In a preface to the Discourses, addressed to Lucius Gellius, Arrian states that " whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech.

Greek writers about India such as Megasthenes and Arrian describe many of the states having republican governments akin to those of Greece.

Quintus Curtius Rufus, the historian, says he was crucified in the place where Darius III had been killed, Arrian states that he was tortured and then decapitated in Ecbatana, and Plutarch suggests that he was torn apart in Bactria after a Macedonian trial.

Bosworth states that " Arrian has in mind Thucydides ' famous strictures of histories of the pentekontaetia, on which the passage is patently modelled ".

Arrian states that all his sources agree that "... for two whole days after Hephaestion's death Alexander tasted no food and paid no attention in any way to his bodily needs, but lay on his bed now crying lamentably, now in the silence of grief.

The author Arrian, during his personal experience in Spain, describes hare hunting with Galgos in a manner almost identical to that used nowadays in Spain, adding that it was a general Celtic tradition not related to a social class.

Also the passage of Arrian explaining that Megasthenes lived in Arachosia with the satrap Sibyrtius, from where he traveled to India to visit Chandragupta, goes against the notion that Arachosia was under Maurya rule:

Of Posidonius's work on tactics, The Art of War, the Greek historian Arrian complained that it was written ' for experts ', which suggests that Posidonius may have had first hand experience of military leadership or, perhaps, utilized knowledge he gained from his acquaintance with Pompey.

As with other authors of the Second Sophistic, Arrian wrote primarily in Attic ( Indica is in Herodotus ' Ionic dialect, his philosophical works in Koine Greek ).

Bosworth, in line with the epigraphic tradition of modern classical studies, points out that Arrian is a secondary source of Alexander's biographical data: " Arrian is prone to misread and misinterpret his primary sources, and the smooth flow of his narrative can obscure treacherous quicksands of error ".

The scholarly consensus is that Arrian's work is to a considerable extent a reworking of Ptolemy ; albeit with material from other writers, particularly Aristobulus, brought in where Arrian thought them useful.

Xenophon & Arrian On Hunting with Hounds.

* Arrian, Array against the Alans translated by Sander van Dorst, with the Greek ( transliterated ) and copious notes.

Its author is usually known as pseudo-Callisthenes, although in the Latin translation by Julius Valerius Alexander Polemius ( beginning of the 4th century ) it is ascribed to a certain Aesopus ; Aristotle, Antisthenes, Onesicritus and Arrian have also been credited with the authorship.

Hephaestion was certainly in the thick of things with Alexander, for Arrian tells us he was wounded, and Curtius specifically mentions that it was a spear wound in the arm.

However, Arrian describes the occasion when Alexander and Hephaestion publicly identified themselves with Achilles and Patroclus, who were acknowledged, by Plato and Aeschylus among others, to have been lovers.

Arrian mentions a quarrel with Alexander's secretary, Eumenes, but because of a missing page in the text, the greater part of the detail is missing, leaving only the conclusion, that something persuaded Hephaestion, though against his will, to make up the quarrel.

" Alexander ordered a period of mourning throughout the empire, and Arrian tells us that " Many of the Companions, out of respect for Alexander, dedicated themselves and their arms to the dead man ..." The army, too, remembered him ; Alexander did not appoint anyone to take Hephaestion's place as commander of the Companion cavalry ; he "... wished Hephaestion's name to be preserved always in connexion with it, so Hephaestion's Regiment it continued to be called, and Hephaestion's image continued to be carried before it.

Roman chroniclers and historians Arrian, Aelian and Asclepiodotus use the term cataphract in their military treatises to describe any type of cavalry with either partial or full horse and rider armor.

Arrian explains that Megasthenes lived in Arachosia, with the satrap Sibyrtius, from where he visited India:

Of these writers, Arrian speaks most highly of Megasthenes, while Strabo and Pliny treat him with less respect.

Arrian, Diodorus, and Plutarch all mention the battle, with Arrian providing the most detail.

Arrian records the chieftain Cleitus the Illyrian as sacrificing three boys, three girls and three rams just before his battle with Alexander the Great.

Arrian recounts that " Pharasmanes ( Фαρασμάνης ), king of the Chorasmians ", visited Alexander with 15, 000 horseman, and pledged his support should Alexander desire to campaign to the Euxine lands and subdue Colchians, whom Pharasmanes names as his neighbors.

