Arrian, in Greek Ἀρριανός and in Latin Lucius Flavius Arrianus, was a Greek from Nicomedia in Bithynia, modern İzmit in Turkey, who became a Roman senator, consul and governor, and wrote the fullest account of Alexander the Great's campaigns that has come down to us.1,2,3,18 He lived in the second century AD, under the emperor Hadrian and his successors.2,3
Debated among scholars Nobody knows exactly when he was born or when he died. Most modern accounts put his birth a few years before AD 90; Philip Stadter, in a survey of 1976, put his life at about 95 to 175. The last firm date is the year 145/6 (146 in Stadter's reckoning), when he held office at Athens.1,2,3,4
A Greek in Roman service
His family were leading people of Nicomedia, and Roman citizens for generations before him.1,2 He held the city's priesthood of Demeter and Kore, perhaps already as a young man.2,4 He studied philosophy with the Stoic teacher Epictetus, who taught at Nicopolis in Epirus, in north-western Greece.1,2,3 The satirist Lucian, later in the same century, calls him “Arrian, the disciple of Epictetus, a Roman of the highest distinction, and a life-long devotee of letters”.5
He was consul at Rome about 129 or 130.2,3 Then Hadrian made him governor of Cappadocia, a frontier province with two legions, from about 131 to 137.2,3 One of his first acts was a voyage of inspection along the shores of the Black Sea, which he wrote up for the emperor as a letter.2,3 It opens «Αὐτοκράτορι Καίσαρι Τραϊανῷ Ἀδριανῷ Σεβαστῷ Ἀρριανὸς χαίρειν», “Arrian greets the Emperor Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus”, in Stadter's translation, and it is not stiff: at Trapezus he found the emperor's statue a poor likeness, and asked him to «πέμψον ἀνδριάντα ἄξιον ἐπονομάζεσθαι σὸν», “send a statue worthy to be called yours” (our translation).4,6
In 134 or 135 the Alans, a people of the steppes, attacked Albania and Media and then Armenia and Cappadocia, and Arrian took the field with his two legions; his orders for the march and the battle survive as the Battle Order against the Alans.1,2,3,4,7 Debated among scholars How the war ended is told two ways. Stadter writes that he “repelled the Alan invasion”;3 the historian Cassius Dio, in the abridged version of his Book 69, says the war came to a stop because the Alans had been bought off with gifts by Vologaesus, king of Parthia, and “stood in dread of Flavius Arrianus, the governor of Cappadocia”.1,7
In 136 or 137 he presented Hadrian with a Tactics, a handbook of drill, much of it on the Roman cavalry, for his twentieth year as emperor; it dates itself to that year of his reign, «ἣν Ἀδριανὸς εἰκοστὸν τοῦτʼ ἔτος βασιλεύει».1,2,3,8 After 137 he left the emperor's service and settled at Athens, where he became a citizen and held the city's offices; inscriptions show him as archon, a leading office of the city, in 145/6.2,3,4
The new Xenophon
Arrian modelled his writing on Xenophon, the Athenian soldier, historian and pupil of Socrates who had lived five centuries before him. Like Xenophon he wrote down his teacher's words, wrote a book on hunting, and called his history of Alexander an Anabasis.2,4 The Byzantine scholar Photius, patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century, says he was called the “young Xenophon” and judges: “His style is dry, and he is a genuine imitator of Xenophon”.3,9 The Byzantine lexicon called the Suda, of the tenth century, gives the same nickname, «νέοϲ Ξενοφῶν».3,10
In his own works he goes further. On Hunting adds what Xenophon left out, by an author who is «ὁμώνυμός τε ὢν αὐτῷ καὶ πόλεως τῆς αὐτῆς», “his namesake and of the same city” (our translation), and who has cared since his youth for the same three things, «κυνηγέσια καὶ στρατηγίαν καὶ σοφίαν», hunting, generalship and wisdom.11 In the Battle Order the commander of the whole army, Arrian himself, is called Xenophon: “The commander of the whole force, Xenophon, should normally be leading in front of the infantry standards”, in Stadter's translation.4,12 And in the voyage round the Black Sea the classical author becomes «Ξενοφῶν ὁ πρεσβύτερος», “Xenophon the elder” (our translation).4,13
Debated among scholars Was Xenophon one of his real names? Stadter argued in 1967 that it was, a Greek name used beside his Roman one, so that his full name was Flavius Arrianus Xenophon; he granted that the inscriptions name him only by his Roman name.4 Others, starting with E. L. Bowie in 1970, have held that the inscriptions tell against it.1
What he wrote
