Reference edition:

Incerti auctoris Epitoma rerum gestarum Alexandri Magni, cum libro De morte testamentoque Alexandri, iterum rec. Ph. H. Thomas, Leipzig 1966 (Bibliotheca Scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana).

This short work is transmitted in three manuscripts: a manuscript formerly kept at Metz (Xth century AD), containing also the Epitoma rerum gestarum Alexandri Magni (see notice on this text, and two codices Hispanienses. It narrates the death of Alexander, poisoned in Babylon, and the public reading of his testament. The unfolding of the story is similar to that of the Greek Alexander Romance (III 30-33). The language and prose rhythm of Epitoma andDe morte present similarities; the Metz manuscript numbers the chapters continuously (Epitoma 1-86, De morte 87-123). This is why scholars such as Landgraf and Wölfflin supposed that De morte and Epitoma are a single work; others (Romano) think they are by the same author. These two short work must have been written in a pagan milieu in the IVth century AD (Ruggini). The Epitoma is a historical work based on various literary sources. Over a century ago, Ausfeld advanced the thesis that the De morte is based on a Greek original written as a piece of propaganda in the first years of the age of the Diadochi.   Cleitarchus and the historians who followed him, in particular Curtius Rufus, Diodorus, and Trogus Pompeius, rejected this version of the events. Scholars debate animatedly on the precise political agenda of the original version, which may have been written around 321 to support Perdiccas or may have been inspired by Polyperchon in 317; a Ptolemaic setting has also been suggested. One cannot rule out the possibility that the Greek work was a flight of fancy of a later era. All late-antique Latin works on Alexander are either translations or epitomes of Greek originals; this lends support to the hypothesis that the De morte is a Latin translation of a Greek text. [R. Tabacco; tr. di L. Battezzato]