Arrian of Nicomedia wrote his account of Alexander the Great in the second century AD, nearly five hundred years after his subject’s death, and called it the Anabasis of Alexander—borrowing the title Xenophon had given his own march into Persia. It is a work of military and political history in seven books, written in Greek by a Roman senator and former general who had governed Cappadocia and once driven an invasion of the Alani back across the frontier. E. J. Chinnock’s literal English translation, with commentary, presents the whole campaign from Philip’s death to Alexander’s own, and the notes that accompany it draw continually on the other surviving authorities—Diodorus, Plutarch, Curtius, Justin, Aelian—so that translation and commentary together amount to a full history of the reign.
Arrian’s own preface sets out his method with unusual candour. He admits as strictly authentic whatever Ptolemy son of Lagus and Aristobulus son of Aristobulus agree on, and where they differ he chooses the more credible account. Both men served under Alexander; Ptolemy afterwards became a king, and for a king to falsify his own record would be the most disgraceful thing imaginable. No one, Arrian observes, has been written about more than Alexander, or more at variance.
From the Danube to the Indus
The Translator’s Purpose and Arrian’s Life
E. J. Chinnock’s 1884 translation opens with a preface explaining why he undertook the work. He began without intending publication, then came to believe that Arrian deserved far more attention from English readers than he had received; no edition of his works, Chinnock says, had appeared in England, though the Continent had produced many. His method is literal fidelity—to give the author’s very words rather than improve his diction, since paraphrase is easy and faithful translation without omission is hard. The commentary constantly cites Diodorus, Plutarch, Curtius, Justin, and Aelian, so that translation and notes together form a complete history of Alexander’s reign. Chinnock judges Arrian, writing in the second century AD, the best of the Greek authors of his age except Lucian, and asks indulgence for errors made under the pressure of teaching in a large school.
The Life and Writings, drawn largely from Photius, traces Flavius Arrianus from Nicomedia in Bithynia, pupil of Epictetus and surnamed the “younger Xenophon.” He gained Hadrian’s friendship at Athens, received Roman citizenship, reached the consulship under Antoninus Pius, and as Governor of Cappadocia drove out the invading Alani. His philosophical works include the Discourses of Epictetus and the Enchiridion; his histories include the Anabasis, the Indica, the Events after Alexander, the Bithynica, the Parthica, and the Periplus of the Euxine. The Anabasis rests chiefly on Ptolemy son of Lagus and Aristobulus, both officers under Alexander, with the Royal Diary and Alexander’s letters used sparingly.
Arrian’s Own Preface
Arrian states his criterion plainly: whatever Ptolemy and Aristobulus agree on he accepts as strictly true, and where they differ he chooses the more credible account. He trusts them because Aristobulus served under Alexander, and Ptolemy not only accompanied the campaign but became a king, for whom falsehood would be most disgraceful.
The Illyrian Campaign
Messengers brought word that Clitus had revolted and that Glaucias of the Taulantians had joined him. Langarus, king of the Agrianians, promised to invade the Autariatians himself and kept them occupied; Alexander rewarded him richly and promised him his sister Cyna, but Langarus died on his way home. Alexander marched to Pelium, shut Clitus inside, then found himself caught between the city and Glaucias’ arriving host. With a display of drill—the phalanx raising and couching spears, then forming a wedge—he panicked the enemy off the ridges, crossed the river under cover of engines and archers, and three days later fell on the carelessly encamped allies by night, routing them. Clitus burned his city and fled to Glaucias.
The Revolt and Destruction of Thebes
Theban exiles, spreading the false report that Alexander had died in Illyria, seized the Cadmea’s garrison officers and raised the city. Alexander marched south with astonishing speed, reaching Boeotia before the Thebans knew he had passed Thermopylae. He encamped near the Cadmea hoping for repentance, but the exiles and Boeotarchs pressed for war. Perdiccas, posted in the advanced guard, attacked the stockade without waiting for the signal and broke through; Alexander fed in archers and Agrianians while holding the guards outside. The city fell, and the Macedonians slaughtered the defenders in the streets.
