Arrian the Historian: Writing the Greek Past in the Roman Empire 9781477321874

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A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n Writing the Greek Past in the Roman Empire

Da n i e l W. L e on

University of Texas Press Au s t i n

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Copyright © 2021 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2021 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form Th is book has been supported by an endowment dedicated to classics and the ancient world and funded by the Areté Foundation; the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; the Dougherty Foundation; the James R. Dougherty, Jr. Foundation; the Rachael and Ben Vaughan Foundation; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper).

Libr ary of Congr ess Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Leon-Ruiz, Daniel William, author. Title: Arrian the historian : writing the Greek past in the Roman Empire / Daniel W. Leon. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020028394 ISBN 978-1-4773-2186-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4773-2187-4 (library ebook) ISBN 978-1-4773-2188-1 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Arrian. Works. | Arrian—Influence. | Greece— Historiography—Case studies. | Rome—Historiography. Classification: LCC PA3935.Z5 L46 2020 | DDC 938/.07072—dc23 LC record available at htt ps://lccn.loc.gov/2020028394 doi:10.7560/321867

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For Karen

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C on t e n t s

A c k no w l e d g m e n t s ix No t e on T e x t s a n d T r a n s l a t ion s xi I n t r oduc t ion 1 C h a p t e r 1 . Amateurs, Experts, and History 7 C h a p t e r 2 . Novelty and Revision in the Works of Arrian 33 C h a p t e r 3 . Alexander among the Kings of History 62 C h a p t e r 4 . Sickness, Death, and Virtue 85 C onc l u s ion 112 A p p e n di x : T h e Da t e of t h e A n a b a s i s 115 A b br e v i a t ion s i n t h e No t e s a n d Bi bl io g r a p h y 122 No t e s 123 B i b l io g r a p h y 153 I n de x L o c or u m 170 G e n e r a l I n de x 176

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Ac k now l e d g m e n t s

T h e de b t s on e ac c ru e s w h i l e w r i t i ng a b o ok a r e innumerable. I will inevitably omit many people who ought to appear here and if that describes you, know that I hold you in my heart. John Dillery guided me through the fi rst version of this project and then spared no effort helping me to land in a work environment that would allow me to develop a dissertation into a book. Ted Lendon gave the sharpest criticism and the most enthusiastic encouragement I could have asked for while I was writing the dissertation. Many other teachers offered intellectual and moral support along the way, notably Tony Woodman, Greg Hays, Jenny Clay, John Miller, Margie Miles, Sara Forsdyke, and David Potter. Colleagues, friends, and mentors have played a key role in refi ning my ideas and sustaining my will to carry on. I especially wish to thank Rachel Bruzzone, Zoe Stamatopou lou, Chris Caterine, Georgia Sermamoglou-Soulmaidi, Katie Rask, Sanjaya Thakur, Owen Cramer, Victoria Pagán, Beth Carney, John Marincola, Adam Kemezis, and Kris Fletcher. All my colleagues at Illinois, past and present, have sustained me in countless ways, but the following have helped me keep the “human” in “humanities”: Angeliki Tzanetou, Brian Walters, Kirk Sanders, and Clara Bosak-Schroeder. David Morris, the classics librarian at Illinois, continues to deal admirably with every arcane request I make of him (reader, there are a lot). Antony Augoustakis, a fearless leader and peerless mentor, kept me moving as I wrote and helped me past numerous obstacles. The University of Illinois supported my work in many ways, not least a much-needed semester of Humanities Release Time in 2017, during which I carried out most of the research for chapter 1. The First Book Writing Group at Illinois and its leaders, Maria Gillombardo, Carol Symes, and Craig Koslofsky, helped me refi ne the arguments of this book and make them intelligible to other people. Jim Burr, Paul Psoinos, and the whole staff at the University of Texas Press have been a joy to work with, ix

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and I cannot thank them enough. I am particularly grateful to the anonymous readers who reviewed the manuscript for the press. They gave generously of their time, knowing they would receive litt le in return, and their comments have greatly improved the quality of this study. Vaughn Fenton provided invaluable support as a research assistant at a crucial stage in the manuscript’s preparation. The work discussed above would not have been worth doing if not for the personal relationships that would be equally strong without it. My parents, Nicolas and Susan Leon, have encouraged my efforts since I was expressing myself through fi nger paint. My brother, Nick Leon, and sister, Kim Leon Prowell, keep me grounded and help me explore other paths through life. A growing throng of nieces and nephews reminds me constantly of the bright possibilities the future holds. My cat, Peanut, has been a source of joy through many difficult transitions. Her dog-sister, Yoko, offers irrepressible love and company on much-needed outdoor excursions every day. Finally, Karen Acton has been and always will be my rock, my inspiration, my everything. I dedicate this book to her.

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No t e on T e x t s a n d T r a ns l at ions

I h av e u s e d W i r t h ’s r e v i s ion of R o o s ’s T e u bn e r text for all quotations of Arrian. I have identified in endnotes the critical texts of all other Greek and Latin authors quoted in this book. Generally, they come from either the Oxford Classical Texts or Bibliotheca Teubneriana series, although there are some exceptions. On rare occasions I have departed from the editor’s reading of a text, but in each case I have sought to explain my reasons clearly. All translations are my own.

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I n t r oduc t ion

T h i s b o ok s e e k s t o ta k e A r r i a n of N ic om e di a s e riously as a historical thinker. There are several reasons for doing so. First, the majority of existing scholarship on Arrian separates his philosophical and historical work, which ultimately reduces the available evidence for his overall intellectual outlook unnecessarily.1 While I myself am chiefly interested in Arrian’s historical thought, his philosophical works have been illuminating and feature in some key arguments in this study. Most philosophical discussions of Arrian downplay his authorial role in composing the Epictetan works and treat them as though Epictetus himself wrote them.2 Scholars working on Arrian’s historical output have generally acknowledged Arrian’s role in creating his literary texts but have concentrated almost exclusively on his Alexander material. Most have taken a source-critical approach with the goal of reconstructing the lost Hellenistic histories upon which Arrian based his work.3 In both cases, Arrian appears more as an obstacle than as an object of study in his own right. The result is that many studies of Arrian’s work are not so much about Arrian as about his subject matter, even though he is often praised as an important and influential author. A third group of scholars has taken more interest in Arrian himself. Studies of the Second Sophistic have frequently cited Arrian as a prime example of the sociocultural trends that characterize the phenomenon.4 His literary output is a part of this story, but no extended study of his work in the context of the Second Sophistic has yet appeared.5 One of the central contentions of this book is that such a study of Arrian’s work reveals his persistent attempts to challenge prevailing trends rather than move in step with them, and so can enrich broader understandings of the period by offering a contrasting perspective.

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Most recently, Vasileios Liotsakis has devoted a monograph to investigating Arrian’s literary techniques in the Anabasis. That book has done much to establish Arrian’s independence from his sources by analyzing large-scale elements of compositional design that source criticism alone could never explain. The result of the study is the most comprehensive demonstration to date that Arrian’s Anabasis is an integrated whole rather than an arrangement of materials drawn from the work of others. Still, Liotsa kis has analyzed only the Anabasis and oriented his discussion within the context of Alexander historiography. Where he does draw on recent studies of the Second Sophistic, it is to illuminate various aspects of Arrian’s writing, but he has not challenged or bolstered any of the prevailing views of such scholarship.6 As such, while Liotsakis has illustrated some of Arrian’s devices in his most famous work, and others have illuminated the dominant trends of the Imperial period, comparatively litt le work has been devoted to exploring the relationship between the two. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with any of the scholarship mentioned above. In fact, much of it is outstanding. My own work simply pursues a different question—namely, how can the study of a single prominent intellectual with a countercultural att itude enrich our collective understanding of both his own immediate historical and intellectual context and the traditions with which he aligns himself? The rest of this introduction will establish some basic facts about Arrian and the world in which he lived before giving an overview of the book as a whole. At some point in the mid to late 80s of our era, Arrian, formally known as Lucius Flavius Arrianus, was born in Nicomedia, in Bithynia.7 At that time, Arrian’s home province was developing into a position of importance in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.8 Over the next sixty years, Arrian went on to have an outstanding political and literary career.9 He was a pupil of the Stoic sage Epictetus and a personal friend of the emperor Hadrian, but his own accomplishments were as impressive as the company he kept. A member of the senatorial order, his career spanned the empire. At a minimum, he worked in Bithynia, Greece, Italy, and somewhere along the Danube before rising to the consulship and then becoming imperial legate in the important frontier province of Cappadocia.10 His legateship found him in command of two legions, which he used to counter a threatened invasion during an extraordinarily long tenure.11 The last official position he is known to have held was the largely honorific eponymous archonship at Athens in 145/146, an expensive magistracy that testifies to the wealth and prestige that accrued to Arrian over the course of his career.12 After this point, no secure evidence exists for Arrian’s life, but he is thought to have

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sett led into a quiet retirement in Athens, one of the most important cultural centers of the empire. Arrian carried out his successful political career in a social world that entailed an unusually prominent interest in ancient history. During the fi rst three centuries of the Common Era, Greek intellectuals living in the Roman Empire developed a strategy for creating and maintaining a position of cultural and political privilege for themselves based on ostentatious displays of Greek education. The result was a massive increase in the production of new literature characterized by a strong thematic engagement with Classical Greek literary texts and written in a stylized form of Greek modeled on the dialect used in Classical Athens some half a millennium earlier. Among the most successful literary figures of this era were sophists who performed their works as a form of display oratory, and the majority of scholarship devoted to the literature of Roman Greece in the past fi ft y years has focused on the concerns that predominate in such texts.13 Nevertheless, many authors working in other genres are only now becoming a part of this story, and, as scholars have begun to investigate them, the centrality of the sophists no longer seems secure. Arrian is such an author, and while he shares some stylistic features with contemporary sophists, in many ways he reacts against their intellectual concerns. Even as our collective understanding of Imperial literary culture grows more complex, historians like Arrian remain an underexploited resource. As practitioners of a genre that had defi ned itself since its inception both by mastery of the past and by opposition to the ephemeral concerns of oratorical performance, historians were uniquely positioned to intervene in conversations on the nature of the Greek past during a time when such knowledge played a particularly crucial role in defi ning cultural identity. As display oratory grew in popularity, some historians pushed back by reasserting the persistent hostility to performance culture that had always formed a key element of their generic identity and by stressing the need to create historical literature that would benefit humanity beyond the span of a single performance. Th is claim to authority beyond their immediate temporal context helps to explain why they have fit so awkwardly into a story of Greek literary history that privileges the orators of the Roman Empire. In explaining the relationship between these traditions, I argue that historians, by virtue of their self-identification as outsiders to the trends of any age, offer a valuable critique of the preoccupations of their contemporaries. Because Arrian has left a variety of materials to examine, and because he is uncommonly explicit about his own perspective on studying the past, I use him as my primary example.

I n t r oduc t ion / 3

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My approach depends on viewing Arrian both as a product of his times and within the long tradition of the genre of history.14 I aim to show how contemporary concerns and long-standing features of Greek historiography live side by side in Arrian’s work, transforming and conditioning one another. To accomplish this goal, I employ literary and historical techniques that bring Arrian into conversations about the writing of history in other places and times. Although such conversations do not feature prominently in the rest of this book, it will be useful to spend a few words on the key questions at stake. The development of the historical profession in the eighteenth century CE is thought to have introduced a separation between historical narrative and historical thought that did not previously exist.15 The professional goal of objectivity, which emerged at the same time, and repeated critiques of that goal grew into a discourse of the discipline that has led to many vigorous debates about what a person does when researching and writing about history. In the second half of the twentieth century, the so-called linguistic turn brought the issue back to the center of the discipline by foregrounding representation (i.e., narrative) as a fundamental part of what historians do.16 While this discussion has been treated as inherently modern, Arrian’s thoughtful separation of his own work from other forms of historical representation shows that such active theorizing was present even in the second century CE, if not before. Classicists have understood for a long time that the arguments made in the historical texts of antiquity can best be accessed through techniques of literary analysis, but the notion that Greeks and Romans saw history as a special kind of intellectual endeavor has not been widely accepted.17 Specialized expertise was certainly a phenomenon in Classical antiquity, and, I argue, history should be treated as a specialized branch of knowledge with its own norms differentiating it from other types of intellectual activity.18 Articulating those norms requires a great deal of philological analysis. Given Arrian’s tendency to discuss his readers overtly, I have found the techniques of reader-response criticism fruitful in interpreting his arguments.19 Studying the way an author constructs meaning through narration naturally lends itself to a narratological approach, although I have generally eschewed theoretical terminology for the sake of clarity.20 Arrian was operating in a highly textualized environment in which a shared knowledge of certain specific texts allowed authors to articulate their thoughts through intertextual references. Thus, intertextual analysis also plays a role in my explication of Arrian’s historical arguments.21 One thing I have not engaged in often is source criticism. I will sometimes compare Arrian’s narrative to other accounts of the same event in order to illuminate the subtle 4 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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differences between them, but the origin of the information is not so important to the present study. Presumably, even when Arrian did adopt the wording of another account, he did so because that version fit well into the cohesive whole he was designing. Therefore it is better for my purposes to view these sections as part of a connected narrative and ignore the priorities of the author Arrian has subsumed. These techniques have allowed me to understand Arrian’s historical outlook better by outlining the narrative logic of his historical work. As a result, it will be possible to see how Arrian speaks to his own intended contemporary and future audiences, and how his concerns align (or do not) with scholars doing similar work at the same time. Th rough the example of Arrian, I show that Greek historians in the Roman Empire actively responded to the aggressive claims of authority over the past made by their social peers working in other fields within the competitive world of the Second Sophistic. In the rest of this book, I will set Arrian’s historical thought within the traditions just discussed. In the next chapter, I offer an overview of Arrian’s contemporary intellectual and social context. I will look at the study of history as a discrete phenomenon within the intellectual culture of the Imperial period, focusing on areas where the education shared by historians and orators led to radically different results; a series of examples will help to chart a path for historians as a “separatist” group of sorts. In chapter 2, I examine Arrian as a representative of this group and show how he goes out of his way to bring contemporary methods to long-stagnant fields. Th rough a survey of his works, I demonstrate Arrian’s persistent attempts to develop a notion of historical progress in his study of the past, thus creating a continuous, unbroken line of human activity leading up to his present day and implying a connection to the future. In chapters 3 and 4, I use Arrian’s longest surviving historical narrative, the Anabasis, as an extended test case for the arguments I develop in the fi rst half of the book. In chapter 3, I look at Arrian’s use of the exempla tradition in his history of Alexander to show how he deploys the tools commonly available through rhetorical education to craft a new analysis of a popular theme. In this way, it will be possible to observe Arrian’s manipulation of contemporary practices in the service of his historical research, since the result is a surprisingly subtle critique of monarchy. In chapter 4, I extend the argument by investigating a specific area of contemporary discourse to see how it plays into the historical outlook explored in chapters 2 and 3. In this case, I show that Arrian draws on contemporary moralizing discourses of the body, which were a central concern of his oratorical rivals. In so doing I will show how Arrian uses lessons learned from the present to reinterpret the past and further explore his historicized reading of empire as a system of government. In the conclusion, I I n t r oduc t ion / 5

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draw together the strands of these arguments and advocate for a more central role for historians in the history of Greek intellectual culture in the Roman Empire. Finally, I provide a brief appendix, where I lay out my view on the disputed date of the Anabasis, since the time of composition is relevant to several key points in my overall reading of the text.

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1 / A m at e u r s , E x pe r t s , a n d H i s t or y

T h e f i r s t t h r e e c e n t u r i e s C E m u s t h av e b e e n a strange time to be a historian. Undeniably, Greek intellectuals cared even more in those years than usual about gathering and deploying knowledge of the Greek past, and so in some ways it seems to have been an ideal setting for winning renown through writing historical prose. Yet coincident with this increased interest in history was a surge in the popularity of virtuoso performers of oratory, who also displayed a deep and detailed engagement with the past. These performers, conventionally called sophists, influenced popular conceptions of the past in numerous ways—not least their preferred focus on the language and characters of Classical (i.e., fi ft h- and fourth-century BCE) Athens—but their performances had litt le to do with the reality of historical events, and nothing to do with methodical investigations thereof. Many of them, however, ran the very rhetorical training academies where most educated people acquired most of their knowledge of history.1 No such academies emerged to specialize in historical training, as they did for philosophy, and no handbooks have survived detailing methods of studying history as they did for rhetoric.2 Nevertheless, there were many active historians in these three centuries, and serious ones at that. For such people, who may have spent years pursuing a difficult topic and refi ning it into a coherent narrative in hopes of becoming the “go-to” authority on it, to sit in a crowd listening to a sophist bring down the house with a farcically inaccurate reenactment of the same events may well have been a frustrating, even insulting experience. Historians, though, are a leathery bunch. They often appear to revel in feeling alienated from their own time, and Greek historians had been doing that since the time of Thucydides, who famously turned up his nose at the rhetorical virtuosos of his own day.3 The uneasy relationship between

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history as a genre and rhetorical performance can only have been exacerbated by a rising tide of historical performances in the Imperial period from orators whose priorities did not include detailed investigation of historical facts. Such a scenario invites the question of how historians—of the sort who seek methodically to examine real events—fit into this world, in which some of the most dominant intellectual figures repeatedly deployed the past and made it meaningful in ways that reflected a somewhat casual att itude toward reality. Writers of history certainly pondered this question, and although we have no explicit theoretical treatises for guidance, they often wove their theory into their narratives in ways that can be excavated. The historians of the Imperial period have much to say about the proper way to study history and the purpose of doing so, but their arguments have not been fully explained or exploited. While some historians have fared better than others in this respect, a number of influential historical authors who commented directly on popular trends in Imperial Greek approaches to the past remain to be examined before a full picture of the contemporary discourse of history can emerge.4 A particularly sharp historical thinker in this period was Arrian of Nicomedia, who used his narrative to articulate a methodical approach to the study of the past. Th is unusually explicit and extended discussion of methodology seems to be a response to the many sophists and other authors who touched on the history of Alexander without showing such concern for theory.5 As we will see, Arrian’s ongoing discussion was emblematic of a broader critique shared by other historians. His intellectual project and his major work on the history of Alexander will occupy much of this book. In this chapter, however, I will begin by exploring the broader relationship between sophistic oratory on historical themes and narrative history in the Imperial period. My aim here is not to offer a comprehensive review of every relevant author but to discuss a specific line of discourse that was available to and exploited by both historians and orators. While many authors have touched on the topic, I will focus here on those orators who most openly show an anxiety about their relationship to historians and on those historians who most directly criticize oratorical performance in order to elucidate some broad trends that appear in subtler forms elsewhere. In so doing, I will show that historians such as Arrian reflect a strand of intellectual development that paralleled and devalued their oratorical rivals. I will gradually narrow my discussion and conclude by introducing several of Arrian’s driving epistemological concerns in preparation for a full analysis in the following three chapters of the book.

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H i s t or ic a l De c l a m at ion a n d S op h i s t ic P e r for m a nc e To fully appreciate historians’ critiques of sophistic oratory, it will be necessary fi rst to examine some of the ways that history was deployed by sophists in their performances. While the primary vehicle for a sophist’s reputation was oratory, it is important to observe the distinction between oratory that was meant to accomplish something practical (like a courtroom speech) and a sophistic performance. The latter is more theatrical in nature, almost like a one-man show.6 The majority of such performances involved the speaker taking on a persona from Classical history or mythology, using the Classical Att ic dialect even though it had been out of use for hundreds of years, and attempting to play the role so persuasively that his audience was emotionally transported back in time. If successful, the speaker and audience collaborated to re-create a past that all found meaningful. So, for instance, Polemo gave a memorable speech in which he pretended to be Xenophon refusing to go on living after Socrates died (Philostratus, VS 542); but we should not think that he was attempting to hoodwink the audience, who were of course well aware of Xenophon’s literary output after the death of Socrates. The emotional appeal of a beloved student-teacher pair is satisfying on its own and does not require anyone to believe that Xenophon actually responded to Socrates’s execution in this way. The relationship between speech and history could at times be quite abstract. On one occasion, Polemo gave a pair of speeches—one each for two different personas—arguing with himself over who should give the funeral oration after the Batt le of Marathon.7 He fi rst goes into character as the father of Cynegirus, who famously lost his hand while grabbing hold of a Persian ship and ultimately died from the wound. The second speech is in the persona of the father of Callimachus, the polemarch on the day of the battle who cast the decisive vote leading to arguably the single most important military triumph in Athenian history. Polemo seems to have found Callimachus more compelling, but he is primarily concerned not with Callimachus’s magistracy or voting record, but with the strange details of his death. He picks up a version of the story in which, early on in the batt le, Callimachus was transfi xed by so many Persian spears and arrows that he died in an upright position, hanging like a scarecrow on the batt lefield (Polem. Decl. B 11–12).8 The imagery of this moment occupies the vast majority of the text and serves as the foundation for its primary arguments. Both speeches are obviously wildly elaborated on the basis of some slender but indisputable facts recorded by Herodotus. Callimachus was the

A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 9

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polemarch that day (Hdt. 6.109.2), and Cynegirus did die after fighting bravely and losing a hand (Hdt. 6.114), but Polemo clearly is not concerned in his speeches with accuracy in any meaningful sense of the term. In fact, he happily confuses even the most basic details of the Marathon campaign, placing Darius himself on the batt lefield to allow Callimachus’s body to strike fear directly into the heart of the king (Polem. Decl. B 61), whereas any reader of Herodotus would know that Darius remained at court while his generals, Datis and Artaphernes, led the campaign. Th is glaring error does not seem to have had any effect on the success of the composition, because the goal of the performance was radically different from a history’s. The point is that the audience and the performer conspired to enact an aspect of the past that they collectively agreed was important, in this case that Greek heroism at Marathon triumphed over Persian cowardice.9 In such a context, to accept and celebrate a sophist’s performance was to accept an abstract understanding of what was important about history without a need for rigorous analysis of the facts.10 The immense popularity of such performances in the Imperial period has been well documented and needs no full elaboration here, but it is worth dwelling for a moment on the immersive experience of display oratory to appreciate its significance in the cultural life of the Roman Empire. Celebrity orators like Polemo habitually went on tour across the empire, and huge crowds, knowing them by reputation, eagerly anticipated their performances. The performances themselves seem to have been worth the wait, to judge from their reported entertainment value. Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists is fi lled with stories of audiences hanging on an excellent performer’s every word or, alternatively, gleefully hurling insults at an unsuccessful performer.11 The performers themselves became thoroughly lost in their roles. There are known instances of orators crying real tears, for example, and in general the vividness of the performance appears to have been a crucial factor in its success.12 The deep engagement of both performer and audience underscores the seriousness of these events, which, to modern observers, can at times seem almost silly in their flamboyance. In the Roman Empire, however, sophistic performances were widely considered high art.

