When Alexander was trying to show that he is divine so that the Greeks and Macedonians would perform proskynesis to him, Anaxarchus said that Alexander could " more justly be considered a god than Dionysus or Heracles " ( Arrian, 104 )

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.

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.

Above and below this sea, from Borsippa to Kufa, extend the famous Chaldaean marshes, where Alexander the Great was nearly lost ( Arrian, Eup.

Reports on the city's surrender to Alexander the Great differ: Arrian reports a peaceful surrender, but Appian claims that the city was sacked.

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:

Arrian tells us he was son of Orontes, a descendant of the independent princes of the Macedonian province of Orestis.

Strabo and Arrian both record that Side was founded by Greek settlers from Cyme in Aeolis, a region of western Anatolia.

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.

The area does not retain many marks of antiquity, although the eponymous river was noted as Masaitica as early as 137 CE, in a letter from Arrian to Emperor Hadrian.

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.

Arrian of Nicomedia (; ; AD 86 – 160 ) was a Roman ( ethnic Greek ) historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the 2nd-century Roman period.

Arrian was born of Greek ethnicity in the coastal town of Nicomedia ( present-day Izmit ), the capital of the Roman province of Bithynia, in what is now north-western Turkey, about 70 km from Byzantium ( later Constantinople, now Istanbul ).

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.

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 ".

As a writer, Arrian was obliged by the prevailing literary mores of his time to compose his works in " good Greek ," which meant imitating as closely as possible the grammar and literary style of the Athenian writers of the 5th century BC.

The result is a work which was inevitably stilted and artificial, although Arrian handled the strain of writing 500-year-old Greek better than some of his contemporaries.

Xenophon was a good model of clear and unpretentious prose, which Arrian was wise to follow.

Ptolemy was a general, and Arrian relied on him as a professional of military science and hence for details of Alexander's battles, on which Ptolemy was certainly well informed.

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.

Critics of the 18th century — Guichard Folard and the Prince de Ligne — were unanimous in thinking Aelian greatly inferior to Arrian, but Aelian exercised a great influence both on his immediate successors, the Byzantines, and later on the Arabs, ( who translated the text for their own use ).

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.

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.

The term is particularly ( and originally ) used to describe the use of this formation in Ancient Greek warfare, although the ancient Greek writers used it to also describe any massed infantry formation, regardless of its equipment, as does Arrian in his Array against the Alans when he refers to his legions.

What is known about the easternmost satraps and borderlands of the Achaemenid Empire are alluded to in the Darius inscriptions and from Greek sources such as the Histories of Herodotus and the later Alexander Chronicles ( Arrian, Strabo et al .).

Literary sources are Alexander's propagandist Arrian ( Anabasis Alexandri 2. 3 ) Quintus Curtius ( 3. 1. 14 ), Justin's epitome of Pompeius Trogus ( 11. 7. 3 ), and Aelian's De Natura Animalium 13. 1.

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 ".

Probably it was not possible for Arrian to recover an accurate picture of Alexander's personality 400 years after his death, when most of his sources were partisan in one way or another.

More than 1800 years later, Mary Renault, an admirer of both Alexander and Arrian, wrote an acclaimed biography of Alexander, " The Nature of Alexander ," drawing heavily on Arrian's work, as well as the few other sources which are still extant.

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.

Of the ancient sources, both Plutarch and Justin mention Barsine and Heracles but Arrian in the Anabasis Alexandri mentions neither.

It is worth noting that all the references to a unit called " Hypaspists " are much later than the period of Alexander, and modern historians have to assume that later sources like Diodorus Siculus ( 1st c. BC ) and Arrian had access to earlier records.

The Mykians of the other side of ancient Maka, the present day region of Balochistan and Sindh had later taken independence because they are not mentioned in the book written by Arrian of Nicomedia about campaigns of Alexander the great but he only mentions the Oman side of Maka which he calls " Maketa ".

Arrian mentions many others by name, but they would seem to have been little more than mountain torrents: the most important of them were Charieis, Chobus or Cobus, Singames, Tarsuras, Hippus, Astelephus, Chrysorrhoas, several of which are also noticed by Ptolemy and Pliny.

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.

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

However, he remained in command of the fleet for the voyage from the Indus to the Persian Gulf, which he recorded in detail ( and which was used extensively for Arrian ’ s Indica ).

Arrian relates an account that "... he flung himself on the body of his friend and lay there nearly all day long in tears, and refused to be parted from him until he was dragged away by force by his Companions ...", another that said "... he lay stretched upon the corpse all day and the whole night too ...", and another which told how he had the doctor, Glaucias, executed for his lack of care.

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.

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.

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.

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

Based on his life in India Megasthenes composed a four-volume Indica, fragments of which still exist, which influenced classical geographers Arrian, Diodor and Strabon.

The oldest documented description of hare coursing is the work Kynegetikos ( Greek ), otherwise known as Cynegeticus ( Latin ), which was written by Arrian circa 180 AD.