Across the Granicus
Parmenio urged camping on the bank and crossing at dawn, warning that the steep, deep river would break the Macedonian line as it emerged. Alexander called it a disgrace that this brook should bar him, and led the right wing obliquely into the ford. A savage cavalry fight developed, more like infantry combat, horses jammed against horses; the Macedonians’ cornel-wood spears prevailed over Persian darts. Alexander’s own spear shattered, Demaratus of Corinth gave him another, and he struck down Mithridates; Rhoesaces cracked his helmet, and as Spithridates raised his scimitar behind him, Clitus cut off the man’s arm. The Persians broke and fled, losing about a thousand horse; the Greek mercenaries were surrounded and cut down, two thousand taken prisoner. Alexander buried his dead, exempted their families from taxes, sent three hundred suits of Persian armour to Athena, and appointed Calas viceroy.
Lycia, Pamphylia, and the Conspiracy
Alexander sent home the newly married generals to levy troops, a gesture that won him popularity, and pushed along the coast to deny the Persian fleet its harbours.
Confirming the Enemy and Alexander’s Exhortation
Learning that Darius had slipped into his rear, Alexander sent a party of Companions back down the coast in a thirty-oared ship to check the report; they returned with confirmation that the Persian king was close by. He gathered his generals, cavalry commanders, and Greek allies and made his case for confidence. The contest, he argued, lay between men who had already won and a foe already beaten; the god himself was acting as their general by drawing Darius off the broad plain into a narrow place where his numbers counted for nothing. He set Macedonian hardiness against Persian softness, free men against slaves, and noted that the Greeks serving Darius fought for poor wages while those with him defended Greece of their own will. The Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, and Agrianians would face the most sluggish races of Asia. Victory here meant not satraps but the Great King himself, and after that nothing remained but to hold all Asia and end their labours. He recalled the army’s shared achievements, named men for valour, touched modestly on his own record, and held up Xenophon and the Ten Thousand—fewer in number and worse equipped, yet they routed the king near Babylon and reached the Euxine. The troops pressed him to lead, grasping his right hand.
Dispositions on Both Sides
Alexander dined, sent horsemen and archers ahead to reconnoitre the Gates, and marched at night to seize the pass, resting his men on the rocks under sentries. At dawn he descended, moving in column through the narrow ground before opening into phalanx. Nicanor son of Parmenio took the infantry guards and shield-bearers on the right, followed by the regiments of Coenus and Perdiccas; Amyntas, Ptolemy, and Meleager held the left, with Craterus commanding the left infantry and Parmenio the whole left wing, under orders not to abandon the sea. Darius had already crossed 30,000 cavalry and 20,000 light troops over the Pinarus, posted 30,000 Greek mercenaries against the Macedonian phalanx, flanked them with 60,000 Cardaces, and placed 20,000 near the mountain facing Alexander’s right, with the rest marshalled by nation to a useless depth—some 600,000 in all. Alexander brought his Companion, Thessalian, and Macedonian horse to the right and sent the Peloponnesians and allied Greeks to Parmenio. Darius shifted most of his cavalry to the seaward right, opposite Parmenio, and took the centre himself in the Persian manner.
Readjusting the Line
Seeing the Persian horse massed toward the sea, Alexander quietly moved the Thessalians behind the phalanx. He placed lancers under Protomachus, Paeonians under Aristo, archers under Antiochus, and Agrianians under Attalus before the right cavalry, angled back toward the mountain; Cretan archers and Thracians under Sitalces fronted the left. Finding his right phalanx too thin, he brought the Anthemusian squadron under Peroedas and the Leugaean under Pantordanus from the centre to the right without the enemy seeing, stretching his line beyond the Persian wing. The Agrianians and archers drove off the troops on the mountain, and 300 horsemen were posted to watch them.