E duc a t ion i n I m p e r i a l G r e e k C u lt u r e While there are reports of audiences enjoying such performances without even understanding Greek, to appreciate them in all their nuance would require an excellent education.13 The more detailed an understanding one could bring of the sophist’s attempt to revivify the past, the more satisfying 10 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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the role-playing experience would become. No one was being fooled. Recent scholarship on sophistic performance has shown that audiences were capable of simultaneously behaving as if they really were a Classical Athenian audience evaluating the merits of a speech by the real Demosthenes, for example, while also judging the quality of the sophist’s performance by contemporary standards of rhetoric.14 They knew exactly what they were doing. These strange impulses have received considerable attention in recent decades. They do seem to demand an explanation, and much work that has been done in Imperial Greek literature in the past fi ft y years has been devoted to fi nding one. Over the years, a general sense that Imperial politics played some role in this phenomenon has gained widespread acceptance. Whereas earlier scholars postulated a disenfranchised Greek elite that preferred to relive its glorious past rather than face up to its diminished power in the Roman present, more recently the conversation has begun to shift to a sociological framework.15 The appeal of Greek education, across multiple populations of the empire, led to a sort of arms race of erudition as individuals and groups sought to advertise the depth of their learning and expose the failures of their rivals.16 Th is social function helps to account for the narrowing focus on a select group of texts used as models, as well as the increasing use of an out-of-date dialect of Greek that takes time, effort, and money to master.17 A bewildering series of complicated rules of comportment attended such efforts and allowed those who were able to play the game successfully to patrol the boundaries of membership in their elite group by intellectual means.18 There is undoubtedly an important element of ethnic identity formation as well. It is specifically Greek education that lies at the heart of this phenomenon, and the form of Greekness displayed by sophists and their circles became a desirable commodity for those seeking to enhance their prestige within the multicultural elite of the Roman Empire.19 Given the importance of education in this system, it is no surprise that public displays of erudition often took the form of school-based behaviors. Declamation, the sophist’s favorite medium, was fundamentally a school exercise, and although it was not a new development in this period, what was new was its widespread performance beyond school years.20 Once it became clear that this was a way to win fame and fortune, the existing structure of schooling helped the phenomenon to replicate itself. Successful sophists frequently taught rhetoric as well as performing, and their performances served both as models of what an advanced student could hope to attain and as advertisements for their services as instructors.21 The central place of education in recent studies of Imperial intellecA m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 11

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tual culture has rightly opened the door to analysis of many other areas in which Greek education was implicated.22 Yet this wider focus has tended to lead to the conclusion that essentially all elite cultural activities replicated the concerns of the sophists.23 While there were undoubtedly points of contact between sophists and other intellectuals and artists, it is still possible to see some areas where there were undercurrents of resistance, backlash, counterculture, and variation that have not been well accounted for and can enrich our growing collective understanding of this period of intellectual history. Historians and historical narrative seem to have been particularly underexploited, as is evident from the fact that comparatively few books have appeared on the subject until very recently.24 As the intellectual figures most explicitly concerned with the rigorous study of the past, they offer many tantalizing routes into understanding this era, in which the past loomed so large in public consciousness. As a group, their interests were unusually broad, and their approach unusually bound to a project of serious inquiry. What is more, historians more often than other literary figures explicitly attempted to separate themselves from sophists in a way so forceful that it demands explanation.

H i s t or i a n s ’ A t t i t u de s t o S op h i s t ic P e r for m a nc e To understand this separation, it will be necessary to explore the relationship between historical research and historical declamation. Certainly all historians received rhetorical training and consequently would have had practice in declamation in historical themes.25 At times, it is possible to see this influence in their writing—the composition of speeches, deployment of rhetorical topoi, and so on.26 Nevertheless, declamation was at heart a school exercise, and even though it was one that was reserved for fairly advanced students, it should still be regarded as something that most people did when they were young and then more or less stopped doing as they got older.27 Professional sophists were one major exception, and we have already seen how much prestige a declaimer could amass through sophistic performance. These successful careers notwithstanding, declamation was frequently held up for ridicule as a childish practice lacking in seriousness. Even rhetorical treatises that discuss successful strategies for declaiming expect this reaction on occasion. A good example comes from Tacitus, who presents a biting critique in the mouth of Messala. While complaining generally about the state of rhetorical education, Messala turns to declamatory 12 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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themes as a particularly egregious example of the decline he has been observing (Dialogus 35.4–5):28 sequitur autem ut materiae abhorrenti a veritate declamatio quoque adhibeatur. sic fit ut tyrannicidarum praemia aut vitiatarum electiones aut pestilentiae remedia aut incesta matrum aut quidquid in schola cotidie agitur, in foro vel raro vel numquam, ingentibus verbis prosequantur. But then comes declamation, which clings to material that shrinks from reality. So we get the rewards of tyrannicides, the impossible choices of raped women, the solutions to plague, the incestuous behavior of mothers, or whatever else is argued in school daily but in the forum rarely or never, all adorned with huge words.

Th is criticism is conventional and can certainly be read as part of a wider discourse of social commentary with deep roots and wide appeal.29 Narratives of decline are common enough in Roman literature, and Tacitus is notable in this area, but however ironic or self-conscious a given reference may be, the persistence of the trope suggests a real anxiety. Quintilian, too, saw a disjuncture between school exercises and actual practice. As he introduces his discussion of declamation, he explores the positives and negatives of the practice before concluding as follows (Institutes 2.10.15):30 Quamvis enim omne propositum operis a nobis destinati eo spectet ut orator instituatur, tamen, ne quid studiosi requirant, etiam si quid erit quod ad scholas proprie pertineat in transitu non omittemus. For although the whole point of this work as I envision it is to see that the orator is prepared, nevertheless, so that students do not miss anything, I will at least touch in passing on something [declamation] that properly belongs to schools.

The distinction between “real” oratory and declamation, which Quintilian and others defi ne as merely a part of schooling, is easy to perceive in passages like these, easier still in those authors who use oratorical performance as a foil for their own work, which they present as more serious intellectual endeavors. Josephus offers a useful version of this critique from the perspective of a historian. In his treatise Against Apion, he defends himself and his people against the calumnies of ignorant Greeks. At one point, he vigorously denies that his historical writing constitutes a schoolboy’s exercise (1.53):31 A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 13

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Φαῦλοι δέ τινες ἄνθρωποι διαβάλλ ειν μου τὴν ἱστορίαν ἐπικεχειρήκασιν ὥσπερ ἐν σχολῇ μειρακίων γύμνασμα προκεῖσθαι νομίζοντες. But some worthless people have tried to slander my history, thinking that I set forth an exercise like those for boys in school.

Here we have a historian balking at being compared to a sophist and bashing rhetorical performance by implication while insisting that his work belongs to a higher order of thought. Insults like these do not invalidate the masses of evidence that we have for successful sophistic careers, but they do provide a useful counterpoint to people like Philostratus, who clearly privileged sophists and their beloved declamations. Josephus, Tacitus, Quintilian, and others can make these performances sound like child’s play rather than serious intellectual work, even if at times they may have enjoyed them themselves. There is a helpful parallel in modern athletics in the United States. Youth athletics are extensive and widely regarded as essential in a child’s upbringing.32 Physical fitness is only the most obvious benefit of participation in youth sports. Values such as teamwork, determination in the face of setbacks, and grace in victory are also frequently cited as important lessons imparted by experience in sports. Sports therefore play a vital role in socialization by delineating proper comportment and defi ning virtue, as well as by providing a safe environment in which youths can practice these lessons. Nevertheless, people generally stop playing organized sports when they fi nish high school, if not sooner, and too much attachment to sports thereafter can become a social liability. Still, the mere act of playing a sport as an adult is not a social problem even for elite individuals—Barack Obama played basketball regularly during his presidency, for example—and adult athletes can become professionals, a status that may grant them access to fame, riches, and powerful social circles. Like sophists, professional athletes are top-tier entertainers and may be seen as heroes and role models by their audiences. Many parents even send their children (often at great expense) to “study” with professional athletes at private camps where the children will learn to perform more like their teachers. The social value placed on such individuals is therefore clear, but their profession, like a sophist’s, can also be used against them. If athletes try to use their celebrity to intervene in a political debate, for example, their critics may attempt to silence them by telling them to stick to sports, since they are not qualified to discuss politics.33 A similar strain of criticism often arises in sport-related labor disputes, when fans

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complain that professional athletes are already paid huge sums to play children’s games and so would have to be truly greedy to ask for more.34 Th is radical circumscribing of behavior reveals a tension in the way professional athletes are socially valued in the contemporary United States: simultaneously held in a position of high honor and ideologically discouraged from entering the most powerful echelons of society. While this barrier is by no means formal or impermeable, the presumption of incompetence just discussed remains a potent social constraint that athletes must overcome in order to be taken seriously in other professional sett ings. In the same way, the fame and glory attached to declamation in the Roman Empire appears to have left sophists open to being accused of intellectual-lightweight status, even by their own fans. Josephus is an especially important example of this phenomenon, because he does not claim to be an insider to the world of the sophists. To the contrary, rather than trying to outperform sophists as other critics did, he draws a sharp distinction between his own work and theirs while claiming a higher purpose for himself. He admits that he hired help to write in better Greek (Contra Ap. 1.50), thus completely abandoning one of the major competitive spheres of sophistry. He goes on to offer a scathing critique even of Greek historical research practices, further alienating himself by becoming aligned with non-Greek traditions.35 Crucially, he writes explicitly as an outsider defending his own people against Greek misconceptions, and in the Jewish Antiquities he is writing from the standpoint of a Jewish priest for an audience that is fully aware that he does not consider himself Greek.36 By removing himself from the competitive world of Greek intellectuals, he calls attention to the seriousness of his purpose and derides the competitive activities of his targets. From Josephus’s point of view, the stakes of his enterprise are obviously much different and much higher for him than for a sophist, and the conventional distinction between school exercise and serious intellectual work is immediately useful in conveying this message.

T h uc y di de s a n d O t h e r s on W r i t i ng H i s t or y There is of course an obvious Classical precedent for this rhetorical move in a famous passage of Thucydides, in which the revered historian anticipates a chilly reception to his matter-of-fact style of narrative (1.22.4):37 καὶ ἐς μὲν ἀκρόασιν ἴσως τὸ μὴ μυθῶδες αὐτῶν ἀτερπέστερον φανεῖται· ὅσοι δὲ βουλήσονται τῶν τε γενομένων τὸ σαφὲς σκοπεῖν καὶ τῶν μελ-

A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 15

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λόντων ποτὲ αὖθις κατὰ τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοιούτων καὶ παραπλησίων ἔσεσθαι, ὠφέλιμα κρίνειν αὐτὰ ἀρκούντως ἕξει. κτῆμά τε ἐς αἰεὶ μᾶλλ ον ἢ ἀγώνισμα ἐς τὸ παραχρῆμα ἀκούειν ξύγκειται. And perhaps the part of them [my writings] that is not fabulous will seem less pleasurable for hearing. But as for those who wish to see the clarity of the things that have happened and of such similar things as will happen at some point in the future in accordance with human nature, it will be sufficient that they judge [my writings] a benefit. And they are offered as a possession for all time rather than as a competition piece for immediate hearing.

Here, at the end of a discussion of his methods of collecting and presenting material, Thucydides has revealed that one of the main objectives of writing his history was that it remain as a valuable object of study for future generations. The opposition of his own work to those that were designed for public performance has often been understood as an attack on Herodotus, whose biographical tradition includes frequent anecdotes of his success as a performer.38 Whomever Thucydides had in mind, he has clearly distinguished his written history from the performances of contemporary authors by opposing the permanence of writing to the fundamentally ephemeral nature of performance. Although Thucydides lived in a time when literate culture was only just establishing itself, Roman readers were fully engaged in a world of written texts, and thus the distinction between writing about history and performing historically themed speeches could be drawn even more sharply.39 Th is famous passage of Thucydides became increasingly popular in the Roman period as a result. The opposition between history and performance is a complex phenomenon in need of nuanced treatment. Most readers of Thucydides would probably agree that it would be difficult to listen to him read aloud, and in fact Dionysius of Halicarnassus cites Thucydides as an example of something that would be far too harsh to enjoy aloud (De comp. verb. 22.226– 236). Nevertheless, not all historians had this reputation, and so we must return to Herodotus because, in later traditions, he was widely regarded as an outstanding performer, perhaps because of a persistent tendency to see him in the passage of Thucydides quoted previously. It is important, however, to insist on the ambiguity of the passage, because it is not at all obvious that Thucydides intended it as a reference to Herodotus. Th is interpretation relies to a high degree on later readings of Thucydides that seek to deepen the contrast between the two perceived originators of the genre, but it tells us litt le of how Herodotus saw himself or indeed how his con16 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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temporaries may have seen him. Moreover, as Josephus has shown us, historians often gladly followed Thucydides’s distinction between performing for the enjoyment of an immediate audience and writing for the benefit of a future audience. “Real” historians spurned the former and embraced the latter. Sophists, meanwhile, valued the past and valued canonical historians like Herodotus and Thucydides as sources of material and models of style but openly courted the praise of contemporary audiences.40 For sophists to be preemptively shunned by the great historians of the past, then, could be embarrassing to them, and so we also need to consider how sophists positioned themselves in relation to earlier authorities on history. The fact that all explicit references to Herodotus’s performances come from the Imperial period or later deserves a thorough examination.41 The scale of the text and simple elements such as his use of a past tense to refer to his own time (e.g., 1.5.4) are sufficient to demonstrate that, like Thucydides, Herodotus was clearly concerned with future reading audiences. While the oral features of Herodotus’s prose have been amply demonstrated, and his own text shows an awareness of immediate audiences too, the nature and extent of whatever oral performances may lie behind the written text as we have it remain obscure.42 The details all come from Imperial Greek readers of Herodotus, who, as we will see, had a vested interest in inflating the importance of performance to Herodotus’s career. One partial exception is the late fourth- or early third-century historian Diyllus. Plutarch cites Diyllus, a universal historian who seems to have been influential, for his claim that Herodotus received a massive award from the Athenians for his flattering portrait of them.43 Although Diyllus may well have been a scrupulous historian with access to good information, the context of Plutarch’s citation raises some questions as to what was in Diyllus’s original text, which Plutarch does not quote directly.44 The relevant passage from Plutarch runs as follows (On the Malice of Herodotus 861F–862B):45 καὶ τὰ τῆς Ἑλλ άδος ἐπαγγελλ όμενος γράφειν , ἐσπουδακὼς δὲ περὶ τὰς Ἀθήνας διαφερόντως οὐδὲ τὴν πρὸς Ἄγρας πομπὴν ἱστόρηκας, ἣν πέμπουσιν ἔτι νῦν τῇ ἕκτῃ χαριστήρια τῆς νίκης ἑορτάζοντες. ἀλλ ὰ τοῦτό γε βοηθεῖ τῷ Ἡροδότῳ πρὸς ἐκείνην τὴν διαβολὴν, ἣν ἔχει κολακεύσας τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἀργύριον πολὺ λαβεῖν παρ’ αὐτῶν. εἰ γὰρ ἀνέγνω ταῦτ’ Ἀθηναίοις, οὐκ ἂν εἴασαν οὐδὲ περιεῖδον ἐνάτῃ τὸν Φιλιππίδην παρακαλοῦντα Λακεδαιμονίους ἐπὶ τὴν μάχην ἐκ τῆς μάχης γεγενημένον, καὶ ταῦτα δευτεραῖον εἰς Σπάρτην ἐξ Ἀθηνῶν, ὡς αὐτός φησιν, ἀφιγμένον· εἰ μὴ μετὰ τὸ νικῆσαι τοὺς πολεμίους Ἀθηναῖοι μετεπέμποντο τοὺς συμμάχους. ὅτι μέντοι δέκα τάλαντα δωρεὰν ἔλαβεν ἐξ ἈθηA m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 17

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νῶν Ἀνύτου τὸ ψήφισμα γράψαντος, ἀνὴρ Ἀθηναῖος οὐ τῶν παρημελημένων ἐν ἱστορίᾳ, Δίυλλ ος εἴρηκεν. Claiming to write the affairs of Greece to preserve the memory of them and especially zealously looking to Athens, you have not even told of the procession to Agrae, which even now they still send out on the sixth [of Boedromion] while celebrating a festival of thanksgiving for their victory. But this at least helps Herodotus against the accusation that he flattered the Athenians to get money from them. For if he had read these things to the Athenians, they would not have allowed it nor overlooked it that he himself says Philippides summoned the Spartans to batt le on the ninth, after leaving the batt le and arriving at Sparta the next day, unless the Athenians used to send for their allies after defeating their enemies. But an Athenian, Diyllus, not one of those forgotten historians, has said that he took ten talents as a gift from the Athenians, with Anytus proposing the motion.

Th is passage has many problems, but Plutarch is clearly not importing any surrounding context from Diyllus himself; rather, he cites Diyllus only as a source of the simple fact that Herodotus received a prize of ten talents, with the trivial detail of Anytus’s proposal thrown in for a flavor of accuracy. The introduction of the fact is confused, however. Plutarch says that Herodotus did not deserve such a prize from the Athenians because of his sloppy narrative of Marathon, which is of course incompatible with the prize itself and so certainly Plutarch’s addition rather than something one might expect to fi nd in Diyllus. Obviously, Plutarch’s polemical purpose does not require perfect logical consistency, but his methods of citation are elsewhere misleading, and it is possible that he is manipulating Diyllus’s account more drastically than has generally been supposed.46 While the context of the passage makes clear that we should make a connection between the award and a performance, Plutarch does not explicitly att ribute the reason for the award to Diyllus.47 The later accounts of Eusebius (preserved in the anonymous Armenian translation and Jerome’s Latin translation) and Syncellus do specify that Herodotus was given an award after reading parts of his history to the Boulē. However, because they are later than both Diyllus and Plutarch, it is impossible to say whether they were combining sources or pulling from some intermediary who fi lled in details on his own.48 The evidence of Diyllus, therefore, is at least ambiguous and certainly not a strong foundation for an account of Herodotus as a renowned performer, however much he may have lectured in reality. It is, however, exactly the sort of foundation that later biographical traditions would happily 18 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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build upon while fi lling in the details of Herodotus’s life and attempting to connect two great literary figures more closely by enhancing an aspect of Herodotus’s career that would make him more obviously the target of a famous passage of Thucydides.49 Lucian is among the most explicit in this area, and whether he invented a tradition himself or found it somewhere, he was clearly att racted to Herodotus the performer because of his own ambition to make a career as a performing sophist. In his brief work comparing Herodotus to the painter Aëtion (Herodotus; or, Aëtion), he discusses how Herodotus won fame through a single brilliant performance at Olympia rather than an extended speaking tour. Unlike Marcellinus’s fanciful tale of a young Thucydides weeping at the beauty of Herodotus’s performance (Life of Thucydides 53), which most reject as obviously false, Lucian’s story of Herodotus at Olympia is widely regarded as evidence for a real performance. However, Lucian’s claim is equally suspicious, because the whole point of the work (or at least its conceit) is to allow Lucian to win fame as quickly as possible. He is speaking in Macedonia at an athletic festival, just like Herodotus at Olympia, and he is explicitly asking for fame as a result of a single performance. He makes Herodotus the originator of this strategy and reports that sophists like himself immediately followed suit (Herodotus 3):50 Ὅπερ ὕστερον κατανοήσαντες, ἐπίτομόν τινα ταύτην ὁδὸν ἐς γνῶσιν, Ἱππίας τε ὁ ἐπιχώριος αὐτῶν σοφιστὴς καὶ Πρόδικος ὁ Κεῖος καὶ Ἀναξιμένης ὁ Χῖος καὶ Πῶλος Ἀκραγαντῖνος καὶ ἄλλ οι συχνοὶ λόγους ἔλεγον ἀεὶ καὶ αὐτοὶ πρὸς τὴν πανήγυριν, ἀφ᾿ ὧν γνώριμοι ἐν βραχεῖ ἐγίγνοντο. Those who later learned that this was a shortcut to renown—Hippias the local sophist in that place, and Prodicus of Ceos, and Anaximenes of Chios, and Polus of Acragas, and loads of others—always themselves spoke their speeches before the assembled audience and thereby swift ly became famous.

Lucian is therefore claiming Herodotus for the sophists, but as we have seen, there is very litt le evidence to show that Herodotus himself (or Thucydides, for that matter) would have acknowledged the connection. Historians, by contrast, fi xated on that famous passage of Thucydides separating historical writing from sophistic performance. Even Lucian, in his treatise on how to write history, refers to it (How to Write History 5):51 τὸ δὲ οἶσθά που καὶ αὐτός, ὦ ἑταῖρε, ὡς οὐ τῶν εὐμεταχειρίστων οὐδὲ ῥᾳθύμως συντεθῆναι δυναμένων τοῦτ’ ἐστίν, ἀλλ’, εἴ τι ἐν λόγοις καὶ ἄλλ ο, A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 19

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πολλ ῆς τῆς φροντίδος δεόμενον, ἤν τις, ὡς ὁ Θουκυδίδης φησίν, ἐς ἀεὶ κτῆμα συντιθείη. But I suppose you yourself know this too, my friend: that [history] is not something easily practiced nor something that can be composed carelessly, but requires above all other types of literature considerable thought if one is going to compose, as Thucydides says, a possession for all time.

Th is statement implies, quite reasonably, that the goal of any historian ought to be to write a work that will have lasting appeal and usefulness. The frequency with which historians discuss writing while emphasizing their concern for posterity suggests there is something in the nature of the genre that demands it be seen as fundamentally written, and that puts it at odds with the fundamentally performative genre of sophistic oratory. In general, then, historians do not appear to have taken much notice of sophists, and when they did, it was usually to emphasize the difference between the two groups. Sophists like Lucian, on the other hand, certainly did take note of historians and appear to have attempted to claim the “Father of History” as the originator of their own preferred art form.52

H e r odi a n a n d t h e H i s t or i a n ’s Au di e nc e Historians’ prickly comments about writing and performance naturally raise questions about their relationship to their own audience. Whereas sophists declaiming while in character encouraged their listeners to imagine themselves as figures from the distant past, historians, as a rule, postulated a future reading audience. However, just as sophists invited their audiences to judge their performance by contemporary rhetorical standards while also imagining themselves in the role of an ancient jury (for example), a historian’s notional future audience could introduce a similar double consciousness in his immediate audience.53 Whether reading privately or listening at some kind of recitation, any mention of a future audience opens the possibility for immediate audiences to cast themselves in that role. Thus at times it is possible to see how historians play to their present critics even as they keep their eyes on the future. Herodian makes this point nicely by manipulating the traditional contrast between pleasure and benefit in his preface (1.1.3):54 ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἱστορίαν οὐ παρ᾿ ἄλλ ων ἀποδεξάμενος ἄγνωστόν τε καὶ ἀμάρτυρον, ὑπὸ νεαρᾷ δὲ τῇ τῶν ἐντευξομένων μνήμῃ, μετὰ πάσης ἀκριβείας 20 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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ἤθροισα ἐς συγγραφήν, οὐκ ἀτερπῆ τὴν γνῶσιν καὶ τοῖς ὕστερον ἔσεσθαι προσδοκήσας ἔργων μεγάλων τε καὶ πολλ ῶν ἐν ὀλίγῳ χρόνῳ γενομένων. I have gathered research into a composition with every precision, not receiving from others something unknown and unwitnessed but something subject to the recent memory of those who will stumble upon it now. I have done this because I expect that knowledge of events so numerous and great happening in a short time will not be unpleasant for people in the future too.