Some Georgian scholars have suggested that the Greek copyists of Arrian might have confused Chorasmia with Cholarzene ( Chorzene ), a Classical rendering of the southwest Georgian marchlands ( the medieval Tao-Klarjeti ), which indeed bordered with Colchis and Pontus.

Both Quintus Curtius Rufus and Arrian refer to Alexander himself meeting with a tribe of fish-eating savages while on his Indian campaign.

Arrian was able to use sources which are now mostly lost, such as the contemporary works by Callisthenes ( the nephew of Alexander's tutor Aristotle ), Onesicritus, Nearchus and Aristobulus.

Arrian was able to use sources which are now lost, such as the contemporary works by Callisthenes ( the nephew of Alexander's tutor Aristotle ), Onesicritus, Nearchus, and Aristobulus, and the slightly later work of Cleitarchus.

Bosworth alleges that " Arrian was prone to the errors of misunderstanding and faulty source conflation that one would expect in a secondary historian of antiquity ".

His Indica served as an important source for many later writers such as Strabo and Arrian.

Anabasis Alexandri ( Greek: ), the Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian, is the most important source on Alexander the Great.

According to Arrian ( Anabasis, 29 ), he built a city " on the spot whence he started to cross the river Hydaspes ", which he named Bukephala ( or Bucephala ) to honour his famous horse Bukephalus or Bucephalus which was buried in Jalalpur Sharif.

It is not known when Arrian died.

In Babylon, he designed the funerary monument to Alexander's general Hephaestion ( died in 324 BC ), which was described by Diodorus Siculus, Arrian, Strabo, Plutarch and others.

Excluding a failed attempt to conquer Bithynia this we do not hear of Calas: it would seem, however, that he died before the treason and flight of his father in 325, as we know from Arrian that Demarchus succeeded him in the satrapy of the Hellespontine Phrygia during Alexander's life-time.

The Enchiridion, or Handbook of Epictetus, (), often shortened to simply " The Handbook ", is a short manual of Stoic ethical advice compiled by Arrian, who had been a pupil of Epictetus at the beginning of the 2nd century.

Even if the king was not accountable for his management of the kingdom's entries, he may have felt responsible to defend his administration on certain occasions: Arrian tells us that during the mutiny of Alexander's soldiers at Opis in 324 BC, Alexander detailed the possessions of his father at his death to prove he had not abused his charge.

It is told by Arrian that at the Battle of Issus the moment the Persian left went to pieces under Alexander ’ s attack and Darius, in his war-chariot, saw that it was cut off, he incontinently fled – indeed, he led the race for safety.

Arrian later wrote a military treatise called Ektaxis kata Alanōn, which detailed the battle against the Alans, and the Technē Taktikē in which he described how he would organise the legions and auxiliary troops at his disposal, among which legions XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris.

Arrian left Cappadocia shortly before the death of his patron Hadrian, in 138, and there is no evidence for any further public appointments until 145 / 6 when he was elected Archon at Athens, once the city's leading political post but by this time an honorary one.

Arrian lists Hephaestion first among these " honorary trierarchs ", indicating his leading position at this time.

However, there are no contemporary Indian records of Chandragupta Maurya and almost all that is known is based on the diaries of Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus at Pataliputra, as recorded by Arrian in his Indika.

In Greek legend, the city was first called Thoana because Thoas, a Thracian king, was its founder ( Arrian, Periplus Ponti Euxini, vi ); it was in Cappadocia, at the foot of the Taurus Mountains and near the Cilician Gates ( Strabo, XII, 537 ; XIII, 587 ).

Both Strabo and Arrian give nearly equal descriptions of the tomb, based on the eyewitness report of Aristobulus of Cassandreia, who at the request of Alexander the Great visited the tomb two times.

The palace of Sopeithes which the Greek historian Arrian mentions as the place on the Hydaspes is supposed to be at Bhera.

According to five historians of antiquity ( Arrian, Curtius, Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch ), Alexander visited the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa in the Libyan desert and rumors spread that the Oracle had revealed Alexander's father to be the deity Ammon, rather than Philip.

Arrian, in Anabasis Alexandri, mentions that prior to the Battle of the Granicus, in May 334 BC, the Persian satraps held a council at Zeleia where they discussed how best to confront Alexander the Great.

According to the historian Arrian, he camped at the confluence of Indus with the combined stream of the Punjab rivers to recuperate from the serious wounds inflicted upon him during the previous battle with Mallians at or near the present-day Multan and also waited for a part of his army led by Perdiccas to join him.