Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius

Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius was a Roman historian. Little is known of his life, but he probably lived in the .

Work Quadrigarius's annals spanned at least 23 books. They began with the conquest of Rome by the Gauls (BCE), reached Cannae by Book 5,J C Yardley, Livy: Hannibal’s War (OUP 2006) p. xxxi and ended with the age of Sulla, or 82BCE.

The surviving fragments of his work were collected by Hermann Peter.H. Peter, Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae, I, 205-237. The largest fragment is preserved in Aulus Gellius,Aulus Gellius, IX, 13. and concerns a single combat between T. Manlius Torquatus and a Gaul.H J Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature (London 1967) p. 202

Legacy Quadrigarius's work was considered very important, especially for the contemporary history he narrates. From its sixth book onward, Livy's History of Rome used Quadrigarius and Valerius Antias as major sources, (if not uncritically),J C Yardley, Livy: Hannibal’s War (OUP 2006) p. xxxi and it seems Livy especially drew on Quadrigarius for trophies placed in the Capitoline temple and lost before Livy's time in the fire of 83 BCE. He is cited by Aulus Gellius, and he was probably the "Clodius" mentioned in Plutarch's Life of Numa.Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Life of Numa, I, 2.

The judgment of his prose has varied. Some considered that it was his lively style which ensured his survival in various extracts;S Usher, The Historians of Greece and Rome (London 1969) p. 136 but more perhaps would agree with Fronto that his language was pure and colloquial (“puri ac prope cotidiani sermonis”),H J Rose, A Handbook of Latin Literature (London 1967) p. 202 and that it benefited from its straightforwardness, and absence of archaisms.M von Albrecht, A History of Roman Literature (1997) p. 385

Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius

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