Rather than drawing a distinction between the pleasure of an immediate listening audience and the benefit of a future reading audience, Herodian inverts the experiences of these two notional groups. The underlying assumption is that his immediate audience would most likely view the tumultuous events he plans to narrate as an unpleasant experience from which they might very well wish to escape.55 Still, the introduction of a future audience who can look back with pleasure on events of a distant past invites that contemporary audience to see themselves as remote from the chaos of the present—as distant as the make-believe Athenians of an audience at a sophistic declamation, but in the future instead of the past. Herodian’s subsequent narrative aids in this project. By craft ing a tidy, linear narrative in a relatively simple Classicizing style, Herodian has effectively imposed order on a notoriously chaotic period of Roman history.56 While this narrative effect is clearly related to the double experience of the sophistic audience—simultaneously serving as ancient Athenian judges and contemporary critics of declamation—Herodian’s audience was doing a different sort of work, imagining not a meaningful past as they understood it, but a wholly uncharted future, one where the troubles of their own age were past, and perhaps where they themselves could benefit from the perspective of hindsight and see more clearly the motion of history through which they were living. My own contemporary readers may recognize in Herodian’s strategy something of their lived experience. We live in tumultuous times when both the institutions that characterized the past century of world history and the civil discourse that structures decision-making processes seem broken beyond repair. Perhaps as a result, numerous commentators have deployed the rhetoric of future audiences through variations on the theme of how history will judge the moment we are in, and the predictive framework of the right and wrong side of history has been invoked so often that metacommentaries on the device have begun to appear.57 The power of this rhetoric lies in the relationship between commentator and reader. Th rough A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 21

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an assessment couched in learned language and frequently attended by historical comparisons, the commentator provides an apparently trustworthy and soothing vision of a calmer future when our present struggles are gone and, crucially, have not been replaced by something worse. Meanwhile, in considering this vision of a pleasing alternative to the present, the audience has the power to acknowledge the authority of the commentator. By accepting or rejecting the assessment, the audience in turn declares itself a possessor of the insight needed to understand confusing events and see better than others how things will unfold in the end. Herodian’s grasp of the power of historical narrative to engender a vision of the future allows him to step into an arena with much more lasting outcomes than his sophistic rivals and invite his contemporaries to feel secure in their place in history.58

H i s t or y a s P e r for m a nc e While historians regularly proclaim an aversion to performance, there is of a course plenty of evidence for performances of historical narratives.59 A brief look at how such events played out will help to explicate the division between historical and sophistic performances. At times historical performances could be formal and public, as in the case of an ambassador appealing to kinship between peoples. A well-known example from the early second century CE appears on stone and offers a glimpse of a performing historian in action.60 While seeking assistance against the encroachments of Antiochus III, an ambassador named Hegesias appears to have gone to considerable lengths to explain that Rome and his home city, Lampsacus, enjoyed a long historical friendship centered on kinship relations. Hegesias’s orations would probably have occurred on a solemn and formal occasion calling for a high degree of decorum, unlike an epideictic sophistic performance, which could expect a fairly raucous and participatory audience.61 Philo gives us an example in the negative in his treatise On the Embassy to Gaius (Leg. 349–372). He and his fellow ambassadors traveled all the way to Italy to plead for the emperor to intervene when the Jews of Alexandria were being viciously persecuted by Greeks. The plan was evidently to explain to Gaius how the Jews had always been treated in Alexandria, stretching back to Ptolemaic times, and, in effect, to give a history of the Jews in Alexandria. Gaius, never intending to take the complaint seriously, continually interrupted the ambassadors as they attempted to make their case until they gave up in frustration. Philo was naturally outraged at this treatment, and explicitly drew attention to the response from 22 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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his audience, highlighting the mockery and jeering that Gaius and his attendants hurled at the Jews and explicitly saying that this treatment was to be expected more of a theatrical performance than of a legal proceeding (Leg. 368).62 Another form of historical performance that must be considered, however, is the private recitation. There is extensive evidence for group reading in antiquity, and literary circles seem to have enjoyed listening to recitations of each other’s new works in the fi nal phases of revision.63 While the purpose was discussion and critical commentary, we should probably expect a fairly respectful audience in these scenarios, as opposed to the more public and unpredictable situation at a sophistic performance.64 Plutarch, in his treatise On Listening to Lectures, repeatedly advises young men to behave themselves at philosophical lectures, contrasting them with sophistic performances (46A–B). Pliny, meanwhile, invites interruptions but expects a high degree of seriousness from his audience, even when reading out his playful poems (e.g., Ep. 8.21.2–5). Th is salonlike format seems a likely home for the debut of a new history, and again we can look to a negative example to illustrate the norm. Suetonius stages just such a scene in his Life of Claudius. Before a large audience, Claudius was preparing to read an extract from the very fi rst history he had written, but an overweight man broke multiple benches while trying to sit down, and Claudius could not stop laughing. The whole event was ruined as a result (41.1):65 et cum primum frequenti auditorio commisisset, aegre perlegit refrigeratus saepe a semet ipso. nam cum initio recitationis defractis compluribus subselliis obesitate cuiusdam risus exortus esset, ne sedato quidem tumultu temperare potuit, quin ex intervallo subinde facti reminisceretur cachinnosque revocaret. And when he debuted for the fi rst time before a crowded room, he fi nished with difficulty, often chilled by his own devices. For at the beginning of the recitation, a laugh arose when more than a few benches were broken by a fat man. Not even when the commotion calmed down could he stop himself from remembering after a bit what happened, and he would start howling again.

The point of the story is to make Claudius look foolish and lacking in selfcontrol, and the clear implication is that Claudius has violated the norms of a serious occasion, where physical comedy was unwelcome. The more serious environment implied by Suetonius’s negative examA m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 23

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ple accords well with the seriousness of purpose claimed by historians. The aim of a historical performance in such an environment would more naturally have been to inspire an interesting discussion rather than to dazzle the audience with a virtuosic performance, and that may be precisely the distinction that Thucydides and his followers had in mind. Of course, individual historians must have had different ideal results, and so it is important to turn now to Arrian and examine his historical aims against the background of the reading and performance culture I have been discussing, because he was himself a prominent man with a large circle of literary friends, clearly someone who wished to be considered an authority on history.66 His perspective on the role of the historian in society will therefore be instructive.

A r r i a n a s H i s t or i a n Arrian is especially useful for exploring the work of a historian because he is unusually forthcoming about his own activities. Whereas other historians generally prefer to keep their struggles submerged beneath the surface of their narratives, making only oblique references to the difficulties of their research, Arrian regularly dramatizes the process of historical inquiry.67 In so doing he offers a glimpse into his conception of the intellectual labor required for the study of history and thereby an illustration of how he understands his place in an elite intellectual community. The opening of his Alexander history illustrates this principle well (Arrian, Anabasis, praef. 1): Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Λάγου καὶ Ἀριστόβουλος ὁ Ἀριστοβούλου ὅσα μὲν ταὐτὰ ἄμφω περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φιλίππου συνέγραψαν, ταῦτα ἐγὼ ὡς πάντῃ ἀληθῆ ἀναγράφω, ὅσα δὲ οὐ ταὐτά, τούτων τὰ πιστότερα ἐμοὶ φαινόμενα καὶ ἅμα ἀξιαφηγητότερα ἐπιλεξάμενος. Whatever Ptolemy the son of Lagus and Aristobulus the son of Aristobulus both wrote about Alexander the son of Philip that was the same, these things I write as entirely true, but whatever they wrote that was not the same, I write after choosing out from these the things that seemed to me more trustworthy and at the same time more worth telling.

We are accustomed to thinking of the opening line of literary works as announcing their themes: “Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles”; “Thucydides the Athenian wrote up the war of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians”; “Th is is the demonstration of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus.” 24 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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All those famous openings go on to elaborate on various aspects of the basic theme, but they all convey some core issue handled comprehensively by the text. In the opening of Arrian’s Anabasis, the core issue is truth, specifically true things about Alexander, the son of Philip. Our route to this truth is initially a pair of historians, Ptolemy and Aristobulus, whose patronymics are also included. The precise phrasing of the names is important here, because it has a powerful leveling effect. The three named individuals in the fi rst line are made equivalent and given standard, unremarkable names: simply a personal name and patronymic both for the sources and for the main subject of the work. They are, in the fi rst instance, human beings like any other, real people whose truth can be discovered, in spite of the many problems that will arise in what follows. Plutarch, by contrast, opens his biography of Alexander by saying that his book will be about Alexander the king and the Caesar by whom Pompey was destroyed (Al. 1.1), thus immediately announcing the social status and historical impact of his subjects. To explain his choice of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, Arrian goes on (Anab., praef. 2): ἄλλ οι μὲν δὴ ἄλλ α ὑπὲρ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀνέγραψαν, οὐδ’ ἔστιν ὑπὲρ ὅτου πλείονες ἢ ἀξυμφωνότεροι ἐς ἀλλ ήλους· ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ Πτολεμαῖός τε καὶ Ἀριστόβουλος πιστότεροι ἔδοξαν ἐς τὴν ἀφήγησιν, ὁ μὲν ὅτι συνεστράτευσε βασιλεῖ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, Ἀριστόβουλος, Πτολεμαῖος δὲ πρὸς τῷ ξυστρατεῦσαι ὅτι καὶ αὐτῷ βασιλεῖ ὄντι αἰσχρότερον ἤ τῳ ἄλλ ῳ ψεύσασθαι ἦν· ἄμφω δέ, ὅτι τετελευτηκότος ἤδη Ἀλεξάνδρου ξυγγράφουσιν αὐτοῖς ἥ τε ἀνάγκη καὶ ὁ μισθὸς τοῦ ἄλλ ως τι ἢ ὡς συνηνέχθη ξυγγράψαι ἀπῆν. Others, certainly, wrote other things about Alexander, nor is there anyone about whom more or more mutually contradictory authors have written. But to me, Ptolemy and Aristobulus seemed more trustworthy as regards their narratives, Aristobulus because he marched with Alexander the king, and Ptolemy because, in addition to marching with Alexander, it was also more disgraceful for him, being himself a king, to tell falsehoods than for another man, but both seemed more trustworthy because for them, writing when Alexander was already dead, there was no compulsion or fi nancial motivation to write anything in any way other than how it happened.

Th is second lengthy sentence introduces subtle differences among the three named individuals. First, Aristobulus is no longer on a level with Alexander, who has been elevated to the status of a king, but his main claim to reliability is that he was an eyewitness and a participant in the campaigns A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 25

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of Alexander. Ptolemy is also an eyewitness and a participant, but he too is expressly labeled a king like Alexander, a status that Arrian claims enhances Ptolemy’s reliability.68 The closing of Arrian’s preface fi nally shifts attention to the work of the author himself by contrasting the availability of trustworthy sources with his assertion that an authoritative version is still lacking. The reasons Arrian gives for trusting his two preferred sources are fairly conventional. They witnessed the events they wrote about and so had direct access to the truth, and they wrote when Alexander was dead, and so they had no fear of him and no obvious way to benefit from him.69 Their positive qualities notwithstanding, Arrian concludes his discussion by recalling the vast quantity of available sources, asserting that even the best of these need to be replaced (Anab., praef. 3): ἔστι δὲ ἃ καὶ πρὸς ἄλλ ων ξυγγεγραμμένα, ὅτι καὶ αὐτὰ ἀξιαφήγητά τέ μοι ἔδοξε καὶ οὐ πάντῃ ἄπιστα, ὡς λεγόμενα μόνον ὑπὲρ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀνέγραψα. ὅστις δὲ θαυμάσεται ἀνθ’ ὅτου ἐπὶ τοσοῖσδε συγγραφεῦσι καὶ ἐμοὶ ἐπὶ νοῦν ἦλθεν ἥδε ἡ συγγραφή, τά τε ἐκείνων πάντα τις ἀναλεξάμενος καὶ τοῖσδε τοῖς ἡμετέροις ἐντυχὼν οὕτω θαυμαζέτω. But there are things that have been written by others too that, because they too seemed to me both worth telling and not entirely untrustworthy, I have written only as things that were said about Alexander. But whoever wonders why, in addition to so many writers, I too got the idea to write this history, let him fi rst read all their work and then, when he gets to mine, then let him wonder.

The result of this shift is to highlight the historian’s active role in reshaping the historical tradition just before beginning his narrative. Arrian’s task is to weigh dozens upon dozens of accounts of Alexander’s life, synthesize them, and create something useful. The contrast between his own useful history and his useless predecessors’ is left implicit here, but throughout his narrative he dramatizes the contrast by repeatedly representing historians at work. He accomplishes this both by explicit commentary about his own interventions and by incorporating references to other historians all throughout his account, sometimes as sources and sometimes as historical actors. In the latter case they become especially important, because Arrian can and does use them to illustrate the relationship between historical events and the creation of historical narrative, thus illuminating his conception of the nature of history.

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C a l l i s t h e n e s a n d t h e H i s t or i a n ’s Wor k Callisthenes is a particularly rich example. He went on campaign with Alexander and so, like Ptolemy and Aristobulus, was an eyewitness to the events he recorded. Although he appears only briefly in the Anabasis, Arrian turns him into a rich and complex character. He displays fearlessness in the face of power when he argues vociferously against the introduction of Persian customs to Alexander’s court (4.11.2–9); he backs up his words by refusing to perform obeisance to Alexander (4.12.4–5); but he is also a wretchedly arrogant man. Arrian illustrates this last trait through the way Callisthenes talks about his own history of Alexander (4.10.1–2): Καλλ ισθένην δὲ τὸν Ὀλύνθιον Ἀριστοτέλους τε τῶν λόγων διακηκοότα καὶ τὸν τρόπον ὄντα ὑπαγροικότερον οὐκ ἐπαινεῖν ταῦτα. τούτου μὲν δὴ ἕνεκα καὶ αὐτὸς Καλλ ισθένει ξυμφέρομαι, ἐκεῖνα δὲ οὐκέτι ἐπιεικῆ δοκῶ τοῦ Καλλ ισθένους, εἴπερ ἀληθῆ ξυγγέγραπται, ὅτι ὑφ’ αὑτῷ εἶναι ἀπέφαινε καὶ τῇ αὑτοῦ ξυγγραφῇ Ἀλέξανδρόν τε καὶ τὰ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἔργα, οὔκουν αὐτὸς ἀφῖχθαι ἐξ Ἀλεξάνδρου δόξαν κτησόμενος, ἀλλ ὰ ἐκεῖνον εὐκλεᾶ ἐς ἀνθρώπους ποιήσων· καὶ οὖν καὶ τοῦ θείου τὴν μετουσίαν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ οὐκ ἐξ ὧν Ὀλυμπιὰς ὑπὲρ τῆς γενέσεως αὐτοῦ ψεύδεται ἀνηρτῆσθαι, ἀλλ ὰ ἐξ ὧν ἂν αὐτὸς ὑπὲρ Ἀλεξάνδρου ξυγγράψας ἐξενέγκῃ ἐς ἀνθρώπους. [A story holds that] Callisthenes the Olynthian, who had heard the lectures of Aristotle and was rather coarse in his manner, did not approve of these things. Indeed, on this account even I myself agree with Callisthenes. But I think the rest of Callisthenes’s claims went too far, if indeed they have been written up truly: that he proclaimed that Alexander and the deeds of Alexander were subject to himself and to his composition, and that he had not come with the intention of acquiring glory from Alexander, but with the intention of making him famous to humanity. And, in addition, that Alexander’s share of the divine did not depend upon the false stories Olympias told about his birth, but upon the sort of things which he himself, after composing them, would publish to men.

Because of the way Arrian dramatizes here the creation of a historical account, this passage is crucial to understanding his idea of a historian’s role and responsibilities. Arrian introduces Callisthenes as an intellectual of the fi rst rank by associating him with Aristotle but invites further scru-

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tiny with his own uneven evaluation.70 First Arrian says that Callisthenes was unpleasant (τὸν τρόπον ὄντα ὑπαγροικότερον), then he acknowledges that he was right about some things (καὶ αὐτὸς Καλλισθένει ξυμφέρομαι). He then says that Callisthenes also did things Arrian does not approve of (ἐκεῖνα δὲ οὐκέτι ἐπιεικῆ δοκῶ) but hedges somewhat by suggesting that some may doubt the story about Callisthenes that he is about to tell (εἴπερ ἀληθῆ ξυγγέγραπται). The particulars of the story bear directly upon the bad information that Arrian has earlier identified in the historical tradition of Alexander’s life. Callisthenes, in this report, puts himself into a relationship with Alexander in which he is the superior partner, and places himself in rivalry with Alexander’s mother, whose story of Alexander’s birth Callisthenes intends to supersede.71 Alexander’s deeds themselves, in Callisthenes’s view, are less important than two rival narratives that are explicitly false, or at least exaggerated. The narrative that follows this introduction is thick with difficult historical problems that illustrate the uncertainty that plagued Arrian’s research. Did Callisthenes really say what he is purported to have said about proskynēsis? Was he really involved in the so-called Pages’ Conspiracy in any meaningful way? Was he to blame for his own demise? Finally, what was the true manner of his death? With disagreement among his primary sources and, evidently, deliberate falsification coming from Callisthenes and others, Arrian uses this passage to flex his critical muscles somewhat, signaling his expertise as a historian by working through challenging areas of history and calling attention to epistemological problems with no obvious solution. At the same time, he signals his expertise as a composer of literature by closing the passage with an announcement that he has violated his usual chronological arrangement for the sake of thematic coherence, thus again asserting the two qualities he most prizes in his own writing: accuracy and benefit to the reader. Th roughout this section of the narrative, Arrian recalls his own methodological statements in his twin prefaces, using both clear verbal echoes and conceptual links.72 In so doing, he makes concrete several issues he has introduced earlier in abstract terms, specifically the tension inherent in reliance upon earlier sources that he also deems irredeemably flawed and his intention to render them obsolete. Arrian’s narrative of Callisthenes’s downfall and death brings these issues to a culmination. Centering the story on two key moments—the sympotic debate over proskynēsis and the Pages’ Conspiracy—Arrian dramatizes the relationship between events, confl icting narratives of those events, and critical assessments of those confl icting narratives. The proskynēsis debate raises issues of court procedure and murky transmission of details that

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Ta bl e 1.1. Verbal echoes between methodological statements in book 1 and the Callisthenes episode in book 4 of Arrian’s Anabasis. Book 4 4.10.1 4.10.2

Book 1

4.10.2

ἀληθῆ ξυγγ έγραπται τὰ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἔργα ψεύδεται ἐξενέγκῃ ἐς ἀνθρώπους

1.praef. 1 1.12.2 1.praef. 2 1.12.2

4.11.5 4.14.3

ἀξιοστρατηγότατον πιστοὶ ἐς τὴν ἀφήγησιν

4.14.4

ξύμφωνα

1.praef. 1 1.praef. 1 1.praef. 2 1.praef. 2

συνέγραψαν . . . ἀληθῆ τὰ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἔργα ψεύσασθαι ἐξηνέχθη ἐς ἀνθρώπους . . . ἀπαξίως ἀξιαφηγητότερα πιστότερα . . . φαινόμενα πιστότεροι . . . ἐς τὴν αφήγησιν ἀξυμφωνότεροι

Ta bl e 1.2. Conceptual links between methodological statements in book 1 and the Callisthenes episode in book 4 of Arrian’s Anabasis. Book 4 4.10.2

4.12.6

4.14.1

4.14.3

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Book 1 Callisthenes came with the intention of making Alexander famous Alexander’s share of the divine will comes from Callisthenes, not from Olympias’s falsehoods Arrian evaluates Alexander’s and Callisthenes’s behavior, judges both negatively according to their social role and relationship to each other Ptolemy and Aristobulus say something that is the same (and distinct from other accounts)

1.12.5

1.praef. 1

Whatever Ptolemy and Aristobulus say that is the same is true

Ptolemy and Aristobulus were present for these events

1.praef. 2

Ptolemy and Aristobulus are reliable because they were present for events they recorded

1.12.2-4

1.12.2-4

Arrian is worthy to record the deeds of Alexander The written word has the power to immortalize and make famous even paltry deeds Arrian delineates his role as coequal cocreator of Alexander’s greatness

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are then resolved through the narrative of the Pages’ Conspiracy, to which I now turn. Overt remarks on Callisthenes’s behavior bracket Arrian’s story of the Pages’ Conspiracy.73 After narrating Callisthenes’s arguments against the practice of proskynēsis, which Alexander was attempting to introduce to his court, Arrian evaluates the confl ict in his own words (4.12.7). Although acknowledging that both men behaved badly, Arrian specifically points out Callisthenes’s inferior social status and discusses in abstract terms the relationship between monarch and courtier before moving back to the specific circumstance and saying that Callisthenes failed to recognize his place in Alexander’s court, thus bringing about widespread acceptance of rumors that he was involved in the Pages’ Conspiracy. A brief ethnographic digression follows, in which Arrian explains the institution of the pages and its purpose (4.13.1) before he gives a detailed narrative of the conspiracy itself (4.13.2–7). Arrian had earlier reported Callisthenes’s praise of the tyrannicides in a discussion with one of his pupils (4.10.3–4), and it is difficult to miss that well-known story’s similarity to the version of the Pages’ Conspiracy offered here, fi lled with pairs of lovers, personal aff ronts carried out in public, and retribution intended to right a personal wrong, whatever the cost to the state. Possibly this is meant as a commentary on Callisthenes’s uses of history to understand his world, and if so, it is no ringing endorsement of his grasp of the lessons available from the past. In any case, the conclusion of the episode brings back the idea that Callisthenes’s earlier behavior influenced contemporary interpretations of these events. Two of those contemporaries who believed in Callisthenes’s involvement were Ptolemy and Aristobulus, as Arrian says later (4.14.1). When they write the same thing, Arrian is pledged to record it as true, but in this case he has already undermined their belief through his own insistence that Callisthenes’s behavior led others to believe the worst of him, implying that this particular belief may have been mistaken. He then goes on to give another version, which he says is a common view (οἱ δὲ πολλ οὶ οὐ ταύτῃ λέγουσιν), in which Alexander’s preexisting hatred of Callisthenes caused him to believe the accusations against him. Alexander’s arrogance comes back here as well when one of the conspirators brings up his many transgressive acts (4.14.2), and this review recalls Arrian’s criticism of Alexander’s behavior in the fi rst confl ict with Callisthenes (4.12.7). Arrian’s evaluation of the relationship between Alexander and Callisthenes is thus structuring the narrative here and weakening the case against Callisthenes, which the trusted Ptolemy and Aristobulus had believed strong. The narrative of Callisthenes’s death brings all these issues to a head. Ptolemy says that Callisthenes was crucified, but Aristobulus, that he died 30 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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of sickness during a lengthy imprisonment (4.14.3). Here two eyewitnesses who were present for these events disagree in a seemingly inexplicable way, which hearkens back to Arrian’s initial rationale for choosing them.74 They had direct access to the facts and nothing to fear or gain from reporting them inaccurately, but here at least one of them must be wrong. Rather than submerge his frustration, Arrian confronts it directly (4.14.3–4): οὕτως οὐδὲ οἱ πάνυ πιστοὶ ἐς τὴν ἀφήγησιν καὶ ξυγγενόμενοι ἐν τῷ τότε Ἀλεξάνδρῳ ὑπὲρ τῶν γνωρίμων τε καὶ οὐ λαθόντων σφᾶς ὅπως ἐπράχθη ξύμφωνα ἀνέγραψαν. πολλ ὰ δὲ καὶ ἄλλ α ὑπὲρ τούτων αὐτῶν ἄλλ οι ἄλλ ως ἀφηγήσαντο, ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ ταῦτα ἀποχρῶντα ἔστω ἀναγεγραμμένα. Thus not even those who are entirely trustworthy as regards their narratives and who were together with Alexander at the time have written in harmony about how well-known events that did not escape their notice happened. Others have told many other things too about these same events in other ways, but let these things that have been written be sufficient for me.

Once again, prefatory language returns in this authorial intrusion. The phrase πιστοὶ ἐς τὴν ἀφήγησιν repeats exactly what Arrian had written when he identified Ptolemy and Aristobulus as his preferred sources (1.1.2), and the mention of harmony (ξύμφωνα) recalls the disharmonious (ἀξυμφωνότεροι) masses of inferior Alexander historians. There is an implicit suggestion here that Ptolemy and Aristobulus are only slightly better than the alternatives, but also an explicit reminder of just how many other alternatives there were (πολλ ὰ δὲ καὶ ἄλλ α), which invites us to reconsider the bold concluding question of Arrian’s fi rst preface. Why another Alexander history? Because, according to Arrian, there was not yet one that made sense of the confused tradition. Indeed, while extant rhetorical manuals suggest that, for example, Thucydides was the unchallenged authority for the Peloponnesian War, no such authority existed for Alexander.75 Here Arrian lets us glimpse the master historian at work, and we are invited to appreciate the lack of confusion present in the rest of his narrative. By deploying his own methodological language and several forceful fi rstperson statements, Arrian has infused his narrative of Callisthenes’s downfall and death with constant reminders of his own role in the creation of historical knowledge and demonstrated his value as a critic of earlier Alexander literature. Ptolemy and Aristobulus and their contemporaries all distorted the record in numerous contradictory and often inexplicable ways, and we the readers need an authoritative guide to approach the meaningful A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y / 31

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truth we all seek in our attempts to know the past. The overt manipulation of Callisthenes is merely emblematic of a larger problem faced by all historians of the distant past, who are forced to reckon with the gaps and distortions left by their predecessors. Th is problem is magnified when source materials are demonstrably falsified, as Callisthenes’s accounts were, by his own admission. Callisthenes’s work obstructs Arrian’s work. Arrian’s work is to undo Callisthenes’s work. Arrian is the future audience Callisthenes envisions when he says he will raise Alexander to glory, and Arrian is telling this story both to his contemporary audience and to us.

