Marcus, a Roman youth, who devoted himself to the gods manes for the safety of his country, about 360 years before the Augustan age. A wide gap had suddenly opened in the forum, and the oracle had said that it never would close before Rome threw into it whatever it had most precious. Curtius immediately perceived that no less than a human sacrifice was required. He armed himself, mounted his horse, and solemnly threw himself into the gulf, which instantly closed over his head.

Quintus, a Latin historian who wrote the life of Alexander the Great in 10 books, of which the two first are not indeed extant, but are so well supplied by Freinhemius, that the loss is scarcely regretted. Where this writer was born, or even when he lived, are points no one pretends to know. By his Curvature style he is supposed to have lived in or near the Augustan age; while some are not wanting, who imagine the work to have been composed in Italy about 300 years ago, and the name of Quintus Curtius to be fictitiously added to it. Cardinal du Perron was so great an admirer of this work, as to declare one page of it to be worth 30 of Tacitus; yet M. le Clerc, at the end of his Art of Criticism, has charged the writer with great ignorance and many contradictions. He has nevertheless many qualities as a writer, which will always make him admired and applauded.

CURVATURE OR A LINE, is the peculiar manner of its bending or flexure, by which it becomes a curve of any form and properties. Thus the nature of the curvature of a circle is such, as that every point in the periphery is equally distant from a point within, called the centre; and so the curvature of the same circle is everywhere the same. But the curvature in all other curves is continually varying.