The Battle of Issus
Alexander let his men rest, then advanced slowly. Darius stayed put on the steep, partly stockaded bank—a sign, Arrian says, that he was already cowed. Alexander exhorted his troops by name and led at a measured pace until within dart range, then charged into the river at a run. The Persian left broke; the Greek mercenaries fell on the disordered Macedonian centre, and a bitter struggle followed, Greek against Macedonian. Ptolemy son of Seleucus fell with about 120 distinguished Macedonians. The right wing wheeled against the mercenaries and cut them up, while the Persian cavalry crossed against the Thessalians until Darius’s flight became visible. The Persians broke in disorder and the Thessalians pursued hard. Darius fled in his chariot, abandoned it on rough ground with shield, Median mantle, and bow still aboard, and mounted a horse; only night saved him. Alexander took the chariot. Among the Persian dead were Arsames, Rheomithres, Atizyes, Sabaces, and Bubaces, with some 100,000 soldiers; Ptolemy son of Lagus reported a ravine filled with corpses. The camp fell with Darius’s mother, wife (also his sister), infant son, two daughters, and the wives of Persian nobles; most of the treasure had been sent to Damascus, where Parmenio later seized it.
The Surrender of Persian Nobles and the Mardian Campaign
The army’s weariness nearly halted the advance, but Alexander’s harangue persuaded the Macedonians to press into Hyrcania. He divided his forces: Craterus against the Tapurians, Erigyius with the baggage by the longer road, while Alexander himself took the shield-bearing guards and archers along a difficult track, posting guards where the barbarians might ambush those following. Near a small river, Nabarzanes and Phrataphernes surrendered, and after four days the columns reunited, though the Agrianians were attacked guarding the rear and drove off their assailants. At Zadracarta, the Hyrcanian capital, Craterus rejoined him, and Artabazus arrived with his sons and Autophradates. Alexander restored Autophradates’s office and kept Artabazus close in honour for his fidelity to Darius. To the Greek envoys serving the Persians he refused terms, ordering unconditional surrender; they yielded themselves and fifteen hundred comrades, and he sent Andronicus and Artabazus to conduct them safely.
He then marched against the Mardians, a rugged, warlike people long uninvaded, and caught them off guard, killing and capturing many. Those who fled to the crags surrendered when he approached, and he pardoned them, appointing Autophradates viceroy. Returning to camp, he found Darius’s Greek mercenaries arrived with Lacedaemonian envoys, whom he arrested; he released the Sinopeans and others not sharing the Greek commonwealth, and ordered the rest to serve under Andronicus at the same pay.
Satibarzanes and the Pursuit of Bessus
After fifteen days at Zadracarta, with sacrifices and a gymnastic contest, Alexander marched toward Parthia and Areia, where Satibarzanes met him and was restored to his viceroyalty, with Anaxippus and forty horse-lancers as guards. News came that Bessus had assumed the upright tiara and Persian dress, calling himself Artaxerxes and king of Asia. Learning that Satibarzanes had killed Anaxippus and armed the Areians at Artacoana, Alexander marched six hundred stades in two days; Satibarzanes fled with a few horsemen, and Alexander killed or enslaved the guilty, proclaiming Arsames viceroy. Barsaentes, one of Darius’s attackers, was arrested by Indians and put to death.
The Conspiracy of Philotas and the Death of Parmenio
Alexander discovered Philotas’s conspiracy. Ptolemy and Aristobulus say it was reported in Egypt but seemed incredible given the friendship and trust involved. Philotas was brought before the Macedonians; Alexander accused him vehemently, he defended himself, but the divulgers convicted him and his accomplices by proofs—especially his confession of hearing of a conspiracy yet saying nothing though visiting the royal tent twice daily. He and his accomplices were killed by the Macedonians with javelins. Polydamas was sent with letters to the generals in Media, who put Parmenio to death—perhaps because Alexander deemed it incredible Philotas conspired without his father, or thought him dangerous if he survived.