C onc l u s ion For all that Arrian promises certainty, he revels in forcing his readers again and again to confront the limits of their knowledge. Th is constant examination of the basis of historical knowledge contrasts sharply with the performances of Polemo and other practitioners of display oratory. It is a totally different kind of intellectual work. Both involve representing a past that the authority figure expects his audience to embrace, but whereas the sophist offers a complete vision—a ready-made interpretation to be accepted or rejected depending on the quality of the performance—the historian offers a past full of holes, one that must be relentlessly examined and reconfigured through a process that resembles conversation. Arrian’s att itude toward his sources is again helpful: he fi nds them lacking, but he knows that he can go nowhere without them. He reads even the bad work, because the lifetime of Alexander can be made meaningful only by attempting to discover what is real. In the next chapter, we will examine some of Arrian’s strategies for provoking critical reading as a means to approaching meaningful historical knowledge.

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2 / Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n t h e Wor k s of A r r i a n

A s I a r g u e d e a r l i e r , a s u r p r i s i ng ly v ig or ou s de bate over how best to conceptualize the relationship between past and present can be detected in the Greek historical literature of the Imperial period. The complexity of this debate makes it quite difficult to pin down the dominant strain of thought in this era, but it is clear that a widely shared reverence for the Classical past helped to provoke a dialog. Modern scholars have even identified in some authors a tendency to observe a sharp break between past and present that colored their understanding of history.1 Nevertheless, overemphasizing that division can obscure the richness of the past as a usable concept in the Greek-speaking communities of the Roman Empire.2 Arrian’s work, written from the perspective of a full participant in Roman political life who nevertheless fashioned for himself an ostentatiously Classicizing authorial persona, depends on an approach to the past that preserves the enduring value of Classical Greek culture while also appreciating the critical capacity afforded by the passage of time. While these two ideas may seem contradictory, a careful examination of Arrian’s methods shows that he consistently labored to bring them into harmony in order to promote a more productive and beneficial study of important individuals and events. Like many of his contemporaries, Arrian proudly displayed his erudition by advertising his close connection with Classical models. In particular, his lifelong emulation of Xenophon looks at fi rst glance almost like a bizarre attempt to relive the past. Not only did he write several works that correspond directly with works of Xenophon, but he even went so far as to call himself Xenophon by name and was apparently prepared to fight an old-fashioned phalanx batt le in an area where Xenophon once did the same.3 These activities certainly represent a deep reverence for the Classical past, but Arrian’s reverence need not have entailed a dismissal or avoid33

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ance of subsequent developments. On the contrary, in his writings he regularly highlights improvements on ancient technology and practices, and he frequently tries to offer some improvements of his own by rewriting outdated or inadequate works of literature on subjects he deems valuable. There is no trace in Arrian’s work of the anxiety other authors sometimes show at arriving on the literary scene centuries after its greatest lights have gone out.4 As we will see, novelty in composition and revision of flawed earlier texts were central to Arrian’s approach to literature generally.5 It is no accident that five of Arrian’s works cover ground that not only had been treated before but had been treated recently.6 Certainly, Arrian’s most aggressive act of criticizing earlier literature was his attempt to write the defi nitive history of Alexander the Great, one of the most famous and extensively treated subjects in all Greek history. Arrian’s Anabasis is packed with careful, detailed readings of earlier authors and, to an extent that many modern critics have found surprising, he is rather open about how he chose his sources and what strategies he employed when they failed him. Th is uncommonly forthright att itude toward his own activities as a historian makes Arrian especially receptive to a style of analysis that privileges his authorial choices over the limitations placed on him by his sources.7 Arrian’s doubts about the accuracy and quality of his sources raise important questions about what he thought he could do to improve the collective state of knowledge about Alexander, and therefore how he dealt with the problem of being a newcomer to a long and crowded tradition of Greek literature. His solutions to these problems, as we will see, reveal that, although surrounded by a culture of archaism in which he himself participated, Arrian was also intensely concerned with showing the possibility and even the necessity of progress in such a way as to advance the study of history and renew the usefulness of the past to a changed world. For Arrian, the past needs the present as much as the present needs the past, and he makes this argument through a clear demonstration of his own critical engagement with material of widely acknowledged value. In so doing, he both improves the quality of information available on his chosen subjects and engages his readers in a series of difficult questions about the nature, purpose, and limits of the discipline.

A r r i a n a n d t h e I n a de quac i e s of T r a di t ion One of the fi rst things that Arrian tells us in the Anabasis is that the work will cover familiar ground. Alexander’s life and deeds had already been treated by an extremely large number of authors and orators by the time 34 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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Arrian was writing, and so he could make no claim to uncovering new material (praef. 3). I want to begin with two important points about Arrian’s prefatory remarks that will be relevant throughout the present chapter. First, Arrian does acknowledge his admiration of Ptolemy’s and Aristobulus’s accounts when he says they are the most trustworthy (praef. 2). Second, however, the rhetoric of Arrian’s concluding statement in the preface shows that his harsh judgment of the existing literary tradition extends even to those two. He acknowledges that someone may wonder why we need yet another history of Alexander when there are already so many. However, his bold invitation to readers to examine all earlier authors’ accounts (τὰ ἐκείνων πάντα) in comparison with his own shows that no author, not even Ptolemy or Aristobulus, can escape his sweeping assertion of superiority. Later, in the “Second Preface,” Arrian expands on this assertion by claiming to be as worthy of the fi rst rank of Greek authors as Alexander is worthy of the fi rst rank of warriors, explicitly invoking Homer, Pindar, and Xenophon as comparisons (1.12.2–4). Taken together, these two passages remove all doubt, if any existed, that he intended to surpass all previous authors with his treatment of Alexander’s life. While this point may seem obvious, Arrian does not make explicit precisely how his history will be superior, and his readers have thus been left to grapple with the question of what makes a good history in the second century CE. Most recent analyses of the Anabasis have endorsed the view that Arrian meant his chief contribution to be an improvement on the literary or stylistic quality of earlier accounts rather than an attempt to improve on their historical reliability or usefulness.8 One scholar goes so far as to say that Arrian “is not really a historian,” meaning that his interest in style was so pervasive that it entirely precluded the serious study of history.9 Still, such assessments cannot adequately account for the careful critical readings Arrian offers all throughout his text. It is of course perfectly valid to say that Arrian wished to surpass the literary quality of earlier histories of Alexander, given his explicit engagement with literary rivals and the simple fact that he was writing a work of literature, but scholarship on this issue has presented a false dichotomy between literary and historical excellence. In the fi rst place, what we might term “historical excellence”—by which I mean an accurate account presented in an unbiased fashion—was a part of literary excellence where the writing of history was concerned.10 That element is just as important to Arrian as style. Certainly, he could and did compare his literary achievement to the work of earlier authors who did not cover the same material and so could not be superseded on grounds of accuracy or impartiality. However, when he comments explicitly on the inadequacy of earlier authors who did Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 35

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treat the same subjects as himself, his point of comparison is always accuracy. Sixteen times he complains that a historian or group of historians has made a factual error, whether deliberately (as a result of bias or malice) or through ineptitude, but he never once explicitly states that an earlier account is deficient because of its style.11 The closest he comes is in the “Second Preface” (Anab. 1.12.2), which, as a programmatic passage, deserves careful attention. There he declares that Alexander’s deeds have not been recorded “worthily” (ἐπαξίως) and contrasts the relatively insignificant accomplishments of earlier historical figures such as Hieron, which had remained famous because they were written up by literary giants, but this is not a comment on any specific failure by any specific author.12 It is possible that this imbalance in criticism results from a long-standing tradition of privileging the writing of contemporary history. In general, both Greek and Roman historians and their readers regarded as most secure those records of the past that were written by authors who either experienced the events themselves or gathered their information directly from eyewitnesses.13 Arrian, as a historian of the distant past, found that one of his main challenges was to demonstrate the reliability of his narrative, and he did so by frequently referring to the depths of his research and his rigorous application of critical methods. Th is is a regular feature of noncontemporary history.14 Nevertheless, the fact that Arrian expresses his anxieties in conventional terms does not mean that they are mere ornamentation. Rather, his use of standard language renders his remarks intelligible to a readership steeped in the traditions of Greek historiography. An important reason why ancient historians often expressed a preference for writing the history of their own times was that accurate information about the past was actually quite difficult to obtain. Although eyewitness testimony was regarded as the best source of information possible, historians regularly observed that even this type of evidence was often confl icting, confused, and unreliable.15 All these issues were compounded by the passage of time and the narrative fi lters applied by later historians, making the study of the distant past even more difficult. Modern historians, who face many of the same problems as their ancient counterparts in working with eyewitness accounts, tend to share this view.16 It is for this reason that eyewitness testimony is regarded by the American legal system, for example, both as an indispensable source of information in many cases and as an extremely hazardous source, such that a bewildering array of rules and strategies has been devised to regulate the admission or exclusion of a given witness’s statements.17 In short, a continuity of anxiety across a diverse range of cultures, disciplines, and time periods reflects an epistemological problem in the study of past events that has not been solved sat36 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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isfactorily.18 Arrian was acutely aware of this problem and addressed it directly at a number of places in the Anabasis.

A r r i a n ’s P r e fac e s a n d t h e I m p or ta nc e of R e v i s ion Arrian’s epistemological anxieties played into another aspect of his att itude toward his predecessors: the necessity of updates, whether for correction of factual details or to enhance the value of a work in light of subsequent developments. Th is att itude has not been frequently identified in the literature of Arrian’s time, in part because a sustained and widespread devotion to the Classical past created a tension between an individual’s desire to make a name for himself and a perceived obligation to revere earlier models. The danger of attempting to supplant a Classical model was that by treading the same ground, one might appear to be a mere imitator rather than an original thinker, and this anxiety can indeed be traced in literature that engages closely with Classical content. Plutarch, an older contemporary of Arrian, displays a fear of precisely this criticism in the preface to his Life of Nicias. His introductory statements reveal a deep awareness of the risks involved in attempting to rival Thucydides’s account of the Peloponnesian War, one of the acknowledged masterpieces of ancient historiography, and he seeks to avoid unflattering comparisons by promising to search out material that has not been covered by Thucydides (Nic. 1.5).19 Additionally, he preemptively deflects criticism away from himself by calling attention to the presumptuous attempts of Timaeus, who has already proven to be an easy target (Plut. Nic. 1.1–2):20 Ἐπεὶ δοκοῦμεν οὐκ ἀτόπως τῷ Νικίᾳ τὸν Κράσσον παραβάλλ ειν καὶ τὰ Παρθικὰ παθήματα τοῖς Σικελικοῖς, ὥρα παραιτεῖσθαι καὶ παρακαλεῖν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ τοὺς ἐντυγχάνοντας τοῖς συγγράμμασι τούτοις, ὅπως ἐπὶ ταῖς διηγήσεσιν αἷς Θουκυδίδης, αὐτὸς αὑτοῦ περὶ ταῦτα παθητικώτατος ἐναργέστατος ποικιλώτατος γενόμενος, ἀμιμήτως ἐξενήνοχε, μηδὲν ἡμᾶς ὑπολάβωσι πεπονθέναι Τιμαίῳ πάθος ὅμοιον, ὃς ἐλπίσας τὸν μὲν Θουκυδίδην ὑπερβαλεῖσθαι δεινότητι, τὸν δὲ Φίλιστον ἀποδείξειν παντάπασι φορτικὸν καὶ ἰδιώτην, διὰ μέσων ὠθεῖται τῇ ἱστορίᾳ τῶν μάλιστα κατωρθωμένων ἐκείνοις ἀγώνων καὶ ναυμαχιῶν καὶ δημηγοριῶν, οὐ μὰ Δία παρὰ Λύδιον ἅρμα πεζὸς οἰχνεύων ὥς φησι Πίνδαρος, ἀλλ’ ὅλως τις ὀψιμαθὴς καὶ μειρακιώδης φαινόμενος ἐν τούτοις, καὶ κατὰ τὸν Δίφιλον παχύς, ὠνθυλευμένος στέατι Σικελικῷ, πολλ αχοῦ δ’ ὑπορρέων εἰς τὸν Ξέναρχον, ὥσπερ ὅταν λέγῃ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις οἰωνὸν ἡγήσασθαι γεγονέναι Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 37

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τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς νίκης ἔχοντα τοὔνομα στρατηγὸν ἀντειπόντα πρὸς τὴν στρατηγίαν, καὶ τῇ περικοπῇ τῶν Ἑρμῶν προσημαίνειν αὐτοῖς τὸ δαιμόνιον, ὡς ὑφ’ Ἑρμοκράτους τοῦ Ἕρμωνος πλεῖστα πείσονται παρὰ τὸν πόλεμον· Since I think that it is quite appropriate to compare Crassus to Nicias and the Parthian disasters to those that happened in Sicily, now is the time to beg and urge (in my own interest) those who happen upon these words not to suppose that I, as regards those accounts that Thucydides has set forth inimitably, surpassing himself in sensitivity, vividness, artfulness, have suffered any such disaster as Timaeus. He, hoping to exceed Thucydides in intensity and to show Philistus coarse and simple in every way, pushes with his history through the middle of their extremely successful contests and sea batt les and speeches, not, by Zeus, “going on foot alongside the Lydian chariot,” as Pindar says, but seeming in these accounts altogether like some delayed student and a childish one, and, as Diphilus says, “thick, stuffed with Sicilian suet.” He often drifts in the direction of Xenarchus, as when he says that he thought it was a bad omen for the Athenians that the general named after victory declined the command, and that by the mutilation of the Herms, the divinity signaled to them that they were going to suffer most in the war at the hands of Hermocrates the son of Hermon.

The ostensible message of the passage is that Plutarch will not attempt to replicate or improve upon Thucydides, seemingly acknowledging the superiority of his great predecessor. Yet Plutarch does not defi ne himself against Thucydides alone. When he adds Timaeus as a second point of reference, he creates a winnable contest, sidestepping any potentially damaging comparisons between himself and Thucydides by asking his readers to judge him against Timaeus instead and offering several examples of Timaeus’s shortcomings to help with the judgment. Th is elaborate dance masks what might be perceived as a criticism of Thucydides. Great as he was, he left certain aspects of Nicias’s character unexplored. Plutarch aims to enhance the value of the subject he shares with Thucydides by including material about Crassus, which of course Thucydides can never have known. It is through the addition of this much later material that Plutarch hopes to achieve a new appreciation of a subject of acknowledged importance and thus to raise himself to the level of a worthy colleague of Thucydides while at the same time contributing something new to an old topic.21 Arrian shows similar concerns in the prefaces to a number of his works, but his approach is more confident and self-assured than Plutarch’s. The Cynegeticus illustrates best the relationship between Arrian’s work and the 38 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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work of the author who wrote his source. In this case, the source is Xenophon’s treatise of the same name, and Arrian makes no attempt to avoid comparison. In fact, he introduces the comparison himself in the opening sentence of the work (Cyn. 1.1):22 Ξενοφῶντι τῷ Γρύλλ ου λέλεκται ὅσα ἀγαθὰ ἀνθρώποις ἀπὸ κυνηγεσίων γίγνεται. Whatever good things come about for people from hunts have been said by Xenophon the son of Gryllus.

Arrian fi rst lists all those things that Xenophon addressed in his own work, proceeding from the sentence just quoted to make explicit what those ἀγαθά actually are and to enumerate the topics covered in the earlier treatise. He then continues to explain that he will differ from Xenophon in his discussion of advances in the art of hunting that have taken place since the composition of Xenophon’s treatise, using another indefi nite relative clause corresponding directly to the opening sentence of the work (Cyn. 1.4): ὅσα δὲ ἐλλ είπειν μοι δοκεῖ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ, οὐχὶ ἀμελείᾳ ἀλλ’ ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ γένους τῶν κυνῶν τοῦ Κελτικοῦ καὶ τοῦ γένους τῶν ἵππων τοῦ Σκυθικοῦ τε καὶ Λιβυκοῦ, ταῦτα λέξω, ὁμώνυμός τε ὢν αὐτῷ καὶ πόλεως τῆς αὐτῆς καὶ ἀμφὶ ταὐτὰ ἀπὸ νέου ἐσπουδακώς, κυνηγέσια καὶ στρατηγίαν καὶ σοφίαν· But whatever he seems to me to have left out in his account, not through carelessness but through unawareness of the Celtic type of dog and Scythian and Libyan types of horse, these things I will say, having the same name as him and being from the same city and having been devoted to the same things from my youth, namely hunting and generalship and wisdom.

The att itude Arrian takes toward his source material is illuminating. He clearly shows reverence for Xenophon, acknowledging his contributions in a positive way and claiming personal affi nities with him in several aspects of his personal life. Th roughout the treatise, Arrian borrows phrases from Xenophon’s version and cites him frequently.23 Nevertheless, Arrian shows no reservations about stating the need for an updated account of hunting practices. He lists two key developments in the art of hunting (the discovery of dogs and horses unknown to Xenophon) that radically altered the practice, and at one point illustrates the supremacy of modern hunters by claiming to have seen eight-year-old boys easily overcoming a certain type Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 39

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of donkey that Xenophon had described in his Anabasis as especially difficult to capture (but delicious if you can manage to). The anecdote inspires Arrian to gloat over the achievements made possible by good horses and dogs while deriding the use of snares and other such devices that were common in Xenophon’s day. Even in a treatise where he goes out of his way to align himself with his hero Xenophon, Arrian delights in the subsequent developments that have led to improvements in an area of life he values.24 Arrian’s rejection of some of Xenophon’s hunting techniques is all the more surprising in light of the fact that the prefatory structure just outlined in fact derives not from the Cynegeticus but from another of Xenophon’s treatises, On Horsemanship (1.1):25 ἡμεῖς γε μέντοι ὅσοις συνετύχομεν ταὐτὰ γνόντες ἐκείνῳ, οὐκ ἐξαλείφομεν ἐκ τῶν ἡμετέρων, ἀλλ ὰ πολὺ ἥδιον παραδώσομεν αὐτὰ τοῖς φίλοις, νομίζοντες ἀξιοπιστότερα εἶναι ὅτι κἀκεῖνος κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἡμῖν ἔγνω ἱππικὸς ὤν· καὶ ὅσα δὴ παρέλιπεν ἡμεῖς πειρασόμεθα δηλῶσαι. But as for whatever we happened to agree with him [Simon] about, we will not remove these things from our account; rather, with much greater pleasure, we will hand them on to friends, thinking that they are the more trustworthy because he too, being a horseman, agreed with us. Moreover, whatever he left out we will attempt to explain.

As in Arrian’s Cynegeticus, a pair of indefi nite relative clauses introduces an opposition between the contribution of a source, Simon, and the contribution of the author, Xenophon. Here too Xenophon acknowledges the value of his predecessor’s work but states explicitly that Simon has left things out (παρέλιπεν).26 Although he does not assert that any specific advances have been made in the art of horsemanship, these parallels in structure, vocabulary, and sentiment suggest that Arrian deliberately borrowed from Xenophon’s introductory remarks and transferred them to another context. On one level, this complex engagement with a Classical model can be read as a profoundly literary act of self-glorification accomplished through an aggressive strategy of appropriation and imitation.27 Arrian enhances his own prestige by borrowing the authority of Xenophon’s prefatory statement in one work in order to justify his attempt to replace another of Xenophon’s works. Th is aggressive claim to authority was made in a treatise written late in Arrian’s career, when he could look back on a lifetime of literary and political achievement, perhaps adding further justification to his contentious engagement with a model of Xenophon’s magnitude.28 However, as we will see, the same att itude runs through much of Arrian’s work, 40 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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and in a number of cases Arrian has expressed it using the same prefatory structure. The twin prefaces of Arrian’s Anabasis, written in all likelihood many years before the Cynegeticus, have caught the attention of many commentators, but most have focused their energies on the more flamboyantly literary “Second Preface,” since the formal opening, or “First Preface,” of the work seems rather straightforward.29 The “First Preface” is eccentric in its own right, however, not least in its detailed discussion of Arrian’s sources, which shares the structure of the Cynegeticus and Xenophon’s On Horsemanship. While it is not altogether uncommon for a historian to name the source of a particular episode in the course of his narrative, historians writing about the distant past rarely make such sweeping acknowledgments of their debts to earlier writers (Anab., praef. 1):30 Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Λάγου καὶ Ἀριστόβουλος ὁ Ἀριστοβούλου ὅσα μὲν ταὐτὰ ἄμφω περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φιλίππου συνέγραψαν, ταῦτα ἐγὼ ὡς πάντῃ ἀληθῆ ἀναγράφω, ὅσα δὲ οὐ ταὐτά, τούτων τὰ πιστότερα ἐμοὶ φαινόμενα καὶ ἅμα ἀξιαφηγητότερα ἐπιλεξάμενος. Whatever Ptolemy the son of Lagus and Aristobulus the son of Aristobulus both wrote about Alexander the son of Philip that was the same, these things I write as entirely true, but whatever they wrote that was not the same, I write having chosen out from these the things that seemed to me more trustworthy and at the same time more worth telling.

As in the Cynegeticus, the agent of the indefi nite relative clause precedes the relative pronoun ὅσα, and as in the Cynegeticus, the clause itself conveys information on the source material used in the rest of the work by Arrian. Both the Anabasis and the Cynegeticus begin with a pair of indefi nite relative clauses stating what the sources did and what Arrian will do differently. In this respect, both appear to be imitating the preface of Xenophon’s On Horsemanship. The ὅσα/ὅσοις . . . ὅσα construction is unmistakable. A similar structure appears in the prefatory letter appended to Arrian’s Discourses of Epictetus, but Arrian’s goal in this work is to write an authoritative account of Epictetus’s philosophy, and so he has adapted his opening statement to suit this different authorial purpose. Th is is the only prefatory letter of Arrian’s that we possess, and it thus deserves special attention. Many such letters exist from other authors, however, and they seem in general to have performed much the same function as prefaces embedded within the works they introduce: capturing the reader’s interest, introducing the subject of the work, giving the author’s statement of purpose, and so Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 41

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forth.31 What is more, epistolary prefaces, because they formally stand outside the works they introduce, offer their authors greater latitude to make explicit comments conditioning their readers’ response to the text before the work itself has even begun, and so they afford us an even clearer picture of the authors’ goals.32 Arrian exploits this latitude in his letter, in which he presents the Discourses as the genuine words of Epictetus himself (Epist. ad L. Gell. 1–3): Οὔτε συνέγραψα ἐγὼ τοὺς Ἐπικτήτου λόγους οὕτως ὅπως ἄν τις συγγράψειε τὰ τοιαῦτα οὔτε ἐξήνεγκα εἰς ἀνθρώπους αὐτός, ὅς γε οὐδὲ συγγράψαι φημί. ὅσα δὲ ἤκουον αὐτοῦ λέγοντος, ταῦτα αὐτὰ ἐπειράθην αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ὡς οἷόν τε ἦν γραψάμενος ὑπομνήματα εἰς ὕστερον ἐμαυτῷ διαφυλάξαι τῆς ἐκείνου διανοίας καὶ παρρησίας. Neither did I compose the conversations of Epictetus as one might compose such things nor did I publish them to humanity myself; not I, who deny that I even composed them. But as for whatever I heard him saying, after writing down these same things in his very words as far as I was able, I tried to preserve them for myself for later as a record of his thought and frankness.