From his notes of Epictetus' talks came the Discourses, in eight books of which four survive, and a short Handbook of the teaching.3,9 In a letter to one Lucius Gellius he insists that he did not compose them as an author would: «ὅσα δὲ ἤκουον αὐτοῦ λέγοντος», “whatever I heard him say, the same I attempted to write down in his own words as nearly as possible”.14,15 Of his own books, six survive: the Anabasis of Alexander in seven books, the Indica on India, the voyage round the Black Sea, On Hunting, the Tactics and the Battle Order.3 The reader has all of them, in Greek only.16 Much more is lost. Photius read and summarised a History of the Successors of Alexander in ten books, a History of Bithynia, his homeland, in eight, and a Parthian History in seventeen; the works ascribed to him also include a book on the Alans and three short lives.3,9 Two works once given to him, both called a Voyage, are not his.3,17
Alexander, from the best witnesses
The Anabasis follows Alexander's reign from his accession in 336 BC to his death in 323, above all his campaigns, and it is by far the fullest account of his conquest of the Persian Empire that survives.18 Its title, and its seven books, come from Xenophon's Anabasis; the word means an “expedition up from the coast”, into the heart of Asia.18,19
The preface sets out his method in a few lines. Where Ptolemy son of Lagus and Aristobulus agree, he writes their account down as true; where they differ, he picks what seems more credible.20 Both had marched with Alexander. Ptolemy later became king of Egypt, and for a king, Arrian says, «αἰσχρότερον ἢ τῳ ἄλλῳ ψεύσασθαι ἦν»: in E. J. Chinnock's translation of 1884, “falsification of facts would have been more disgraceful to him than to any other man”.18,20,21 What other writers tell he includes «ὡς λεγόμενα μόνον», “merely as reports”.20,21 So he often writes “they say”. When Alexander destroyed Thebes in 335, «λέγουσιν ὅτι διεφύλαξεν Ἀλέξανδρος»: “It is said that Alexander preserved the house and the descendants of Pindar the poet”.18,21,22
Debated among scholars Readers long trusted him as the most reliable narrative of Alexander that we have. Since the 1970s, largely through the work of A. B. Bosworth, scholars have shown that he can be careless in weighing his sources, too ready to excuse his hero, and in places misleading.1,18 As the historian Jona Lendering puts it, “Alexander as we know him was, until recently, very much a creation by Arrian”.2 In Book 4 he gathers the darkest episodes of the reign, among them the killing of Cleitus and the death of Callisthenes, in one place, out of their order in time; for Bosworth, “The whole digression serves the function of a sermon on the evils of intemperance”.18,23
What reading him is like
His style is plain, as Photius noticed, and he says what he thinks.4,9 When Alexander had the traitor Bessus mutilated, Arrian comments: “I do not commend this excessive punishment”; he holds «βαρβαρικὴν εἶναι τίθεμαι τῶν ἀκρωτηρίων τὴν λώβην», in Chinnock's words that “the mutilation of the prominent features of the body is a barbaric custom”.21,24
At Troy, the story went, Alexander called Achilles lucky to have had Homer to herald his fame; Alexander had no such writer, so that the march of Xenophon's Ten Thousand was better known than his deeds. Then comes a second preface. Arrian will not give his name, his country or his offices, for «ἐμοὶ πατρίς τε καὶ γένος καὶ ἀρχαὶ οἵδε οἱ λόγοι εἰσί», “these writings are my country, family and offices”, as Stadter renders it; and on that ground he claims a place among the first writers of Greek, «εἴπερ οὖν καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις», “if Alexander indeed is among the first in arms”.4,21,25 The book ends with his verdict. He has blamed some of Alexander's acts, «ἀλλὰ αὐτόν γε Ἀλέξανδρον οὐκ αἰσχύνομαι θαυμάζων», “I am not ashamed to admire Alexander himself”.21,26
He could be tender. In On Hunting he writes down the name of his own hound so that something of her may last: «Ξενοφῶντι τῷ Ἀθηναίῳ κύων, Ὁρμὴ ὄνομα, ὠκυτάτη τε καὶ σοφωτάτη καὶ πραοτάτη», “Xenophon the Athenian had a dog, Hormê by name, the swiftest, cleverest and gentlest” (our translation).4,27
The Indica is a surprise. Arrian wrote it in Ionic, the dialect of Herodotus.2,9,28 Its very first sentence has Ionic forms such as «ἔθνεα» for ἔθνη, “peoples”, the second has the Ionic endings of «τοῖσι πολλοῖσιν Ἰνδοῖσιν», “most Indians”, and later it says ὅκως, the Ionic form of ὅπως, “how”.19,29,30 In it he refers back to the Anabasis as «ἐν τῇ ἄλλῃ τῇ Ἀττικῇ συγγραφῇ», “in my other, Attic, history” (our translation).30 Its first part describes India, much of it from the Greek envoy Megasthenes; the second follows the voyage of Alexander's admiral Nearchus from India to the Persian Gulf.1,2,28
Why he matters
Because Arrian chose eyewitnesses as his sources, modern accounts of Alexander usually follow him and add details from other writers.2,18 And Epictetus, who wrote nothing himself, would be a name rather than a voice without the notes of his pupil.3,4