The Destruction of Caranus’s Force and the Punishment of Bessus
Caranus, commander of the cavalry, tried to cross the river without consulting Andromachus; the infantry followed without orders, descending the steep banks in panic. The barbarians sprang into the ford, seizing those who had crossed, overturning others into the river, and shooting arrows from the flanks. The Macedonians fled to a small island, where the Scythians and Spitamenes’ cavalry surrounded and killed them with arrows, except a few reduced to slavery. Aristobulus says most were destroyed by an ambuscade, and that the officers declined the chief command in the confusion, so that no more than forty horsemen and three hundred foot survived. Alexander, chagrined, marched speedily against Spitamenes, covering fifteen hundred stades in three days; Spitamenes abandoned Maracanda and fled, and Alexander pursued him as far as the desert, then laid the land waste.
At Zariaspa he remained until deep winter. Phrataphernes and Stasanor arrived bringing Arsames in chains, and others who had joined Bessus. Alexander led Bessus in, accused him of betraying Darius, and ordered his nose and ears cut off and that he be taken to Ecbatana to be put to death there in the council of the Medes and Persians. The narrator does not commend this excessive punishment, considering mutilation barbaric, and agrees with those who say Alexander was induced to emulate Median and Persian wealth and treat subjects as inferior according to foreign kings’ custom.
The Battle Against Porus
Porus’s son led a cavalry force against Alexander’s crossing, but his squadrons broke before the Macedonian charge; four hundred horsemen fell, the prince among them, and the chariots were taken where the clay ground bogged them down. Fugitives carried word to Porus that Alexander himself had crossed with the strongest division and that his son was dead. The king wavered, watching Craterus’s men threaten the crossing opposite his camp, then chose to stake everything on a decisive clash with the king in person. Leaving a handful of elephants to bluff Craterus, he marched with four thousand horse, three hundred chariots, two hundred elephants, and thirty thousand picked foot.
On hard, level sand he drew up his line: elephants spaced a plethrum apart across the front to terrify cavalry and bar the gaps, infantry behind them ready to push into the intervals, foot on the wings, cavalry beyond, chariots at the extremes. Alexander let his exhausted men rest and inspected the array, then refused the centre and its elephant wall. Superior in horse, he took the bulk of his cavalry against the Indian left, sent Coenus with two regiments to hang on the enemy’s rear, and held the phalanx back until disorder appeared. A thousand horse-archers opened the attack; Alexander charged the wavering wing.
Coenus’s appearance in the rear forced the Indians to face both ways, and their ranks dissolved into confusion. Alexander struck the turning squadrons, driving them back onto the elephants as onto a wall. The beasts charged, but the Macedonian phalanx closed on them, darting at the riders and striking the animals from every side. Wherever an elephant wheeled it broke the dense ranks; the Indian cavalry rallied, only to be beaten back a second time among the beasts. The whole Macedonian horse gathered into one squadron and the Indian line collapsed.
The Mutiny at the Hyphasis
The officers’ longing for home and dread of further hazards hung over the camp. Coenus spoke his mind, and Alexander, stung, dismissed the conference; the next day he declared in anger that he would force no Macedonian against his will—volunteers alone would follow, and the rest might go home and boast that they had abandoned their king among enemies. He shut himself in his tent for days, waiting for a change of heart that never came. Sacrifices for the crossing proved unfavourable, and at last he told the army he would turn back. The men wept and blessed him, conquered by him alone.
Altars, the Return, and the Nile Conjecture
Twelve tower-high altars were raised as thank-offerings and monuments of his labours, games were held, and Porus received the land as far as the Hyphasis. The army retraced its steps, garrisoned the new city on the Acesines, and received Arsaces and the envoys of the sick Abisares, confirming that prince in his rule. At the Hydaspes Alexander repaired Nicaea and Bucephala, then prepared a fleet for the voyage down to the Great Sea. Crocodiles in the Indus and Egyptian beans near the Acesines convinced him he had found the Nile’s source, and he wrote as much to Olympias; learning the rivers’ true course, he struck the claim from the letter. Coenus died and was buried magnificently; Porus was made king over seven nations and two thousand cities. Craterus and Hephaestion marched along the opposite banks with the elephants, Nearchus commanded the fleet, and at dawn Alexander poured a libation to the Hydaspes, the Acesines, the Indus, Heracles, and Ammon, and the ships moved out to the sound of trumpets.