Whereas in the fi rst two examples Arrian urges his reader to appreciate the supremacy of his new work over the source material from which it derives, the letter to Lucius Gellius allows Arrian to retreat from view so that the philosophical content of the work becomes the focus of critical attention rather than the plain and unadorned style in which it is delivered. His source, Epictetus, is responsible for the content; Arrian has merely put pen to paper. The same separation between source and author remains, but in this case Arrian has expressed that separation in a slightly different manner (οὔτε . . . οὔτε . . . ὅσα rather than ὅσα . . . ὅσα). Yet here too the ultimate goal is to claim an authoritative status for the work. The sincerity of Arrian’s unassuming posture in his prefatory letter may be doubted, however, for there are several elements that suggest that he may have been using it as a recusatio to appear humble while still claiming credit for the work. First, philosophical works frequently begin with their authors ostentatiously claiming to remember accurately a conversation that took place at some time in the past.33 Arrian appears to be adhering to this generic convention when he stresses his memory of Epictetus’s words. Second, it has long been recognized that the Discourses themselves bear a clear resemblance to Xenophon’s Memorabilia, which would amount to an astonishing coincidence if Arrian were merely recording accurately what 42 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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he heard at Epictetus’s lectures.34 Finally, the letter shows affi nities with Thucydides, who is a surprising model for an epistle—even more so for a philosophical work—but was imitated thoroughly by Arrian elsewhere.35 The influence of Thucydides on Arrian’s letter to Gellius has gone unnoticed perhaps because it does not, as allusive relationships often do, rely upon extensive borrowing of particular words.36 Many of the sentiments expressed, however, are noticeably similar to some of Thucydides’s prefatory statements, and in particular his methodological statement on the composition of speeches (Thuc. 1.22.1). At the very opening of the letter, however, Arrian attempts to distance himself from any particular literary aim, emphasizing his refusal to consider the Discourses a proper composition by repeating the verb συγγράφω three times in the fi rst sentence. Th is verb is regularly used of literary composition, often in the context of historiography, as in the opening line of Thucydides and Arrian’s own Anabasis, and literary composition is precisely what Arrian denies here.37 He never says that he did not write the work; he says only that he had no literary pretensions when he did. The almost incantatory repetition of συγγράφω makes it easy to miss the slight shift later in the letter when, after mentioning that the Discourses have been published without his knowledge or consent, Arrian goes on to say (Epist. ad Gell. 5): ἀλλ’ ἐμοί γε οὐ πολὺς λόγος, εἰ οὐχ ἱκανὸς φανοῦμαι συγγράφειν, Ἐπικτήτῳ τε οὐδ’ ὀλίγος, εἰ καταφρονήσει τις αὐτοῦ τῶν λόγων. But to me, anyhow, it is no great concern if I do not seem competent to compose [the discourses of Epictetus], and to Epictetus it is not even a small concern if someone looks down on his words.

The reappearance of the verb συγγράφω here is surprising. After repeatedly denying that he should be considered a composer of this work, he nevertheless addresses the possibility that his composition will be judged unfavorably by others. Th is subtle change in att itude suggests rather strongly that Arrian does want to take credit for the work, even as he preemptively deflects criticism through his posture of philosophical aloofness. There are two further echoes of distinctly Thucydidean methodological sentiments in the opening of Arrian’s letter. The fi rst relates to the composition of speeches (Thuc. 1.22.1):38 Καὶ ὅσα μὲν λόγῳ εἶπον ἕκαστοι ἢ μέλλ οντες πολεμήσειν ἢ ἐν αὐτῷ ἤδη ὄντες, χαλεπὸν τὴν ἀκρίβειαν αὐτὴν τῶν λεχθέντων διαμνημονεῦσαι ἦν ἐμοί τε ὧν αὐτὸς ἤκουσα καὶ τοῖς ἄλλ οθέν ποθεν ἐμοὶ ἀπαγγέλλ ουσιν· ὡς Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 43

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δ’ ἂν ἐδόκουν ἐμοὶ ἕκαστοι περὶ τῶν αἰεὶ παρόντων τὰ δέοντα μάλιστ’ εἰπεῖν, ἐχομένῳ ὅτι ἐγγ ύτατα τῆς ξυμπάσης γνώμης τῶν ἀληθῶς λεχθέντων, οὕτως εἴρηται. And as for whatever each said in speeches, either before they were fighting the war or once they were already in it, it was difficult to remember the very precision of what was said, both for me in the case of those things that I myself heard and for those reporting to me from other places. But the speeches have been given as it seemed to me each person would surely have spoken with respect to what was necessary in the present circumstances in every case, keeping as closely as possible to the basic idea of the things that were truly said.

The boldfaced words in the passages just quoted provide some verbal linkage between Arrian and Thucydides, but the underlined passages show a much closer affi nity.39 Both authors acknowledge the difficulty of reproducing the exact words of the speaker, and both authors express a desire to achieve some measure of fidelity to the original.40 In both cases, that fidelity is largely confi ned to the spirit of the speech, rather than the actual words, although Arrian shows more hope than Thucydides of gett ing the words right too, since he mentions having kept notes for later. There too, however, Arrian’s early recognition of the importance of what he was hearing in his school days is reminiscent of Thucydides’s recognition of the greatness of the Peloponnesian War at its outset (Thuc. 1.1.1). The two diverge in that Thucydides has informants, whereas Arrian has only his own personal experience, the philosophical equivalent of autopsy. By imitating Thucydides, Arrian has adopted a historian’s claim to authority, even though he is not here writing history. Given his elaborate engagement with multiple literary models, it would seem that Arrian means to claim some measure of credit for the Discourses by highlighting his literary talents as a master of different styles even as he assures his readers that they will contain the genuine philosophy of Epictetus. As such, the prefatory letter to Lucius Gellius must be considered to serve the same function as the prefaces to the Anabasis and Cynegeticus: all three clearly acknowledge the contributions of other men while simultaneously demonstrating the necessity and value of Arrian’s contribution as author, and all three are expressed using the same grammatical structure. One fi nal example, which does not share the prefatory structure of the foregoing works but does share the same att itude toward source material, is the Tactica. Th is work was Arrian’s chief contribution to military theory, and he organizes it in a way that is reminiscent of his other works. He fi rst 44 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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lays out Hellenistic military practices, digesting the work of earlier military theorists, whom he names at the beginning of the work. Arrian then adds a discussion of contemporary Roman cavalry maneuvers, thus once again combining the study of the past with material relevant to the present, and even says that he has written a separate work, now unfortunately lost, on Roman infantry tactics.41 Even his discussion of historical material is infused with repeated references to Roman practice, which makes relevant and contextualizes material that might otherwise be perceived as mere literary showmanship.42 Arrian seems to be operating under the assumption that no serious military man would be well served to consult a Hellenistic treatise on warfare, since it would be of limited value in the field. That is why he has produced that information in the same handbook as more upto-date material. It is this same phenomenon of subsuming earlier models and producing something new, different, and necessary that pervades all Arrian’s work, including the Anabasis, which has long been mined for fragments with litt le attention to the intellectual goals of its author.

S t r at e g i e s of K now l e d g e P r oduc t ion i n t h e A n a b a s i s In the Anabasis, Arrian’s primary means of establishing the content of his narrative is to rely on his preferred sources, Ptolemy and Aristobulus, but as I previously showed, even they sometimes fail him, and for this reason they need to be replaced or at least augmented.43 At times, he simply proceeds through his narrative with no indication of how it is being produced, but on occasion he signals a deficiency in the tradition, whether a disagreement among his sources or a failure to record some important information, and in a number of cases he makes explicit statements as to how he approaches the problem. It is in these passages that Arrian makes most clear what specific contributions to the study of Alexander he thinks he is making. A good starting point is the disagreement between Ptolemy and Aristobulus over the nature of the divine guides that led Alexander to Siwah. Th is episode reveals how Arrian can use uncertainty of detail as a way of affi rming a more important underlying issue. Arrian reports that Ptolemy’s account identified the guides as snakes, but Aristobulus’s, as crows. In this case, Arrian says that Aristobulus’s version is the more common, and in fact all indications are that Arrian was right and Ptolemy was the sole source of the story about snakes.44 Nevertheless, even with numbers on Aristobulus’s side, Arrian withholds judgment on this confl ict.45 Instead, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the state of his sources (Anab. 3.3.6): Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 45

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καὶ ὅτι μὲν θεῖόν τι ξυνεπέλαβεν αὐτῷ ἔχω ἰσχυρίσασθαι, ὅτι καὶ τὸ εἰκὸς ταύτῃ ἔχει, τὸ δὲ ἀτρεκὲς τοῦ λόγου ἀφείλοντο οἱ ἄλλ ῃ καὶ ἄλλ ῃ ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ ἐξηγησάμενοι. And I can say with certainty that something divine helped him because probability also inclines in this direction, but the fact that the people who have given accounts do so in so many different ways about it has removed precision from the story.

Arrian refrains from choosing between his sources, but he adds some additional guidance here that illustrates a key point in his approach to the tradition. From the confl icting accounts he is able to salvage a single, telling detail: that Alexander did in fact have some form of divine aid. Even in a situation where one of his principal sources appears to be lying, he is able to retrieve something of value by applying a critical faculty, represented here by his appeal to probability (τὸ εἰκός).46 He contrasts what can be known (that divine aid happened) with what cannot be known (the exact form of that aid) using an antithetical μὲν . . . δὲ construction to emphasize the opposition. Th is passage shows one of the ways Arrian attempts to improve upon the available material on Alexander in order to offer a more reliable version. By performing the critical function of eliminating unverifiable details, he maximizes the value of the core element of the story, on which all authorities agree.47 Before examining some of Arrian’s other strategies for dealing with faulty source material, it will be beneficial to look at one passage where he discusses in detail the process by which a tradition becomes confused. Arrian’s longest meditation on the mechanics of falsehood comes in the context of Alexander’s famous batt lefield heroics at the Mallian town (Anab. 6.9.1–6.11.8). Here Arrian gives a fast-paced account of the siege that includes Alexander’s daring leap into the town, subsequent wounding and rescue, and the eventual Macedonian victory. Following his narrative of this episode, Arrian goes on a lengthy digression to address the many errors that have attached to the story of Alexander’s wound and extends the discussion to other episodes as well. He introduces his catalog of errors with the following statement (6.11.2): πολλ ὰ δὲ καὶ ἄλλ α ἀναγέγραπται τοῖς ξυγγραφεῦσιν ὑπὲρ τοῦ παθήματος, καὶ ἡ φήμη παραδεξαμένη αὐτὰ κατὰ τοὺς πρώτους ψευσαμένους ἔτι καὶ εἰς ἡμᾶς διασώζει, οὐδὲ ἀφήσει παραδιδοῦσα καὶ ἐφεξῆς ἄλλ οις τὰ ψευδῆ, εἰ μὴ ὑπὸ τῆσδε τῆς ξυγγραφῆς παύσεται.

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Many other things have been written by those giving an account of the misfortune, and common report, accepting them in accordance with the fi rst ones telling the story wrong, preserves them still even to our times, nor will it cease handing down the falsehoods to others continuously, unless it is stopped by this very history.

The most notable feature of this introductory statement is Arrian’s hope that his history can stop the relentless stream of falsehood that has created the confused jumble of traditions about Alexander. The statement itself is reminiscent of Thucydides 1.20.1–3, where Thucydides laments common misconceptions about the tyrannicides and about Spartan institutions.48 Like Thucydides, Arrian lists several examples of falsehoods that are commonly believed: that Alexander was wounded among the Oxydracae instead of the Mallians (Anab. 6.11.3), that the decisive batt le against Darius was fought at Arbela rather than Gaugamela (6.11.4), and that Ptolemy saved Alexander among the Mallians even though he himself says that he was actually away on a separate assignment (6.11.5). However, the fact that Arrian is imitating Thucydides does not make him any less right in saying that all these things were widely believed.49 Similarly, complaints about inaccurate traditions and credulous readers are familiar topoi of historiography, but they can still carry with them legitimate critiques and welldeveloped arguments. The successful use of a topos depends entirely on how it is deployed and for what purpose.50 Here Arrian includes detailed argumentation along with his conventional complaint and seems genuinely to have been trying to solve a historical problem. The way he closes off the digression is especially illuminating, because he openly states that its purpose was to encourage better writing of history in the future (Anab. 6.11.8): ταῦτα μὲν δὴ ἐν ἐκβολῇ τοῦ λόγου ἀναγεγράφθω μοι, ὡς μὴ ἀταλαίπωρον γίγνεσθαι τοῖς ἔπειτα ἀνθρώποις τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν τηλικούτων ἔργων τε καὶ παθημάτων ἀφήγησιν. Let these things be written by me in a digression from the narrative, lest the telling of such deeds and misfortunes be done incautiously by people in the future.

What is important about this statement is the explicit concern for future historians. The beneficiaries of his digression are identified as τοῖς ἔπειτα ἀνθρώποις, with ἔπειτα here functioning as an imprecise designation of fu-

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ture generations.51 Crucially, the deeds and misfortunes he imagines these future people narrating are not even necessarily the specific ones he has just discussed, since he uses the qualitative demonstrative τηλικούτων rather than the ordinary demonstrative τούτων, indicating that he has a class of events in mind and not a specific set. Arrian has therefore used this digression for two purposes: to correct error and to set an example for aspiring historians. It is a cautionary tale for readers and writers alike. Elsewhere Arrian uses analogy and inference to provide information he has not found in his sources. A good example of this practice is his attempt to solve the mystery of how Alexander bridged the Indus, which, Arrian tells us, was greater than all the rivers of Asia combined.52 If the river were as large as Arrian believes, bridging it would certainly be a noteworthy feat of military engineering. Arrian’s curiosity is therefore justified, but as he explicitly states, Ptolemy and Aristobulus disappoint him here and offer no clues as to how this feat was achieved (Anab. 5.7.1).53 Rather than simply leaving the question open, as he does elsewhere, he attempts to answer it himself by discussing several methods of bridging a river and evaluating their relative value in the specific circumstances Alexander was in at the Indus. After complaining that Ptolemy and Aristobulus do not say how Alexander’s bridge was made, Arrian introduces his discussion with a cautious statement about the limits of his own knowledge (Anab. 5.7.1): οὐδὲ αὐτὸς ἔχω ἀτρεκῶς εἰκάσαι, πότερα πλοίοις ἐζεύχθη ὁ πόρος, καθάπερ οὖν ὁ Ἑλλ ήσποντός τε πρὸς Ξέρξου καὶ ὁ Βόσπορός τε καὶ ὁ Ἴστρος πρὸς Δαρείου, ἢ γέφυρα κατὰ τοῦ ποταμοῦ διηνεκὴς ἐποιήθη αὐτῷ· Nor am I myself able to reckon with certainty whether the passage was bridged with boats, as the Hellespont was by Xerxes and the Bosporus and Danube by Darius, or a bridge was made by him [Alexander] straight across the river.

Th is statement recalls Herodotus, not just in the mention of Xerxes and Darius, whose bridging efforts were legendary, but in the use of the words ἀτρεκῶς and εἰκάσαι, both of which were important to Herodotus’s conception of historical inquiry.54 The search for the often unattainable ideal of certainty (ἀτρέκεια) and the process of developing conclusions through rational appeals to probability (τὸ εἰκός) were central to Herodotus’s method, and here Arrian is aligning himself with that method in order to introduce his own attempt at a Herodotean reckoning.55 He explicitly states that certainty is unattainable here but goes on to work through some possibilities 48 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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that lead to a tentative conclusion about the method Alexander is most likely to have employed in building his impressive bridge.56 The pontoon bridges of Xerxes and Darius set a precedent for using boats as bridges, and Arrian uses this precedent as the fi rst building block of an argument for Alexander’s use of boats. The second part of his argument is an evaluation of the specific circumstances presented by crossing the Indus (Anab. 5.7.1): δοκεῖ δ’ ἔμοιγε πλοίοις μᾶλλ ον ζευχθῆναι οὐ γὰρ ἂν δέξασθαι γέφυραν τὸ βάθος τοῦ ὕδατος, οὐδ’ ἂν ἐν τοσῷδε χρόνῳ ἔργον οὕτως ἄτοπον ξυντελεσθῆναι. But to me, at least, it seems rather that it [the river] was bridged by boats. For the depth of the water would not have received a bridge, nor would such an extraordinary work be completed in such a short time.

Arrian has moved the argument forward by eliminating one of the two possible methods with which he began. What he claims to know about the size of the Indus is brought to bear on the question of how it could be bridged and how quickly, and the conclusion, according to Arrian, must be that a traditional bridge is impossible. After establishing to his satisfaction the use of boats, Arrian then moves to a second question (Anab. 5.7.2): whether Alexander’s bridge was more like that of Xerxes at the Hellespont, or the kind the Romans used to cross the Danube, the Celtic Rhine, the Euphrates, and the Tigris.57 He again begins his discussion with an admission of uncertainty, saying, “I am also unable to resolve this” (οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἔχω ξυμβαλεῖν).58 He then says that he will describe the Roman method, because it is the fastest one he knows (ταχυτάτη γε ὧν ἐγὼ οἶδα) and is “worthy of narration” (λόγου ἀξία), a phrase that invokes Herodotus’s sense of wonder. A lengthy description of the Roman method follows, in which Arrian gives sufficient detail to impress upon his reader that this was indeed an efficient and reliable method. At the end of his description, he restates his uncertainty and fi nally renders a judgment (5.8.1): Ῥωμαίοις μὲν δὴ οὕτω ταῦτα ἐκ παλαιοῦ ἐπήσκηπται Ἀλεξάνδρῳ δὲ ὅπως ἐζεύχθη ὁ Ἰνδὸς ποταμὸς οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν, ὅτι μηδὲ οἱ συστρατεύσαντες αὐτῷ εἶπον. ἀλλ ά μοι δοκεῖ ὡς ἐγγ υτάτω τούτων ἐζεῦχθαι, ἢ εἰ δή τινι ἄλλ ῃ μηχανῇ, ἐκείνῃ ἐχέτω. These things have been practiced by the Romans in this way for a long time, but how the Indus River was bridged by Alexander I cannot say, beNov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 49

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cause not even those who campaigned with him said. But to me it seems to have been bridged in a way most similar to theirs [the Romans’], but if by some other means, let it be so.

Although maintaining to the end his unwillingness to give a defi nitive answer to the questions he poses, Arrian has taken his best guess and, crucially, told us how he arrived at it. It is true that, through his engagement with Herodotus and Thucydides, Arrian has used his bridging excursus as means of displaying his literary virtuosity, but there is more happening here.59 By walking his audience through an attempt to solve an admittedly insoluble problem, Arrian allows us to glimpse an aspect of his historiographical method that is often difficult to discern, namely how he deals with the lack of good information that plagues his research.60 Here he is combining what he knows about the geography of the area and the length of time it took to make the bridge with his knowledge of two sets of comparative models that he thinks would be sufficient to meet the needs of the situation. One is known to him from his reading of Herodotus, and the other, seemingly from his own personal experience. He rejects the method modeled by Xerxes simply on the grounds that it was slower than the other. Arrian is comfortable retrojecting a contemporary practice onto ancient history because, on the basis of several carefully considered factors, he thinks it is the more likely explanation. The notion that Arrian’s modern world could add something to the study of the past is an intriguing departure from the common att itude of his contemporaries, who tended to presume that antiquity was the source of important models that, properly studied, could render the modern world intelligible. Here Arrian seems to be saying instead that a modern practice makes so much sense that it might actually be ancient. Ptolemy’s and Aristobulus’s silence consigned the practice to oblivion, however, and it had to be rediscovered by the Romans. Ar rian’s rational analysis of the possibilities for bridging the Indus unites past and present in such a way as to offer a new interpretation of one of Alexander’s great deeds that had previously been left unclear, and it models for his reader a method of overcoming the difficulties of incomplete historical traditions. The Indus bridge episode shows how Arrian can make use of narrative uncertainty to draw his readers into critical assessments of historical problems, but there are further examples in the text that reveal a more complex use of contradictory stories he found in his sources. The fact that Arrian frequently cites variant versions of the stories he tells is not in itself particularly noteworthy, since the practice is a regular feature of ancient histori50 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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ography from the very beginning.61 Nevertheless, when examined closely, Arrian’s use of variant versions emerges as a driving force at significant moments in his narrative that engages his readers in complex thought experiments regarding the character of Alexander.62 Arrian deploys narrative uncertainty as an analytical framework in order to produce positive conclusions where insufficient evidence exists. In this way, without making baseless assertions that could be refuted, he is able to encourage his reader to consider and accept his characterization of Alexander. A key step in recognizing the importance of variant versions to Ar rian’s narrative lies in noting that there are many places where he could cite a variant but does not. A good example is the case of Alexander’s destruction of the palace at Persepolis (Anab. 3.18.1–12). Other accounts stress the role of the Athenian courtesan Thaïs, but Arrian makes no mention of her at all, att ributing the entire event to Alexander alone.63 It is extremely unlikely that Arrian was not aware of this tale, since Plutarch mentions it in his biography of Alexander and Arrian seems to have known Plutarch’s work, yet his silence obscures what could easily have become a controversial moment in the narrative.64 Arrian has passed over that issue in favor of his own preferred focus on the significance of the act itself; for him it is much more important to view the act as Alexander’s own folly, hence the absence of the external motivation of Thaïs.65 Such silences suggest that where Arrian does mark the existence of alternative possibilities, he does so with a purpose, and we should be att uned to the possibility that Arrian is attempting to enhance the significance of the surrounding narrative in some way. References to variant versions tend to cluster around prominent narrative moments that Arrian wishes to use as opportunities for reflecting on some important aspect of his characterization of Alexander or his notions of historical truths more generally.66 He uses this technique to draw his reader into a reflective and critical assessment of some important thematic point. Rather than simply forcing an interpretation, he introduces a problem to be considered and leaves the true point to emerge from the reader’s own internal thought processes. These confrontations encourage a critical assessment of Alexander’s character at important and difficult moments in his career. There were many stock examples of Alexander’s bad qualities, and, not surprisingly, Arrian seems to focus on these examples for his narrative anxieties, inviting his reader to consider the true character of Alexander at these, his most questionable moments. One of the best examples of this phenomenon is Arrian’s report of the Roman embassy that supposedly greeted Alexander on his return to Babylon shortly before his death. Th is incident, quite understandably, has generated a great deal of scholarly interest inasmuch as it is the only recorded direct interaction between AlNov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 51

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exander and Rome, the unquestioned master of the Mediterranean world in which Arrian was writing.67 Unfortunately, there is almost no evidence for the embassy apart from Arrian. Pliny the Elder mentions it (NH 3.57– 58), but only in passing as he makes a list of the earliest authors to talk about Rome, and the only detail he gives is that it was Clitarchus who had originally recorded the incident. So, essentially, we are left with Arrian’s account alone, and that too is problematic since Arrian himself is unsure of the truth of the tale (Anab. 7.15.6): καὶ τοῦτο οὔτε ὡς ἀτρεκὲς οὔτε ὡς ἄπιστον πάντῃ ἀνέγραψα· πλήν γε δὴ οὔτε τις Ῥωμαίων ὑπὲρ τῆς πρεσβείας ταύτης ὡς παρὰ Ἀλέξανδρον σταλείσης μνήμην τινὰ ἐποιήσατο, οὔτε τῶν τὰ Ἀλεξάνδρου γραψάντων, οἷστισι μᾶλλ ον ἐγὼ ξυμφέρομαι, Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Λάγου καὶ Ἀριστόβουλος· οὐδὲ τῷ Ῥωμαίων πολιτεύματι ἐπεοικὸς ἦν ἐλευθέρῳ δὴ τότε ἐς τὰ μάλιστα ὄντι, παρὰ βασιλέα ἀλλ όφυλον ἄλλ ως τε καὶ ἐς τοσόνδε ἀπὸ τῆς οἰκείας πρεσβεῦσαι, οὔτε φόβου ἐξαναγκάζοντος οὔτε κατ’ ἐλπίδα ὠφελείας, μίσει τε, εἴπερ τινὰς ἄλλ ους, τοῦ τυραννικοῦ γένους τε καὶ ὀνόματος κατεχομένους. I wrote this down neither as certain nor as entirely unbelievable, except of course that none of the Romans made any mention of this embassy sent to Alexander, nor did those of the writers of Alexander’s deeds with whom I generally agree, Ptolemy son of Lagus and Aristobulus; nor was it appropriate for the Roman state (being at that time supremely free indeed) to send an embassy to a foreign king at all, let alone so far from home, when fear was not compelling them and they did not hope for benefit, and they were restricted more than any others by a hatred of both the tyrannical race and its name.

