the landmark arrian the campaigns of alexander

Arrian satisfies the latter inclination: historians use his information to reconstruct Alexander’s battlefield tactics, which this volume’s charts graphically depict. Its formula of maps, photographs, chronologies, footnotes, and appendixes exceptionally elucidates texts without impeding their flow readers may digress into academic controversies or forge ahead to the next battle, according to their wont. To that audience, the editors have directed their Landmark series, which counts Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon in its prior lineage. If its composition three centuries after Alexander the Great lived inherently raises scholarly questions, Arrian’s account possesses a narrative momentum that will always interest general readers of ancient Greek history. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.Īnabasis Alexandrou (The Campaigns of Alexander), by Lucius Flavius Arrianus, a Roman of the second century, is the principal literary source for modern accounts about the Macedonian conqueror. Having served as a high Roman official with command of an army, Arrian had a unique perspective on Alexander, imbued with a level of understanding that only firsthand military experience can provide. Drawing on Ptolemy’s memoirs and other sources that have not survived antiquity, Arrian’s portrait of Alexander is unmatched for its accuracy and immediacy.

Arrian’s history of those conquests, the most reliable and detailed account to emerge from the ancient world, is a work that will fascinate readers interested in classical studies, the history of warfare, and the origins of East-West tensions that still simmer today in Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. During twelve years of continuous campaigns, Alexander conquered an empire that stretched from the shores of the Adriatic to the edge of modern India. The Landmark Arrian is an important new edition of The Campaigns of Alexander, the most authoritative ancient account of one of the world’s most brilliant military leaders.

The landmark arrian the campaigns of alexander