Downriver to the Mallians
At the junction of the Acesines and Indus he waited for Perdiccas, founded a city and dockyard, and set Oxyartes over the Parapamisadians. Musicanus surrendered with his elephants and was pardoned; Oxycanus’s cities were stormed and Sambus’s capital opened its gates. Musicanus revolted and was hanged with the Brachmans who had stirred the rising. At Patala the Indus split into two branches; Alexander built a harbour, sent Leonnatus through the island, and sailed for the mouth, where an ebb tide stranded his ships and the returning flood dashed them together—a terror to men who had never seen the sea’s rhythm.
Craterus, Antipater, and the Quarrel with Olympias
Craterus, the notes explain, was a favourite with the Macedonians precisely because he set himself against Alexander’s Asiatic innovations. When the king died, Craterus had got no farther than Cilicia on his way home, carrying written instructions for projects of astonishing scale: a vast fleet in Phoenicia to carry an expedition against Carthage and the western nations as far as the pillars of Hercules, magnificent temples, and the transfer of populations between Europe and Asia. The generals set the plans aside as too vast for anyone but Alexander.
The summons of Antipater, Arrian argues, was probably meant not to disgrace him but to head off the feud between him and Olympias, which Alexander might not be able to mend himself. The two wrote to the king without pause. Antipater complained that Olympias’s arrogance and meddling ill became the king’s mother; Alexander answered that she was exacting heavy house-rent for the ten months. Olympias retorted that Antipater was insolent beyond measure, forgetting who had appointed him while claiming the first rank among Macedonians and Greeks. The slanders seemed to weigh with Alexander the more they threatened royal dignity, yet no act or word ever showed Antipater less in favour.
The Nisaean Plain and the Amazons
Hephaestion yielded against his will and was reconciled with Eumenes. On the march Alexander saw the Nisaean plain, devoted to the royal mares; Herodotus had counted a hundred and fifty thousand horses there, but Alexander found not many above fifty thousand, most carried off by robbers. Atropates, viceroy of Media, presented a hundred women said to be of the race of Amazons, armed like horsemen but with axes instead of spears and targets instead of shields, their right breasts smaller and exposed in battle. Alexander dismissed them lest they be violated, bidding them tell their queen he was coming to father children by her. Arrian doubts the whole story: neither Aristobulus nor Ptolemy nor any trustworthy authority recorded it, and he thinks the race had died out by then. Yet he cannot believe it wholly fictitious, since poets, Herodotus, the Athenian funeral orators, and Micon’s painting all celebrated it. If Atropates showed horsewomen at all, Arrian supposes they were foreign women trained to ride.
The Death of Hephaestion
At Ecbatana Alexander sacrificed, held gymnastic and musical contests, and drank. Hephaestion fell sick; on the seventh day of fever, with the stadium full for a boys’ contest, word came that he was critical. Alexander went at once but found him dead. Accounts of his grief differ, coloured by good-will or envy. Some say he lay prostrate on the body most of the day until his Companions carried him off; some say a day and a night. Some say he hanged the physician Glaucias; others that Alexander, watching the games, neglected his friend, who was filled with wine. Arrian thinks it likely he cut off his hair in imitation of Achilles, but disbelieves that he drove the chariot bearing the body. He finds it plausible that, marching to Babylon, Alexander met embassies from Greece, and told the Epidaurians, who asked for an offering for Asclepius, that the god had not treated him fairly in not saving his Companion, valued equally with his own head. Most writers say he ordered Hephaestion honoured as a hero; some that he sent to Ammon’s oracle to ask whether sacrifice as a god were allowed, and Ammon said not. All agree he touched no food nor attended to his appearance for three days, ordered a pyre at Babylon costing ten thousand talents, and decreed public mourning throughout the barbarian territory. Many Companions dedicated themselves and their arms to the dead, Eumenes first, so that Alexander might not think he rejoiced. No successor was appointed to the Companion cavalry, so the name might not perish; the division was still called Hephaestion’s, and his image went before it.