Arrian’s extreme skepticism has been a source of trouble for those wishing to know whether the incident actually occurred, but his doubts about the Roman embassy form part of the pattern we have been examining, and a solution to the unsett ling nature of Arrian’s account can therefore be found in his persistent use of narrative anxiety as a means of manipulating his reader. Like the incident at Siwah, the confl ict of Arrian’s sources here is less important than the larger truth about Alexander that it reveals. In this case, however, Arrian will use the open questions about the episode to show that the very idea that such an event may have occurred underscores the extent of Alexander’s achievements. The Roman embassy does not occur in isolation. Arrian includes the Romans at the end of a catalog of embassies that come from Libya, Italy, 52 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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Carthage, European Scythia, Ethiopia, some unspecified Celtic region, and Iberia at the height of Alexander’s military success. These varied peoples came to Babylon from geographically diverse regions and represented the fringes of the known world. The periegetic quality of the catalog suggests that the whole world was ready to submit to Alexander, yet Arrian’s hesitance concerning Rome creates a doubt. If he were looking to give a straightforward presentation of an unstoppable Alexander who could have conquered the whole world if only he had not died so young, Arrian could easily have ignored or downplayed the Romans as he did Thaïs, but instead he makes them the primary focus of the passage by placing them last in the catalog and giving them a far more expansive treatment than the other peoples involved. The point he is trying to make with the Roman embassy is that over the course of his life, Alexander achieved a level of fame that no other individual could rival. Th is point can be best understood in combination with a strikingly similar episode from book 1 that follows a parallel structure, culminating with a Celtic embassy. Both episodes deal with Alexander’s quest for global fame, and the connection that Arrian draws between them through their structural and thematic similarities highlights Alexander’s achievement of that fame by comparing two divergent moments in his career.68 To begin with structural similarities, we should not be too surprised to fi nd that these two episodes are designed to respond to each other, since they occur at narrative moments that naturally suggest comparison: the Celtic episode is reported immediately following the very fi rst campaign discussed in the Anabasis, whereas the Roman episode follows the very last campaign. Arrian has deliberately exploited the potential for comparison by laying out the episodes in parallel. In both cases, just after fi nishing a great military exploit, Alexander receives embassies from non-Greek peoples from beyond the scope of the preceding narrative. In both cases, those embassies are presented in a simple catalog culminating with a detailed description of the interaction between Alexander and the most impressive of the ambassadors, and in both cases that interaction takes the form of an ethnographic investigation conducted by Alexander.69 These ethnographic inquiries provide the reader with the opportunity to think about the scope and potential limitations of Alexander’s preceding conquests, and thus, ultimately, the extent of his fame, although this is the point where the two episodes diverge, since one occurs at the beginning and the other at the end of Alexander’s reign. The Celtic embassy occurs immediately after Alexander’s fi rst action as king, a campaign undertaken in order to sett le the northern regions of his newly inherited Macedonian empire (Anab. 1.1.4–1.4.5).70 He met with Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 53

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great success, and even briefly pushed beyond the Danube, which had been the northern frontier of Philip’s empire. It is in this context that Alexander receives embassies from several peoples dwelling in the vicinity of the Danube, as well as the Celts who live along the Adriatic. The embassies come to Alexander seeking friendship, and, evidently quite proud of his recent achievements, Alexander decided to fi nd out the extent of his glory (1.4.7): τοὺς Κελτοὺς δὲ καὶ ἤρετο, ὅ τι μάλιστα δεδίττεται αὐτοὺς τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων, ἐλπίσας ὅτι μέγα ὄνομα τὸ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἐς Κελτοὺς καὶ ἔτι προσωτέρω ἥκει καὶ ὅτι αὐτὸν μάλιστα πάντων δεδιέναι φήσουσι. And in addition he asked the Celts what mortal thing terrified them most, hoping that his own great name had reached both the Celts and still further, and that they would say that they feared him most of all.

The explicit mention of Alexander’s great name (μέγα ὄνομα) is no chance detail. Name recognition was a key component of the sort of epic fame Alexander desired, and that Arrian desired to bestow upon him.71 Moreover, in the eulogistic closing of the work, fame again features prominently. Very nearly the last word Arrian has to say on the subject of Alexander concerns his achievement of fame (Anab. 7.30.2): ὡς ἔγωγε δοκῶ ὅτι οὔτε τι ἔθνος ἀνθρώπων οὔτε τις πόλις ἐν τῷ τότε ἦν οὔτε τις εἷς ἄνθρωπος εἰς ὃν οὐ πεφοιτήκει τὸ Ἀλεξάνδρου ὄνομα. As far as I am concerned, I think that there was no race of humans, no city at that time, nor any one person to whom the name of Alexander had not frequently traveled.

Th is assessment concludes Arrian’s narrative of Alexander’s meteoric rise to fame, but in order to understand the dynamics of the narrative, we must return to the beginning, to the Celtic episode where the seeds of Alexander’s desire were fi rst planted. When Alexander asks the large and proverbially terrifying Celts what they fear most, the question is explicitly designed to measure the extent of his fame, since Alexander is hoping his name has traveled far. The Celtic response, however, leaves litt le doubt that Alexander still has a long way to go (Anab. 1.4.8):72 τῷ δὲ παρ’ ἐλπίδα ξυνέβη τῶν Κελτῶν ἡ ἀπόκρισις· οἷα γὰρ πόρρω τε ᾠκισμένοι Ἀλεξάνδρου καὶ χωρία δύσπορα οἰκοῦντες καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἐς 54 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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ἄλλ α τὴν ὁρμὴν ὁρῶντες ἔφασαν δεδιέναι μήποτε ὁ οὐρανὸς αὐτοῖς ἐμπέσοι, Ἀλέξανδρόν τε ἀγασθέντες οὔτε δέει οὔτε κατ’ ὠφέλειαν πρεσβεῦσαι παρ’ αὐτόν. καὶ τούτους φίλους τε ὀνομάσας καὶ ξυμμάχους ποιησάμενος ὀπίσω ἀπέπεμψε, τοσοῦτον ὑπειπὼν ὅτι ἀλαζόνες Κελτοί εἰσιν. But then the Celts’ answer turned out contrary to his hope, for having sett led in such places as were far off from Alexander, and inhabiting harsh lands, and seeing that Alexander’s expedition was going to other places, they said that they feared that the sky might at some time fall upon them, and that they, though admiring Alexander, had sent the embassy to him neither out of fear nor for the sake of benefit. He, both naming them friends and making them allies, sent them away, muttering something about Celts being boastful.

The exchange underscores the fundamentally local nature of Alexander’s initial successes. The Celts had indeed come from far off, but by comparison to the vast stretches of territory Alexander would later cover himself, the distance between the Danube and the Adriatic seems pathetically tiny, and their att itude seems to suggest that they were simply curious about him, rather than willing to submit in any formal sense. Alexander’s grumblings about Celtic arrogance indicate that he has been humbled by the experience and realizes that he has not yet done anything to deserve the kind of fame he desires. The Roman embassy, on the other hand, makes clear how much has changed over the course of Alexander’s reign. In contrast to the Celtic episode, there is no doubt here that Alexander has achieved his desired fame. In this second series of embassies, Arrian underscores that fact by revisiting the question of name recognition, but with a totally different orientation (Anab. 7.15.4): Κατιόντι δὲ αὐτῷ ἐς Βαβυλῶνα Λιβύων τε πρεσβεῖαι ἐνετύγχανον ἐπαινούντων τε καὶ στεφανούντων ἐπὶ τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῆς Ἀσίας, καὶ ἐξ Ἰταλίας Βρέττιοί τε καὶ Λευκανοὶ καὶ Τυρρηνοὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐπρέσβευον. καὶ Καρχηδονίους τότε πρεσβεῦσαι λέγεται καὶ ἀπὸ Αἰθιόπων πρέσβεις ἐλθεῖν καὶ Σκυθῶν τῶν τῆς Εὐρώπης, καὶ Κελτοὺς καὶ Ἴβηρας, ὑπὲρ φιλίας δεησομένους· ὧν τά τε ὀνόματα καὶ τὰς σκευὰς τότε πρῶτον ὀφθῆναι πρὸς Ἑλλ ήνων τε καὶ Μακεδόνων. And on his return to Babylon, embassies from the Libyans happened upon him, both praising him and crowning him for the kingship of Asia. And, from Italy, Brutt ians and Lucanians and Tyrrhenians sent embasNov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 55

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sies for the same reasons, and it is said that at that time the Carthaginians sent an embassy, and that ambassadors came from the Ethiopians and the Scythians who live in Europe, and that the Celts and Iberians sent ambassadors to ask about friendship. And the names and dress of these were at that time seen for the fi rst time by both Greeks and Macedonians.

The peoples in this catalog come from parts of the world Alexander has not yet visited. They come seeking Alexander’s friendship and, Arrian tells us a litt le later (7.15.5), arbitration in their disputes, actions normally associated with submission to a foreign authority. These peoples know who Alexander is, but crucially, not all their names are known to him. Some of the Celtic and Iberian tribes were entirely new to Greeks and Macedonians, and they arrive of their own accord to seek Alexander’s favor. How different this situation is from that earlier scene in which Alexander’s name has barely made it to the Adriatic. Here his name has traveled not just beyond the Adriatic but beyond the confi nes of the known world. It is in this context that Arrian reports (7.15.5): καὶ τότε μάλιστα αὐτόν τε αὑτῷ Ἀλέξανδρον καὶ τοῖς ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν φανῆναι γῆς τε ἁπάσης καὶ θαλάσσης κύριον. And it was at that time most of all that Alexander seemed both to himself and to those with him to be the lord of every land and sea.

Just following this decisive pronouncement, Arrian reports the story of the Roman embassy, a story he credits to the obscure historians Aristus and Asclepiades (7.15.6).73 He tells of Alexander’s interest in the constitution of the Romans and his admiration of their traditional virtues: orderliness, hard work, and liberty. He also declares that Alexander offered a prophecy of Rome’s future greatness, and this is where Arrian introduces the doubt we looked at earlier, refusing to confi rm or deny the truth of the tale. Again, according to Arrian, no Romans ever mentioned this, nor did Ptolemy or Aristobulus, and as far as Arrian knows, Republican Rome was not the sort of state that would willingly send envoys to a foreign king so far from home, on account of their hatred of the name of tyranny, an unusual phrase that simultaneously recalls the issue of name recognition and underscores Roman anxieties about monarchy. If the arrogance of the Celts was designed to shock the reader into recognizing how paltry the earliest achievements of Alexander were, Arrian’s

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hesitation concerning Rome can do something similar. Every educated reader in Arrian’s world would have been fully aware of the Republic’s distaste for monarchy, yet Arrian is able to name at least some people who believed that, nevertheless, even the Romans were willing to acknowledge Alexander’s sovereignty. By directly confronting this interpretive difficulty, Arrian encourages his reader to stop and ponder whether such a thing could have happened, pitt ing the legendary greatness of Alexander against the legendary freedom of Republican Rome. Th is is an insoluble problem as Arrian presents it, and the impact of that uncertainty is enormous: in contrast to the Celtic episode, in which an unimportant barbarian tribe was able to treat Alexander with a certain degree of eff rontery, now we must entertain the notion that his fame and glory were so great as to overshadow the virtue of Rome.74 Who but Alexander could make such a claim? The response that Arrian elicits from his readers through this strategically deployed uncertainty thus brings about a consideration of the true magnitude of Alexander’s meteoric rise to fame. The surprising end to the Celtic episode highlights the humble beginning of Alexander’s conquests, whereas the question posed by the Roman episode illustrates the unmatched fame Alexander had acquired by the end of his life. The high degree of parallelism between the two episodes (in terms of both narrative structure and theme) prepares the ground for this comparison. Arrian therefore has included the Roman embassy not out of mere curiosity or fidelity to truthful narrative but in order to engage his reader in a critical analysis of one of his main themes: Alexander’s hard-won and everlasting fame. In this way he exploits narrative uncertainty in order to solidify his characterization of Alexander, which was based on his own synthesis of inconclusive source material.

A l e x a n de r a s a R e a de r Perhaps the best indicator that Arrian wants to draw his readers into the kind of reading just discussed is the fact that Alexander himself engages in it with varying degrees of success.75 At times, Alexander’s knowledge of history features prominently in Arrian’s presentation of ideologically charged events. Successes are often the result of good decisions arrived at by careful study and correct interpretation of history. Failures, likewise, often come about from a glaring error in interpreting similar situations from the past. Most important, however: Arrian stresses not just a close study of historical texts but the combination of such study with new experiences in order

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to create a new and better understanding of both the past and the present. Th ree episodes that hinge on Alexander’s engagement with famous passages of Herodotus bear this hypothesis out. Alexander’s crossing of the Hellespont was bound to be an important moment in his war of retribution, given the ideological significance accorded to it by Herodotus in his account of the earlier war of Xerxes.76 Arrian’s account of this crossing (Anab. 1.11.3–8) picks up many of the themes of Herodotus’s narrative, and it is difficult to resist the impulse to see Alexander’s activities as a direct engagement with Herodotus and the world of epic. Herodotus had marked the Hellespont as the natural division between Europe and Asia, and the bad behavior of the Persians at that geographical boundary highlights the outrageous hubris in Herodotus’s schema of their attempts to extend beyond their proper realm.77 Arrian, too, focuses on the significance of this same geographical boundary, using precisely the religious points of comparison that Herodotus had before him. He states outright that Alexander’s intention in making a sacrifice before he crossed was to bring about a more fortunate landing than Protesilaus had experienced (Anab. 1.11.5), famously the fi rst Greek to die in the Trojan expedition but also the hero whose shrine was desecrated by the Persian Artayctes in one of the closing vignettes of Herodotus’s Histories (Hdt. 9.116–120).78 By placing such considerations in the thoughts of Alexander, Arrian has created a historically minded hero who certainly has drawn a connection between his own situation and the Trojan War and is thinking of Herodotus as well. A further correspondence is in Alexander’s dedicating altars at Sestos and Abydos, the beginning and end points of his crossing (Anab. 1.11.7). These are also the points of Xerxes’s crossing, during which he famously yoked together two continents (Hdt. 7.34.1–36.5). By reporting the dedication of altars at these points, Arrian has suggested a comparison between the activities of the two kings: the one connected continents through the sheer eff rontery of his massive bridge, the other through the religiously correct attention to appropriate deities. Alexander’s yoking is a direct response to Xerxes, and even the crossing itself is marked by the antithesis of his sacrifices to Poseidon and the Nereids in midstream (Anab. 1.11.6), as opposed to Xerxes’s famous outrage of lowering fetters into the uncooperative strait (Hdt. 7.35).79 By stressing Alexander’s attention to the religious matters emphasized by Herodotus at the Hellespont, Arrian has represented him as a warrior who learns the lessons presented by the past. There is no Persianstyle hubris at this point, and that is a direct result of Alexander’s knowledge of history. A different situation is presented by Alexander’s invasion of the Scythians (Anab. 4.4.1–4.4.9). Shortly after the capture of Bessus, Alexander is 58 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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pricked to anger by a group of Scythians at the river Tanaïs. They shout insults at him and boast of their military invincibility. Alexander immediately plans to cross the Tanaïs and engage the Scythians but is unable to obtain favorable sacrifices. At this point Arrian begins to focus on a historical comparison that should have made Alexander’s best course of action obvious. In this case the comparison is between Alexander’s present situation and Darius I’s famous debacle in Scythia.80 As in the case of the Hellespont, Arrian has stressed Alexander’s knowledge of history by presenting the reader with the king’s own thoughts (4.4.3): ὁ δὲ κρεῖσσον ἔφη ἐς ἔσχατον κινδύνου ἐλθεῖν ἢ κατεστραμμένον ξύμπασαν ὀλίγου δεῖν τὴν Ἀσίαν γέλωτα εἶναι Σκύθαις, καθάπερ Δαρεῖος ὁ Ξέρξου πατὴρ πάλαι ἐγένετο. And he [Alexander] said it would be better to go to the farthest bounds of danger than, having conquered almost all Asia, to be a joke to the Scythians, just like Darius the father of Xerxes was long ago.

Th is presentation leaves no doubt that Alexander knew his history and was thinking about it while making an important decision. The outcome, however, underlines his failure to learn the obvious lesson from Darius’s experiences in Scythia. Like Darius’s, his military forces were utterly superior to the Scythians, but, again like Darius, Alexander is unable to pin them down long enough to destroy them. Ultimately, in a distinctly Herodotean mode, Arrian highlights the impossibility of conquering Scythia not only by stressing the lifestyle of the Scythians but even by suggesting that the land itself is unconquerable: Alexander is forced to turn back when drinking the local water gives him an incapacitating and near-fatal bout of diarrhea (4.4.9). The details of Alexander’s physical difficulties would have appeared especially humiliating to a Roman audience, given the general Roman fi xation on bodily control, but to any audience the difference between Darius’s eventual realization that his invasion was an exercise in futility and Alexander’s forced interruption of the campaign would seem obvious. In this instance, Alexander knows his history but has failed to learn from it.81 An intermediate case involves Alexander’s search for the source of the Nile. Taking a cue from Herodotus, Alexander observes that the Indus has more crocodiles than any river other than the Nile (Anab. 6.1.2).82 The language that Arrian uses to describe Alexander’s initial suppositions regarding the connection between the Indus and the Nile clearly recalls Herodotus’s (both authors focus on the odd detail that the Indus is second only to Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n A r r i a n / 59

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the Nile in crocodile production), suggesting strongly that Herodotus was the source of Alexander’s previous knowledge on the subject. Thus once again Alexander has entered unfamiliar territory with expectations based on literature. His further observation of botanical similarities between India and Egypt leads him initially to conclude that he has found the source of the Nile. However, like a good Herodotean histōr, Alexander seeks further information through both autopsy and interviews with the locals, discovering that there are in fact no connections between the Indus and the Nile. Ultimately, his initial suppositions, based on Herodotus, are revised and updated on the basis of new information that he gains for himself. Th is is precisely what Arrian seems to suggest is the best use of written history: it provides a basis for rational suppositions about new situations but must constantly be updated when new information becomes available.

C onc l u s ion Arrian’s compositions show a marked tendency toward the revision of the work of earlier authors. About half his known works go over material that has been treated previously, sometimes quite recently. Nevertheless, whenever we are in a position to judge, it is clear that Arrian has not merely rehearsed hackneyed themes but has gone out of his way to highlight what is new about his composition. In some cases, his contribution is to enhance the usefulness of a great predecessor by the addition of wholly new material, whereas in others it is to reevaluate important subject matter in light of subsequent developments or with a new critical focus. In all cases, however, there is a sense that some key issue has been left unaddressed in an earlier work. Arrian asserts through his new creations that Classical models are indeed great, but they can still be surpassed; ancient history is important, but its value has not been totally exhausted by constant study. On the contrary, continued reappraisal of familiar themes can, in the right hands, produce new insights and recontextualize history in such a way as to bring out its significance for the modern world. The authorial persona he pursues throughout his works looks forward rather than back as he seeks to give better answers to the same questions that motivated his predecessors and produce new material for future generations to confront. The next chapter will show how Arrian’s method works in the particularly contentious atmosphere of exemplary history. Alexander was almost infi nitely malleable as both a positive and a negative exemplum, and accordingly an enormous body of moralizing literature had emerged using the famous Macedonian as a touchstone for all manner of historical and 60 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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philosophical theories. An analysis of Arrian’s bold engagement with both Greek and Roman discourses of leadership will demonstrate how his interest in historical progress can produce innovative political thought as well as rhetorically satisfying reading material. In so doing I will begin to move toward a description of a partial literary context that can better explain certain features of Arrian’s work as I examine his attempts to use the stock themes of kingship literature to create a new notion of an ideal king.

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3 / A l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y

I n t h e l a s t c h a p t e r , I wa s c onc e r n e d w i t h A rrian’s sustained effort to enhance the usefulness of the past for his contemporary audience. Nowhere is this effort more evident than in the Anabasis. To say that Alexander was a popular subject of study throughout antiquity would be an understatement. He was among the most frequently discussed topics in Greek and Roman schools, and the focus of an untold number of narrative histories and other types of literature.1 In addition, political figures made a habit of imitating Alexander seemingly from the moment of his death, a habit that took many forms but one that was adopted eagerly by Roman politicians in the Republic and continued well into the empire.2 Significantly, the emperor Trajan vigorously pursued a rivalry with Alexander that was highly visible during Arrian’s formative years.3 Th is connection is not likely to have been lost on Arrian, whose own education clearly involved the study of Alexander and who professed to have had an interest in Alexander from a young age.4 The multiplicity of voices mediating the history of Alexander contributes to his versatility as a historical exemplum.5 While all could agree on the noteworthiness of his legendary military successes, his notoriously erratic behavior left him open to a broad range of positive and negative interpretations, and his early death meant that many questions about his character had to remain open because of a lack of evidence. Th is uncertainty made Alexander an ideal figure around whom to construct discussions of kingship.6 The question of what made a good king was a popular topic of debate in Roman intellectual circles from the Late Republic on, and with good reason. Court culture became an increasingly important focus of power in the Roman world as the empire developed, and attendant discussions of political life naturally gravitated toward the most powerful figure

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in such a context, the emperor.7 Since theoretical discussions of autocracy often avoided direct comment on sitt ing (or even recent) emperors, historical figures from the more distant past were frequently used as exploratory test cases.8 It should come as no surprise, then, that Arrian too, as a member of the very class of people who were interested in examining the virtues and vices of kings and often used Alexander as a thought experiment for just such purposes, entertained a variety of notions of kingship in his history of Alexander. Although Arrian’s presentation of Alexander has often been regarded as wholly positive, even encomiastic, the king who emerges from this history is a complex figure who goes through alternating and at times overlapping phases of good and bad behavior.9 To be sure, Arrian concludes his history on a note of praise, summarizing his assessment of Alexander as follows (Anab. 7.30.3): ἐπεὶ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐμεμψάμην ἔστιν ἃ ἐν τῇ συγγραφῇ τῶν Ἀλεξάνδρου ἔργων, ἀλλ ὰ αὐτόν γε Ἀλέξανδρον οὐκ αἰσχύνομαι θαυμάζων. Although there are some things that I myself have condemned in my account of Alexander’s deeds, nevertheless I am not ashamed to marvel at Alexander himself.

Arrian’s fi nal judgment, however, allows ample room for individual negative assessments of Alexander’s character and behavior in the Anabasis that cannot be ignored. Arrian frequently criticizes Alexander’s actions openly and explicitly, and elsewhere he deploys the comparative strategies discussed in chapter 2 to invite his reader to evaluate Alexander’s character in light of a series of historical kings who function as foils for the Alexander of the moment, at times with unflattering results.10 From these comparisons emerges an Alexander who is a flawed but excellent leader and king, his humanity making him simultaneously more and less approachable than he appears in the work of other extant authors. The all-too-human cracks in his superhuman façade remind the reader constantly that this man was indeed only a man, and for that reason his achievements seem all the greater.11 Placed as he is within a network of competing notions of royal authority, Alexander himself becomes an exemplum from which Arrian can create a commentary on the nature of kingship. Taking advantage of Alexander’s mobility and constantly changing circumstances, Arrian develops a notion of kingship detached from older theories that relied on geographical and cultural determinism. Although he uses conventional modes

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of expression and well-worn subject matter, he articulates a new and flexible conception of kingship centered on the relationship between an individual king’s character and his sociopolitical role.

