninth volume of this series contains Brugmann's famous paper on the nasal sonant, with which began the aggressive propaganda of the new school against the theories of Curtius and his predecessors. The new theories form the subject of a vigorous attack by Curtius himself in the Kritik mentioned above, in which he maintains the principle of “sporadic change” in addition to invariable phonetic law and the influence of analogy. (See Philologia.) In 1878, Prof. Curtius founded with Lange, Ribbeck, and Lipsius the Leipziger Studien zur klassischen Philologie.
A Roman youth, who devoted himself, for his country, to the Manes, B.C. 362. According to the account given by Livy (vii. 6), the ground near the middle of the Forum, in consequence either of an earthquake or some other violent cause, sank down to an immense depth, forming a vast aperture; nor could the gulf be filled up by all the earth which could be thrown into it. At last the soothsayers declared that, if the Romans wished the commonwealth to be everlasting, they must devote to this chasm what constituted the principal strength of the Roman people. Curtius, on hearing the answer, demanded of his countrymen whether they possessed anything so valuable as their arms and courage. They yielded a silent assent to the question put them; whereupon, having arrayed himself in full armour and mounted his horse, Curtius plunged into the chasm, and the people threw after him their offerings and quantities of the fruits of the earth. Valerius Maximus (v. 6, 2) states that the earth closed immediately over him. Livy , however, speaks of a lake occupying the spot, called Lacus Curtius. In another part of his history (i. 13), he mentions this same lake as existing in the time of Romulus, and as having derived its name from Mettus Curtius, a Sabine in the army of Titus Tatius. In all probability it was of volcanic origin, since the early accounts speak of its great depth, and was not produced merely by the inundations of the Tiber. Tarquinius Priscus is said to have filled up this lake at the time that he drained the whole of this district and constructed the Cloaca Maxima. Possibly he may have been aided in this by a natural tunnel gradually formed through the basin of the lake itself.