Arrian

2nd century Greek historian, official and philosopher

Fame59.1
Momentum10.7
Wikipedia9.1K

Source-basedStable

Lived 89–175, aged 86

WritersWriter / Author

Wikipedia
56 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
89–175
Aged 86

Summary

Updated 2026-06-10

He wrote the definitive account of Alexander the Great's campaigns fifteen centuries after they happened — and for two thousand years since, historians have trusted his version over everyone else's.

Biography

About

Arrian was a Greek from Nicomedia who lived under Roman rule in the second century AD, serving as both military commander and public servant. Trained as a philosopher, he turned to history and produced the Anabasis of Alexander, a reconstruction of the Macedonian king's conquests drawn from older sources now lost. Scholars long considered it the single most reliable narrative of Alexander's wars, prizing Arrian's sober method over more sensational rivals. That consensus has softened recently as historians question his editorial choices, but his account remains the skeleton on which most recons…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Arrian

Arrian

saidundated

He also buried the Persian commanders and the Greek mercenaries who were killed fighting on the side of the enemy.

— Anabasis Alexandri I, 16, 7.

Arrian

saidundated

Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury; … [and] I have been appointed leader of the Greeks …

— Anabasis Alexandri II, 14, 4.

Arrian

saidundated

This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians.

— Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, Book VII : Indica, as translated by Edgar Iliff Robson (1929), p. 335

Arrian

saidundated

No Indian ever went outside his own country on a warlike expedition, so righteous were they.

— Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, Book VII : Indica, as translated by Edgar Iliff Robson (1929), p. 18

Arrian

saidundated

From the time of Dionysus to Sandrocottus the Indians counted 153 kings and a period of 6042 years, but among these a republic was thrice established...

— Arrian (Indica, I. ix.) , quoted in K. D. Sethna, Ancient India in a New Light, 1990

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Gallery