A l e x a n de r a n d E x e m p l a r i t y The use of historical exempla to explain or illustrate a point was a crucial part of Greek and Roman historiographic and rhetorical traditions from their very beginnings.12 Roman authors enthusiastically embraced the use of exempla, and by Arrian’s day the value of this narrative strategy was so widely recognized that whole manuals of exempla were published both for the assistance of speakers and writers and more generally as teaching tools.13 Historians who, like Arrian, wrote in Greek while living as fully engaged members of Roman society were necessarily affected by their Roman context and demonstrated a pronounced tendency to rely on the use of exempla for explanatory purposes in the fi rst three centuries of our era.14 The prominence of this method of explanation and the popularity of Alexander as an exemplum provided a rich background of material with which Arrian could work, and his own tendency to seek out parallels in historical figures and events led him to develop a common rhetorical convention into a serious analytical tool. A ready source of comparisons was available to Arrian in the rich traditions that had built up around the Achaemenid kings of Persia from an early stage.15 To the Greeks of the fi ft h century, they represented power and wealth on an unimaginable scale and quickly took on the trappings of legendary figures. Xerxes in particular, whether because of his role in the events of 480/479 BCE or because of his real historical personality, was associated in the Greek imagination with the potential disasters of placing so much power in the hands of a single person. From his earliest surviving appearance in Greek literature, in Aeschylus’s Persae, produced in 472 BCE, he was associated with violent mood swings and uncontrollable emotions.16 Xerxes became a classic type of the tyrant, and he maintained that status well into the Roman period.17 Because Xerxes had already achieved his dubious status as a model tyrant long before, Alexander in turn made many efforts to present himself as an anti-Xerxes, especially in his public interactions with Greek cities. In order to reconcile the Greeks to Macedonian rule, still an unsett led issue when he took the throne, Alexander represented his Asian expedition as a campaign of vengeance for the wrongs done to Greece under Xerxes some hundred and fi ft y years earlier.18 The importance of the Persian invasions 64 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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to the formation of Greek identity is therefore closely related to Alexander’s expedition into Asia, another topic with a long historical reach. Alexander’s own decision to pit himself against Xerxes therefore offered Arrian the opportunity to play two extremely well-known models against each other in a natural and uncontrived sett ing. Arrian exploited the circumstances to explore the conceptual difficulties of placing the classic Greek hero on the throne once occupied by the classic Persian despot, and he used the pairing implicitly to provide commentary at challenging moments in his narrative. A clear example occurs early in the history when Alexander invades Thebes, an event whose violent end certainly could undermine a portrait of Alexander as a friend to all Greeks.

M ac e d on i a b e t w e e n G r e e c e a n d P e r s i a The violent actions of Alexander’s Macedonian army at Thebes, one of the oldest and most powerful cities in Greece at the time, could easily have been used to cast him in the role of a conquering barbarian king, as his father had been cast before him.19 The incident is especially important in establishing Alexander’s standing relative to the Greeks because it comes so early in his reign and contrasts so sharply with his later self-presentation as leader of all the Greeks by common consent.20 Arrian’s framing of the incident effectively suppresses this potentially barbaric association and helps him achieve the Hellenic characterization of Alexander that dominates the early sections of the history. By employing the memory of Theban Medism during the Persian Wars and its resulting effects on the status of Thebes in Greek politics, he sets these events in a Greek narrative environment. In this way, Arrian defi nes the engagement as one that is entirely Greek, and his emphasis on the collective nature of the decision making at this point in his narrative places Alexander fi rmly within the world of ordinary Greek city-state politics. From the very beginning of the Anabasis, even before Alexander has overcome the difficulties of his accession and made the invasion of Asia a legitimate possibility, Arrian portrays him as a Greek acting against Persia in the interests of all Greeks. In pursuit of this characterization, he drastically truncates the sequence of events surrounding Alexander’s accession and in a few brief lines presents affairs in Greece as totally sett led.21 The lone exception is the refusal of the Lacedaemonians to join the Corinthian League (Anab. 1.1.2), but Arrian’s sparing comment leaves the impression that it was a minor concern. In reality, the Lacedaemonians’ initial refusal became a major problem for Alexander, but Arrian elided that information A l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 65

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in order to enhance the solidarity of the Greeks who decided to follow Alexander.22 The virtuoso military narrative that follows contributes to this impression.23 An extremely fast-paced account of Alexander’s swift and crushing defeat of various neighboring northern non-Greek tribes allows Arrian to highlight Alexander’s versatility on the batt lefield without showing him in confl ict with Greeks. One after another in numerous different styles of combat, opponents fall before Alexander’s superior army as he reestablishes the frontiers of his empire and sets affairs in order. All this action is in keeping with Arrian’s characterization of Alexander as a warrior fighting against barbarians on behalf of Greeks, but the last event Arrian narrates before moving toward the Hellespont and Asia is the destruction of Thebes, a notoriously brutal event.24 In order to accommodate the image he has created for Alexander as leader of all the Greeks, Arrian must fi nd a way to explain the destruction of one of Greece’s most famous cities and the death or enslavement of all its citizens without giving the impression of unilateral action on the part of a quasi-foreign king. To begin with, Arrian mitigates Alexander’s role in the destruction of Thebes by emphasizing both his willingness to come to a peaceful resolution and the fact that Thebes was torn by internecine strife, with a warmongering faction forcing Alexander’s hand (Anab. 1.7.10–11): Ἀλέξανδρος δέ—ἔτι γὰρ τοῖς Θηβαίοις διὰ φιλίας ἐλθεῖν μᾶλλ όν τι ἢ διὰ κινδúνου ἤθελε—διέτριβε πρòς τῇ Καδμείᾳ κατεστρατοπεδευκώς. ἔνθα δὴ τῶν Θηβαίων οἱ μὲν τὰ βέλτιστα ἐς τὸ κοινὸν γιγνώσκοντες ἐξελθεῖν ὥρμηντο παρ’ Ἀλέξανδρον καì εὑρέσθαι συγγ νώμην τῷ πλήθει τῶν Θηβαίων τῆς ἀποστάσεως· οἱ φυγάδες δὲ καì ὅσοι τοὺς φυγάδας ἐπικεκλημένοι ἦσαν, οὐδενὸς φιλανθρώπου τυχεῖν ἂν παρ’ Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀξιοῦντες, ἄλλ ως τε καὶ βοιωταρχοῦντες ἔστιν οἳ αὐτῶν, παντάπασιν ἐνῆγον τὸ πλῆθος ἐς τὸν πόλεμον. Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ οὐδ’ ὥς τῇ πόλει προσέβαλλ εν. But Alexander—for he still wished to approach the Thebans in friendship rather than batt le—waited in camp near the Cadmea. Then those of the Thebans who knew what was best for the common good were eager to go out to Alexander and obtain pardon for the multitude of Thebans for the revolt, but the exiles and those who had summoned them, thinking that they would get no kindness from Alexander (especially the Boeotarchs among them), were urging the multitude to war in every way. But still Alexander did not attack the city.

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Still, Arrian further exculpates Alexander by blaming the onset of the attack on Perdiccas, who mistakenly attacks too soon, forcing Alexander to intervene to save a part of his army (Anab. 1.8.1–2). Th is account confl icts with the more plausible narratives of Diodorus (17.9.1–6) and Plutarch (Al. 11.7–8), both of whom stress Alexander’s active desire to make an example of the Thebans to discourage other Greek states from revolt.25 Further, the responsibility for the brutal actions on the batt lefield described in detail by Arrian is ultimately removed from the Macedonians entirely when he blames the Phocians, Plataeans, and other Boeotians for the gruesome slaughter of suppliants, women, and children at the end of the fighting. Such actions are widely regarded as indefensible in Greek accounts of warfare and thus constitute an issue Arrian needs to handle delicately, since he chooses not to omit them entirely. His concern is clearly to emphasize Greek involvement in these affairs, even though the Greek contingent here, as elsewhere, was a minor component of Alexander’s fighting force.26 Arrian, however, highlights old regional enmities in a way that not only exonerates the Macedonians but also offers a grim reminder of what Greek politics was like before Macedonia became a significant factor in that realm (Anab. 1.8.7–8): οἱ δὲ πεζοὶ ὡς ἑκάστοις προὐχώρει ἐσώζοντο. ἔνθα δὴ ὀργῇ οὐχ οὕτως τι οἱ Μακεδόνες, ἀλλ ὰ Φωκεῖς τε καὶ Πλαταιεῖς καὶ οἱ ἄλλ οι δὲ Βοιωτοὶ οὐδὲ ἀμυνομένους τοὺς Θηβαίους ἔτι οὐδενὶ κόσμῳ ἔκτεινον, τοὺς μὲν ἐν ταῖς οἰκίαις ἐπεισπίπτοντες, οὓς δὲ ἐς ἀλκὴν τετραμμένους, τοὺς δὲ καὶ πρὸς ἱεροῖς ἱκετεύοντας, οὔτε γυναικῶν οὔτε παίδων φειδόμενοι. And the infantrymen saved themselves however each one could. Then, in a frenzy, not so much the Macedonians but the Phocians and the Plataeans and the other Boeotians too still continued in complete disorder to kill the Thebans, even when they did not resist. They attacked some of them in their houses, some who did fight back, and some even as suppliants in the temples. They held back from neither women nor children.

The brutality of the Boeotians, from which the Macedonians are carefully set apart, can be understood only as an expression of frustration at the long tradition of Theban dominance in Boeotia, so often cruelly exercised to the detriment of the Plataeans and Phocians in particular.27 Th is is precisely the type of Greek politics, characterized by infighting among the various states and an inability to move past ancient rivalries, that Alexander has sometimes been credited with ending, a major part of both his and Philip’s rhetoric of war. The destruction of Thebes as Arrian presents it is Greek vioA l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 67

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lence against Greeks, and he draws Philip and Alexander into that world by discussing their personal connections in Thebes, particularly Alexander’s concern for the home and descendants of Pindar (Anab. 1.9.10). The action is entirely a Greek affair; Alexander’s involvement in it is represented as the involvement of an insider, a point Arrian drives home with an extended digression on the significance of the event. The digression itself is loaded with Thucydidean language, and Arrian uses that language to refer to exclusively Greek confl icts.28 The clearest example is the opening sentence (Anab. 1.9.1): Καὶ πάθος τοῦτο Ἑλλ ηνικὸν μεγέθει τε τῆς ἁλούσης πόλεως καὶ ὀξύτητι τοῦ ἔργου, οὐχ ἥκιστα δὲ τῷ παραλόγῳ ἔς τε τοὺς παθόντας καὶ τοὺς δράσαντας, οὐ μεῖόν τι τοὺς ἄλλ ους Ἕλλ ηνας ἢ καὶ αὐτοὺς τοὺς μετασχόντας τοῦ ἔργου ἐξέπληξε. And this Greek calamity, both in terms of the size of the city captured and the harshness of the deed, and especially in terms of the surprise both to those suffering and those committ ing the act, shocked the rest of the Greeks no less than those who took part in the deed.

Embedded in this brief quotation are imitations of several of Thucydides’s most famous passages. The phrase Arrian uses to designate the event a great “Greek calamity” (πάθος τοῦτο Ἑλληνικὸν μεγέθει) recalls Thucydides’s opening words on the “greatest confl ict among the Greeks” (κινήσις .  .  . μεγίστη δὴ τοῖς Ἕλλησιν).29 However, the similarities do not end there. Verbal resonances also recall Thucydides’s description of the Athenian destruction of the Ambracians, and his summary comments at the end of the Sicilian Expedition.30 Furthermore, Arrian closes off this section by explicitly comparing the event he has just described to a series of famous Greek disasters: the Sicilian Expedition, Aegospotami, Leuctra, Mantinea, the Theban sack of Plataea, and the captures of Melos and Scione.31 Arrian’s use of Thucydidean language and his constant emphasis on Greek internal politics allow him to avoid the potential pitfalls of describing what was from a Theban (i.e., Greek) point of view a brutal power move on the part of a foreign king, perhaps more obviously akin to the invasion of Xerxes than to the actions of the Athenian democracy in the Peloponnesian War. By calling the event a Greek calamity (πάθος Ἑλλ ηνικόν), he focuses the reader’s attention on the pre-Alexander world of Greek politics and sets up a contrast that will allow him to shift quickly into the Asian expedition without ever engaging with the messy reality of fourth-century opinions of Alexander. 68 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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The closing of the episode caps these themes decisively. Along with a brief treatment of Alexander’s negotiations with Athens, Arrian reports contemporary reactions to the fate of Thebes, which dredge up for the fi rst time in the Anabasis the still-visceral memory of the Persian invasion. The Greeks, Arrian says, believed that the destruction of Thebes was the result of the Thebans’ own actions during the invasion of Xerxes. Their betrayal of the Greek cause a century and a half before had earned them the punishment they now received at the hands of Alexander and the allied Greek army (Anab. 1.9.6–7). As if their actual Medism were not sufficient, the virtual Medism of mistreating Plataeans, who had gained a special status by virtue of living at the site of the great Greek victory over Persia, is also discussed. Arrian pointedly mentions the “un-Greek slaughter” (οὐχ Ἑλληνικῆς σφαγῆς) of the Plataeans, who had surrendered to the Lacedaemonians in 427, at the end of a lengthy siege.32 The destruction of Thebes, as Arrian tells it, has litt le to do with Alexander’s grasping for power and everything to do with Persia, specifically Xerxes’s Persia. Thus, while narrating what amounts to Alexander’s conquest of the Greeks, Arrian has already introduced the dynamics of retribution that he will use to explain Alexander’s conquest of Persia.33

C om p e t i ng K i ng s h i p s After introducing Alexander in the guise of Panhellenic hero, Arrian narrates the war against Darius III as far as the Batt le of Gaugamela without seriously questioning that characterization. For more than two whole books of the Anabasis, Alexander appears to be an exemplary Greek leader. His main foil is Darius III, whom Arrian has represented along fairly conventional lines, exploiting long-standing stereotypes of weak-minded Persian tyrants.34 It would be easy to see in this early phase of the narrative a standard Greek/barbarian division, with Alexander and Darius representing opposing sides of the dichotomy.35 However, the war against Darius should be seen as a single, unified phase of Alexander’s career, distinct from later phases that offer a more complex characterization suited to increasingly complex political circumstances. Th roughout this fi rst phase, Alexander has a single goal in mind, namely to defeat the Persian Empire, which he does at Gaugamela. Although Darius continues to resist, Arrian’s presentation leaves litt le doubt of the ultimate outcome. Gaugamela is a crucial turning point, because for the fi rst time Alexander literally cannot be simply a Greek fighting against barbarians. After defeating Darius, he claims to have become king of Persia, and Arrian introduces a narraA l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 69

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tive shift in order to accommodate a new and more complicated role for his protagonist. In order to emphasize that the Batt le of Gaugamela should be taken as a turning point in Alexander’s career, Arrian gives a detailed account of the att itudes that both Alexander and Darius take toward the event.36 Although Alexander’s stated goal, both before the Batt le of Issus and before the Batt le of Gaugamela, is to rule over “all Asia” (Ἀσία ξυμπάση), Darius gives two distinct responses to the outcomes of these batt les.37 After Issus he continues to negotiate with Alexander diplomatically, seeking to end the confl ict and mitigate his losses while maintaining his own role as king and sovereign (Anab. 2.14.1–3). After Gaugamela, however, his concern is specifically that Alexander will soon achieve his objective. Whereas both Diodorus (17.64.1) and Curtius (5.1.4) explicitly state that Darius immediately planned to raise another army after the batt le, Arrian’s Darius appears more panicked. He flees for Media not to raise an army as in the other accounts, but because he believes that Alexander will march off to Babylon and Susa, which he names “the prize of the war” (τοῦ πολέμου τὸ ἆθλον), a belief Arrian ratifies in his own voice (Anab. 3.16.3). Darius, then, seems to believe that he is about to lose the heart of his empire, and thus his perspective on the war has changed dramatically. Arrian then postpones further resistance on the part of Darius, and this distorted chronology leaves the impression that the war is indeed over and the Macedonians now rule Asia.38 Alexander, in turn, has become the king. As a result, Arrian has in effect created a second accession narrative, and the events that follow Gaugamela in the Anabasis represent actions taken by Alexander for the fi rst time in his dual role as victorious Greek conqueror and Asian monarch. As I have shown, up to this point in the Anabasis Arrian had been careful to present Alexander principally as the leader of a Panhellenic army of retribution, but the highly stylized episodes that follow the Batt le of Gaugamela illustrate the difficulties posed to such a character by the added constraints of Persian kingship. Arrian highlights these difficulties by deploying the exempla of earlier Persian kings, in particular three kings who were discussed at length by Herodotus: Cyrus the Great, Darius I, and especially Xerxes. Arrian draws heavily on Herodotus while sett ing these comparisons up as a meaningful framework for understanding Alexander’s behavior. While Cyrus and Darius are explored somewhat allusively, Arrian makes an explicit comparison between Alexander and Xerxes, in line with the contrast set up at Thebes; but all these exempla play important parts in Arrian’s tightly woven parallel narratives of the next four episodes in the Anabasis. The conquests of Babylon, Susa, Uxiane, and Persepolis follow a struc70 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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tural pattern composed of four elements and reinforced by Arrian’s distortion of the chronology of some of Alexander’s most ideologically significant deeds. In each case, Alexander and his advancing army fi rst are met by representatives of the country in question, whereupon Alexander next either accepts the country’s surrender or conquers its forces in a batt le. Following his assumption of power he then performs a symbolic act and fi nally adds the new territory to his empire through a series of bureaucratic appointments or other maneuvers designed to establish order. Uxiane forms a partial exception to this scheme for reasons that will become clear later, but the four conquests grow progressively longer and more detailed, falling into two distinct groups divided by Alexander’s crossing the Pasatigris.39 The fi rst, shortest, and most easily explained of these episodes is the one occurring in Babylon (Anab. 3.16.3–5). Whereas Curtius (5.1.39) and Diodorus (17.64.4) report that Alexander and his army stayed for a long time feasting, Arrian gives the impression that the stopover in Babylon was quite brief. He states that the whole city came out together (πανδημεί) to greet Alexander and hand themselves over to him. Alexander then enters the city and performs a symbolic act; in this case it is the rebuilding of temples (with special attention to the Temple of Bel-Marduk at Esagila) torn down by Xerxes, who is mentioned here for the fi rst time by name in the Anabasis. Th is particular symbolic act is especially notable for two reasons. First, Xerxes seems only to have removed the cult statue from the Temple of BelMarduk, rather than to have destroyed it as Arrian reports; and, more important, Alexander did not adorn the temple during this visit to Babylon but during his later visit, toward the end of his life, as Arrian himself makes clear at the appropriate juncture (Anab. 7.17.2).40 Nevertheless, Arrian presents these events in their fi rst appearance (in book 3) as a continuous sequence, temporarily distorting a chronology of which he is fully aware in a way that heightens the contrast between Alexander and Xerxes. Furthermore, because a special relationship with Bel-Marduk was a real Babylonian royal tradition maintained throughout the Achaemenid and Seleucid periods and, as a result, fairly well known, it seems clear that Arrian has imported Alexander’s later action into this episode for the express purpose of juxtaposing him to Xerxes.41 Here Arrian presents an Alexander who in his fi rst act as the ruler of Asia engages in proper royal behavior. He listens to the priests, honors the local gods, and is loved by his people. The episode closes with Alexander’s appointment of a local dignitary (Mazaeus) as his fi rst Asian satrap and with his careful attention to the advice of the Chaldean priests concerning the right way to make sacrifices. The situation in Babylon thus constitutes an auspicious start to Alexander’s control of Asia. A l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 71

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Alexander meets with similar good fortune in Susa (Anab. 3.16.6–11). Although his arrival here is accompanied by less fanfare, since the city has already been formally handed over to Alexander’s messenger, a fact suppressed by Arrian until now, the episode follows the same format as before. After his meeting with the messengers on the road from Babylon to Susa, Alexander enters the city and performs a symbolic act, again reversing the outrages of Xerxes, this time returning some of the plunder that Xerxes brought back from Greece rather than addressing insults to the gods of the Babylonians. Here again Arrian has imported an event from later in Alexander’s life—which he also later records in its proper chronological order (7.19.2)— but presents it in its fi rst appearance as part of a continuous sequence of events. He has done this in order to continue the comparison he has been drawing between Alexander and Xerxes, who is mentioned by name for the second time here.42 In this case, Alexander’s restoration of the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton to the Athenians effectively closes off the retributive expedition upon which he had set out and completes Arrian’s portrait of the ideal Panhellenic leader. Finally, Arrian further emphasizes Alexander’s Hellenism by specifying that he sacrificed in the ancestral fashion (τῷ πατρίῳ νόμῳ) and conducted Greek-style games, in a sharp contrast with the notably non-Greek sacrifices to Bel-Marduk in Babylon (3.16.9). Even the bureaucratic section of the episode looks back toward Greece as, in addition to dealing with the affairs of Susa, Alexander sends a huge portion of the war proceeds to Antipater for use in a separate war against the Lacedaemonians. Antipater, acting as regent in Macedonia, is dealing with a serious instance of Lacedaemonian aggression. However, this brief reference to the present war against the Lacedaemonians comes as something of a surprise, since virtually nothing has been said of it up to this point, in spite of the fact that it is, historically, a major problem for Alexander.43 Unlike Curtius, who sought to avoid confusion by separating his Greek and Asian narratives (5.1.1–2), Arrian weaves the details of affairs in Greece into his narrative of Alexander’s rule over Asia precisely in order to interrogate Alexander’s motivation for the rest of his campaign. If the war of retribution is over, and affairs in Greece are unsett led, there seems to be no reason for Alexander to carry on into Asia as he does. Nevertheless, Alexander is far from fi nished with his Eastern campaigning, and the next two episodes, responding as a pair to the ones just discussed, raise questions about Alexander’s character as he moves forward in his new role as the conquering king of Asia. As Alexander crosses into the territory of Uxiane, he meets full force with the reality of politics in his newly acquired empire (Anab. 3.17.1–6). Unlike the Babylonians, the Susians, and the Persepolitans, whom he will 72 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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meet later, the Uxians have no cities, no leaders, and no money and are only partially subservient to the Persian Empire.44 They are nomadic herdsmen, and like other nomads before them, they represent a limit on the powers of despotism.45 Darius never fully subdued them, nor did the local satrap, and the greeting scene in this episode dramatically illustrates the unusual power dynamic in Uxiane. There are no adoring crowds as in Babylon, no friendly envoys as in Susa; here the Uxians send representatives to ask Alexander for tribute, which they had successfully extracted from the previous Persian king (3.17.1). Alexander responds with deceptive words, bidding the Uxians to come to the narrows so that they could receive “what has been assigned to them.” The Greek phrase Arrian uses is “τὰ τεταγμένα,” an ambiguous and unusual way of referring to tribute in contrast to the more regular φόρος that the Uxians will later render to Alexander. Alexander’s deception continues as he immediately begins a night action and a surprise attack on the towns of the Uxians. Not long before (only eleven pages in the Teubner edition), Arrian reported Alexander’s angry reaction to Parmenion’s suggestion of a nighttime stealth attack on the Persians at Gaugamela (Anab. 3.10.2). There Alexander asserted that it would be shameful (αἰσχρόν) to steal the victory and that he must win openly and without contrivance (φανερῶς καὶ ἄνευ σοφίσματος). Now, Alexander has violated his own prohibitions by initiating a night action against the Uxians along a road that was not open to view (ἄλλ ην ἢ τὴν φανεράν).46 Moreover, Alexander’s ostensible success is tempered by the ultimate results. He gains only plunder (λεία) from this attack, in contrast to the money (χρήματα) he derives from Babylon, Susa, and Persepolis. He grants mercy to the Uxians at the behest of Darius’s mother, a detail Arrian gives to us on the authority of Ptolemy, and while taking advice from royal women is new to Arrian’s presentation of Alexander, it is a standard feature of Eastern despotism in the Greek imagination.47 The mercy in question takes the form of an ambiguous set of gifts (γέρα) offered to the Uxians. Alexander will allow them to inhabit their own land for as long as they bring him tribute. The same word, γέρα, is used by Herodotus of the gifts given by Xerxes to Pythius before marching out from Sardis, gifts memorably paired with Xerxes’s gruesome slaughter of Pythius’s son.48 Finally, the tribute specified will be paid in livestock, since as Arrian explicitly states, the Uxians have no money (χρήματα) or arable land (γῆ οἵα ἐργάζεσθαι) and are herdsmen (νομεῖς). Arrian’s emphasis on the nature of the Uxian economy and the absence of newly appointed officials highlights Alexander’s failure to conquer the Uxians completely in spite of his military victory. Even for Alexander, nomads represent the limits of empire, since their way of life defies full abA l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 73