The Letter to Cleomenes
Arrian does not blame Alexander for loving Hephaestion or remembering him dead, but he blames much else. The letter to Cleomenes ordered chapels for the hero Hephaestion in Alexandria—one in the city, one on Pharos where the tower stands—exceedingly large and lavishly built, with Hephaestion’s name attached to them and engraved on all legal documents by which merchants bargained. For these trifles Arrian has no blame. What he condemns severely is the letter’s promise that if the temples were well completed, Alexander would pardon Cleomenes any past crimes and he would suffer no unpleasant treatment in future, however great his crimes—a message Arrian cannot commend from a great king to a wicked man ruling a large country.
The Omen of the Throne
Aristobulus records an omen.
The Commander and His Sources
The Alexander who emerges from these pages is a general of extraordinary speed and nerve. At the Granicus he rejects Parmenio’s prudent advice to wait for dawn, calling it a disgrace that a mere brook should bar his passage, and leads the cavalry straight into the river against the massed Persian horse. At Issus he reads the ground and shifts squadrons from his centre to his right without the enemy seeing. At Gaugamela he wheels his Companions into the gap that opens in Darius’s line and drives at the king himself. The set-piece descriptions—the wedge of the phalanx at Pelium, the scythe-chariots broken by javelin-men seizing the reins, the night crossing to surprise Clitus’s careless camp—are the work of a soldier writing for soldiers, and Chinnock’s commentary on the other authorities keeps the reader aware of how much rests on the testimony of two officers with reputations to protect.
Yet Arrian is equally attentive to the political Alexander: the pardons and the executions, the honours paid to the dead with statues by Lysippus at Dium, the exemption from taxes granted to the families of the fallen, the Thebans sold into slavery and the Theban envoys later released out of compassion for a city the Macedonians had destroyed. The book is a record of decisions as much as of battles.
The King Who Changed
The later books turn inward. The murder of Clitus at a drinking-party, when Alexander taunts his own officers and Clitus answers with the names of Philip’s victories, is set down as a tragedy of drink and flattery; Arrian notes that the king had begun to imitate foreign customs in his cups. The trial and death of Philotas, and the killing of Parmenio by orders sent to Media, are reported with the evidence laid out and the suspicion left standing. The mutilation of Bessus draws explicit censure: Arrian calls the cutting off of nose and ears barbaric, and says plainly that Alexander was emulating Median and Persian wealth and treating his subjects as inferiors. The adoption of Persian dress meets the same judgement. Against this, the marriage to Roxana is praised for its restraint, and the king’s refusal to violate Darius’s wife is held up as the conduct of the best and most chaste of men.
The portrait is not that of a hero beyond criticism. Arrian measures Alexander against self-control, and finds that even a man vigorous in body, illustrious in descent, and more successful in war than any other could gain no happiness without it.
Why the Book Endures
The Anabasis survives as the most sober of the ancient lives of Alexander, and its value lies precisely in the narrowness of its sources: two eyewitnesses, weighed against each other, with the letters and the Royal Diary used sparingly and the legends of the East kept at arm’s length. Arrian declines to settle who the Dionysus of Nysa really was, or whether serpents or ravens led the army to the oracle of Ammon; he reports both and says the discrepancies deprive the story of certainty. That habit of mind—credulous of nothing, dismissive of nothing—is what has kept the book in use. Chinnock’s preface makes the further claim that Arrian deserves more attention from English readers than he had received, and the translation was undertaken to supply a want: no edition of his works had, to the translator’s knowledge, appeared in England, though many had on the Continent. The volume closes with the king’s death, the omens, Arrian’s apology for his own work, and a eulogy—the last word of a historian who spent seven books proving that his subject was worth the trouble.