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sorption into his bureaucratic network. His attack on them is an attempt to transgress the natural boundaries of his own power, reminiscent of Darius I’s invasion of the Scythians or Cyrus the Great’s encounter with the Massagetae.49 Thus, whereas in Babylon and Susa Alexander had acted as an anti-Xerxes, in the Uxian episode his actions are uncomfortably close to a stereotype of Eastern kingship. Th rough his use of the shadows of Cyrus and Darius, Arrian has suddenly destabilized his formerly uncomplicated presentation of Alexander, signaling that a new segment of the narrative is beginning as Alexander’s political circumstances require a revision of his earlier public persona. The fourth and fi nal episode in this sequence, Alexander’s conquest of Persepolis (Anab. 3.18.1–12), adheres more closely to the four-part structure of the Babylon and Susa episodes, but here too Alexander’s behavior subverts the paradigm of leadership displayed earlier. The party that comes to greet Alexander on his way to the city, again in contrast to the friendly overtures at Babylon and Susa, represents another political reality of the Persian Empire. It is an army of forty thousand men led by the powerful local chieftain Ariobarzanes. Dynastic struggle and imperfectly loyal, highly independent subordinates were real features of the Persian imperial power structure, and now Alexander has to confront these elements for the fi rst time as an insider.50 His strategy here is similar to what he employed against the Uxians. Th rough another night maneuver and a predawn attack on the Persian camps, Alexander makes short work of his opposition without fighting a pitched batt le. He then occupies the city, sets up a satrap, and performs perhaps the most important symbolic act of the entire fourepisode sequence: he burns the palace at Persepolis.51 Arrian marks the burning of the palace as especially significant by the accompanying speech of Parmenion (the only speech in the four episodes under discussion here) and by his own authorial judgment on Alexander’s behavior. First, Parmenion reminds Alexander that the palace being burned in fact belongs to him. Th is reminder recalls Croesus’s famous advice to Cyrus during the sack of Sardis (Hdt. 1.87–88), thus simultaneously casting Alexander as an Eastern despot (Cyrus) and offering him the opportunity to take good advice.52 Alexander’s response and the authorial intrusion it occasions warrant a close look (Anab. 3.18.12): ὁ δὲ τιμωρήσασθαι ἐθέλειν Πέρσας ἔφασκεν ἀνθ’ ὧν ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλ άδα ἐλάσαντες τάς τε Ἀθήνας κατέσκαψαν καὶ τὰ ἱερὰ ἐνέπρησαν, καὶ ὅσα ἄλλ α κακὰ τοὺς Ἕλλ ηνας εἰργάσαντο, ὑπὲρ τούτων δίκας λαβεῖν. ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ σὺν νῷ δρᾶσαι τοῦτό γε Ἀλέξανδρος οὐδὲ εἶναί τις αὕτη Περσῶν τῶν πάλαι τιμωρία. 74 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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And he kept saying that he wished to punish the Persians for what they had done when they drove into Greece, razed Athens, and burned the temples, and that he wished to administer justice for all the other evils they had done to the Greeks. But Alexander does not seem to me to have done this particular action with a sound mind, nor does it seem to have been any punishment for Persian deeds of old.

Arrian gives a sense of insistence and repetition on Alexander’s part, both by his use of the imperfect tense for the governing verb and by his choice of the verb φάσκω, which regularly has that sense.53 Alexander is attempting to hold on to his status as the leader of a retributive Greek expedition against the Persians. Arrian, however, leaves no doubt as to his own opinion of this explanation. Th is justification for Alexander’s war in Asia no longer suffices for him, since he has demonstrated in his narrative of events at Susa that the retributive war was over. Thus Alexander’s campaign has become something altogether different, and here Arrian begins to open questions of the meaning of this campaign and the character of the man who is leading it. Alexander maintains his Greek identity, but he is increasingly faced with the reality of his new identity as Persian king. Arrian’s complex narrative in this section illustrates that no simplistic dichotomy will suffice to structure an understanding of Alexander’s later career, which will occupy more than half the remaining text. A rich series of problems begins to emerge, which Arrian will analyze in due course. The challenge posed to Alexander’s character by his confl icting identities is a theme that persists throughout the rest of the Anabasis. Arrian has introduced this theme through his side-by-side narration of two pairs of episodes. In the fi rst pair, the Babylon and Susa episodes, Alexander acts as a proper Persian king and then as a proper Greek leader. In the second pair, the Uxian and Persepolis episodes, Alexander transgresses the boundaries of propriety fi rst as a Persian king, and then in turn as a Greek leader. Arrian is not moralizing here, nor is he simply reporting events in a neutral mode. He has gone to great lengths to narrate these episodes in parallel. As yet he offers no fi nal judgment of his own, only a framework within which his readers can approach the complexities of Alexander’s remarkable but increasingly exotic campaigns.

P e r s i a i n Ac t ion The patterned conquests just discussed close down the retribution narrative that motivated the action in the opening books of the Anabasis, as ArA l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 75

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rian himself acknowledges through his explicit commentary on the palace incident in Persepolis. In this sequence, Arrian reorients his narrative moving forward, in part through the sudden deployment of Persian exempla who appear repeatedly as Alexander solidifies his position on the Persian throne. The primary source for these exempla in Arrian’s world is Herodotus, and Herodotus accordingly becomes an important intertext for Arrian at this point in the narrative.54 Indeed, Arrian has even drawn the patterning technique itself from Herodotus.55 The use of a Herodotean mode of narrative assists in the creation of a new geopolitical atmosphere while also constantly reflecting on earlier parts of Alexander’s career, thus grounding individual incidents in longer stories of Alexander’s life and the historical relationship between Greece and Persia. At times, Arrian is quite explicit in drawing attention to Persian exempla. For instance, when he censures Alexander’s mutilation of Bessus, he directly compares this action to stereotypical behavior of Persian and Median kings.56 In Arrian’s view, such brutality was characteristic of the way they related to their subjects (Anab. 4.7.4): καὶ ἐγὼ οὔτε τὴν ἄγαν ταύτην τιμωρίαν Βήσσου ἐπαινῶ, ἀλλ ὰ βαρβαρικὴν εἶναι τίθεμαι τῶν ἀκρωτηρίων τὴν λώβην καὶ ὑπαχθῆναι Ἀλέξανδρον ξύμφημι ἐς ζῆλον τοῦ Μηδικοῦ τε καὶ Περσικοῦ πλούτου καὶ τῆς κατὰ τοὺς βαρβάρους βασιλέας οὐκ ἴσης ἐς τοὺς ὑπηκόους ξυνδιαιτήσεως. And I do not praise the excessive punishment of Bessus, but I put down the mutilation of facial features as barbarism, and I declare that Alexander was dragged down into emulation of Median and Persian wealth, and of the barbarian kings’ nonegalitarian interaction with their subjects.

Arrian is similarly direct in his approach to Alexander’s invasion of Scythia. He is the only extant authority to give a negative spin to this failed expedition,57 and to help along his preferred interpretation of the event he puts a comparison with Darius I into the mouth of Alexander (4.4.3): ὁ δὲ κρεῖσσον ἔφη ἐς ἔσχατον κινδύνου ἐλθεῖν ἢ κατεστραμμένον ξύμπασαν ὀλίγου δεῖν τὴν Ἀσίαν γέλωτα εἶναι Σκύθαις, καθάπερ Δαρεῖος ὁ Ξέρξου πατὴρ πάλαι ἐγένετο. And he [Alexander] said it would be better to go to the farthest bounds of danger than, after conquering almost all Asia, to be a joke to the Scythians, just like Darius the father of Xerxes was long ago.

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Alexander’s overt remark calls out for a comparison between his expedition and Darius’s, and the result is not flattering, since in the end he is carried back to his tent after an incapacitating bout of diarrhea. Arrian thus highlights both kings’ failures to appreciate the limits of their power by bringing them into a closer parallelism than the historical circumstances warrant.58 Thus common exempla drawn from the Persian parts of Herodotus’s Histories assist in Arrian’s reorientation of his narrative of Alexander’s campaigns following his accession to the Persian throne. The Scythian episode also shows that Arrian has more subtle ways of introducing Persian exempla. His whole narrative of Alexander’s invasion of Scythia (Anab. 4.3.6–4.4.9) is modeled on an earlier sequence of suppressed rebellions (1.3.1–1.4.5) in a way that recalls Herodotean narrative patterning.59 The episodes share numerous structural components, particularly their organization around the crossing of a large river that forms a border of Alexander’s empire. Each is also situated in the immediate aftermath of one of Alexander’s accessions. In book 1, the campaigns follow Philip’s death and Alexander’s accession to the Macedonian throne, whereas in book 4 they follow the arrest of Bessus, whose attempt to usurp the throne is the last serious challenge to Alexander’s sovereignty in Persia that Arrian presents. By these means, and using a Herodotean style of narrative, Arrian encourages a comparison between Alexander’s early reign as the king of Macedon and his early reign as the king of Persia in a way that illustrates Alexander’s evolving motivations.60 At the same time, both overt and implicit references to Herodotus’s portraits of Cyrus and Darius I infuse the narrative with Herodotean touches while also recalling the intellectual themes treated in the Histories. The greed and arrogance of tyrants come through especially strongly here and offer a Herodotean approach to understanding Alexander. By deploying Herodotean techniques and modes of thought, Arrian has subtly shifted his idealizing narrative into a more flexible frame along with a rich array of contestable exempla largely drawn from Herodotus himself. Already in the patterned conquests after Gaugamela he has lit a long Herodotean fuse leading to explosive controversies illustrated through the Scythian campaign (Anab. 4.3.6–4.4.9), a massive digression on Alexander’s most famous misdeeds (4.8.1–4.14.4), and numerous scandalous anecdotes.61 In approaching this critical last stage of Alexander’s development, Arrian uses familiar exempla in combination with his own narrative innovations. It is important to emphasize, however, that Arrian is resisting the temptation to use exempla as simplistic formulas for judging Alexander’s character as positive or negative. There is a productive vacillation in

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his presentation of Alexander’s career that depends on routinely upsett ing the expectations created by oversimplified exemplary narratives. Alexander’s evolving motivations illustrate this principle clearly.62 After the Batt le of Gaugamela and the ensuing conquest narratives mentioned above, Arrian replaces the retribution theme with a new, more politically calculated motivation: the capture of Darius. To illustrate the new motive, Arrian again gives the thoughts of both Alexander and Darius just as he had before Gaugamela (Anab. 3.19.1): ταῦτα δὲ διαπραξάμενος προὐχώρει ἐπὶ Μηδίας· ἐκεῖ γὰρ ἐπυνθάνετο εἶναι Δαρεῖον. γνώμην δὲ πεποίητο Δαρεῖος, εἰ μὲν ἐπὶ Σούσων καὶ Βαβυλῶνος μένοι Ἀλέξανδρος, αὐτοῦ προσμένειν καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν Μήδοις, εἰ δὴ τι νεωτερισθείη τῶν ἀμφ’ Ἀλέξανδρον· εἰ δ’ ἐλαύνοι ἐπ’ αὐτόν, αὐτὸς δὲ ἄνω ἰέναι τὴν ἐπὶ Παρθυαίους τε καὶ Ὑρκανίαν ἔστε ἐπὶ Βάκτρα, τήν τε χώραν φθείρων πᾶσαν καὶ ἄπορον ποιῶν Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τὴν πρόσω ὁδόν. After doing these things he marched forth toward Media, for he kept hearing that Darius was there. Darius, meanwhile, had formed the opinion that if Alexander remained in Susa and Babylon, he himself would stay there in Media in case anything drastic were to happen in Alexander’s camp. On the other hand, if Alexander were to march against him, he himself would go to the interior, to the Parthians and Hyrcania all the way to Bactra, laying waste to the whole country and making the road impassable for Alexander.

The considerations here are practical and tactical on both sides with litt le hint of ideology. In some ways the story seems to continue as before, but with retribution removed as a motive, military intelligence begins to take over as a way of explaining the action, and the narrative becomes increasingly granular. There is an undeniable swift ness to the pace of Arrian’s narrative in certain parts of the Anabasis that lends a sense of being carried along with Alexander’s inexorable campaign.63 Detailed reports of troop movements and distances traveled, combined with incidental descriptions of local geography, help to create a genuine atmosphere of motion in these so-called march narratives.64 Arrian’s account of the pursuit and death of Darius and the ensuing account of the pursuit and trial of Bessus certainly qualify as march narratives, as has been noticed before.65 The march technique effectively underscores the political ramifications of the rapid changes brought about by the action. Movement across geographical space eventually leads to changing geopolitical circumstances and changing cultural sett ings, and 78 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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by describing the space, Arrian highlights such changes through a variety of devices. A particularly striking device occurs at the very end of book 3, involving the interruption of a march narrative with generalizing language. Th is is a segment of the narrative that Arrian has marked as transitional in numerous ways, and the opening of book 4 will accelerate the transition dramatically. At the end of book 3, however, the details of Alexander’s march briefly give way to an account of unspecified actors in an unspecified space. The effect of this abrupt change of tone in the narrative is to step back from the grind of the campaign and consider Alexander’s trajectory across larger stretches of space and time, and thus ultimately to consider his place within a network of historical questions. The timing of this shift, immediately after the arrest and trial of Bessus, illustrates the changing face of Alexander’s expedition. Alexander’s pursuit of Bessus follows directly from the death of Darius and thus continues the political motivation of the campaign. In effect, Bessus takes over from Darius as the primary antagonist in a geopolitical struggle, as the high degree of parallelism in Arrian’s narrative of the two pursuits implies. Alexander, in turn, steps into the role of a vengeful Persian king challenging a usurper. The fi rst section of the text after Arrian’s eulogy of Darius clearly connects to the preceding narrative (Anab. 3.23.1): Ἀλέξανδρος δὲ τοὺς ὑπολειφθέντας ἐν τῇ διώξει τῆς στρατιᾶς ἀναλαβὼν ἐς Ὑρκανίαν προὐχώρει. And Alexander, after taking up the part of the army that had been left behind in the pursuit, marched forth into Hyrcania.

By mentioning the pursuit of Darius, Arrian closely ties this section of the campaign to the previous one, even though the death of Darius gives him an opportunity to break the sequence.66 Hycarnia then becomes the next stage of the march, and Arrian continues his pattern of giving specific local information directly relevant to the immediate context. So, for example, Arrian describes the road to Bactria (3.23.1), mentions intelligence concerning the leftover mercenaries of Darius, and names the Tapurians as the next group Alexander will have to fight. He carries on to give the names of commanding officers and their specific mandates (3.23.2), and generally picks up just where he left off before he digressed with a death notice for Darius. The character of the narrative changes, however, once Alexander condemns Bessus to death (3.30.5). The closing sections of book 3 (Anab. 3.30.6–11) differ from the precedA l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 79

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ing section in two ways that raise questions to be considered in the following narrative. First, the geographical information that Arrian offers at this point speaks to large-scale divisions of the world rather than local and regional touches to explain the action. The question of the correct way to divide Europe from Asia introduces an old debate laden with cultural baggage as far back as Herodotus, who is mentioned by name here.67 Second, Bessus has not yet been replaced as the primary antagonist by anyone specific but instead by a generic group of barbarians, who again play into older notions of a sharp divide between the Greek and barbarian worlds by deploying a stereotype instead of a clearly delineated group. By departing from his own narrative scheme in this way, Arrian momentarily entertains the question of whether the story he has been telling works within these older and more established frameworks for understanding the relationship of Greeks to non-Greeks. The geographical digression orients Arrian’s questions in both space and time. Arrian moves smoothly from a typical description of a river into a discussion of global geography as the incidental detail of Alexander’s arrival at the Tanaïs inspires a sudden macrolevel discussion. The Tanaïs, as Arrian reminds us (Anab. 3.30.8), features in Herodotus’s ethnography of Scythia (Hdt. 4.57), which is also where Herodotus sets forth his understanding of the relative size and proper divisions of Europe, Asia, and Libya (Hdt. 4.36.2–4.45.5). Arrian’s own account of Scythia will occupy the opening sections of book 4 of the Anabasis and rely heavily not only on Herodotus’s account of Darius’s Scythian expedition but on Herodotus’s broader theme of barbarian despotism as well.68 Here, Arrian too considers where best to identify the division between Europe and Asia, suggesting that not everyone agrees that it should be fi xed at the Tanaïs (Anab. 3.30.8): καὶ τὸν Τάναϊν τοῦτον εἰσὶν οἳ ὅρον ποιοῦσι τῆς Ἀσίας καὶ τῆς Εὐρώπης. And there are those who make this Tanaïs the boundary of Asia and Europe.

As is typical, Arrian does not take a fi rm position on this debate, using it instead to pose questions to his audience.69 Crucially, however, in the preceding sentence Arrian denied that this is the same Tanaïs that Herodotus was describing. Thus he has raised a debate over geography and invoked a historian famous for his portraits of barbarian kings and their relations with Greeks. These issues appear just as Alexander has completed his war of retribution in response to those Herodotean kings and intends to carry on occupying their position. Geographical determinism has a long history 80 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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in Greek ethnographic thought, and Herodotus employed some versions of this concept in his own history.70 The combination of a geographical debate and a hinting reference to the relevant historical narratives developed by Herodotus thus raises that analytical framework as a possibility here for interpreting the future actions of Alexander. The military action described at this point on one level picks up from before the geographical digression, but the loss of specificity continues the theme of grand divisions. The last specific detail of Alexander’s march was that he moved from the Oxus to Maracanda and then the Tanaïs (Anab. 3.30.6), a detail that inspired the digression just discussed. After going on about how best to divide the world, however, Arrian returns to the story with the localizing adverb “there” (ἐνταῦθα, 3.30.10), but he does not make a specific connection with the preceding narrative as he did after his digression on the death of Darius.71 Thus the thread of the march has been lost, and in fact the last place mentioned in Arrian’s geographical digression is the Nile, so some labor is required to connect ἐνταῦθα back to the banks of the Tanaïs. Similarly, the action follows some Macedonians (τινὲς τῶν Μακεδόνων) rather than specific units and commanders as before. These Macedonians encounter a fierce attack, but their assailants receive no detailed treatment, and instead Arrian simply says the Macedonians were butchered by the barbarians (κατακόπτονται πρὸς τῶν βαρβάρων). Although details are also fuzzy in other accounts of the incident, it was possible to associate these enemy combatants closely with Maracanda as Curtius did, but Arrian has presented them without even his habitual adjective “local” (ἐπιχώριος).72 A miniature ring composition brings this section to a defi nite conclusion. Arrian uses the same phrasing to describe the initial Macedonian suffering and then the reversal in which the Macedonians triumph. After their fi rst successful raid, the enemy combatants flee to the top of a sheer mountain, where Alexander engages them in a brutal and costly uphill batt le (Anab. 3.30.10–11). Eventually the Macedonians gain the upper hand, and some of their enemies throw themselves over a cliff while others are butchered by the Macedonians (κατεκόπησαν πρὸς Μακεδόνων), a nearly exact repetition of the phrasing used at the beginning of the episode. Although the verb κατακόπτω is not uncommon in batt le descriptions, it is uncommon to see it repeated so precisely in such a short space, and so the repetition clearly serves the function of closure.73 Th is miniature ring forms a retribution narrative—precisely how Arrian began his story of Alexander’s invasion of Persia. After explicitly rejecting retribution as a motivation at Persepolis (Anab. 3.18.12), Arrian has begun to entertain other motives for Alexander’s continued campaigns. A l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y / 81

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The Herodotean overtones of the surrounding narrative recall the grand themes of the earlier historian’s analysis of the Persian invasions of Greece. Famously, Herodotus began his story with an exploration of the idea that Asians and Europeans had been caught in an endless cycle of retributions since mythological times (Hdt. 1.1–5) before shift ing to his certain knowledge of the political harm done by Croesus to Greek communities in western Asia. Herodotus is thus present in multiple ways in this section of the narrative organized around the river Tanaïs, but Arrian’s insistence that we are not looking at Herodotus’s Tanaïs upsets the idea that Alexander can be mapped directly onto old, Herodotean portraits of Asian kings. As Arrian prepares to inaugurate a new segment of his narrative, he thus begins to build a new analytical framework within which to entertain serious historical questions about the meaning of Alexander’s later career. After many pages of hyperspecific descriptions of discrete locales, Arrian suddenly shifts to macrolevel geographic argumentation and strips Alexander’s opponents of any specific identity. In so doing, Arrian places Alexander in a generic barbarian space, where readers are invited to contemplate the behavior of the protagonist within existing geographical and cultural frameworks that rely on sharp divisions between Europe and Asia and between Greek and barbarian, the same basic narratives that dominated school exercises using exempla from the Persian Wars.74 Bessus will eventually be replaced with another primary antagonist, Spitamenes, and the details of the campaign will return accordingly, although the opening chapters of book 4 are fi lled with questions about Alexander’s character and with details of a particularly grueling campaign. The resumption of detailed description effectively breaks down the overly simplistic dichotomies momentarily entertained at the end of book 3 and begins to build up a more complex image of Alexander, grounded in Arrian’s fi xation on the realia of the campaign. As Alexander’s motivation evolves throughout the Anabasis, the pattern of exempla changes as well. Persian kings presented through a Herodotean lens dominate the narrative immediately following Alexander’s accession to the Persian throne, but as the pursuit of Spitamenes sputters out, yet another series of exempla takes over as Alexander’s motivations change again. Whereas Spitamenes had been a third primary antagonist following Darius and Bessus, his story ends with less fanfare (Anab. 4.17.7): ὡς δὲ ἐξηγγέλλ ετο αὐτοῖς Ἀλέξανδρος ἐν ὁρμῇ ὢν ἐπὶ τὴν ἔρημον ἐλαύνειν ἀποτεμόντες τοῦ Σπιταμένους τὴν κεφαλὴν παρὰ Ἀλέξανδρον πέμπουσιν, ὡς ἀποτρέψοντες ἀπὸ σφῶν αὐτῶν τούτῳ τῷ ἔργῳ.

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And when it was reported to them that Alexander was driving hard toward the desert, cutt ing off Spitamenes’s head they sent it to Alexander with the intention of turning him aside from themselves by this deed.

The death of Darius inspired a lengthy eulogy (3.22.2–3.22.6), followed by an obviously related campaign against Bessus; and Bessus’s death in turn introduced a massive digression on Alexander’s tyrannical behavior (4.8.1– 4.14.4), followed by a resumption of a campaign against Spitamenes already under way.75 By contrast, the death of Spitamenes is largely ignored. It leads to a brief administrative section (4.18.1–3), a typical, unremarkable way for Arrian to end a section of narrative, and then a totally unrelated, unmotivated campaign directed quite literally against a rock (4.18.4): ἅμα δὲ τῷ ἦρι ὑποφαίνοντι προὐχώρει ὡς ἐπὶ τὴν ἐν τῇ Σογδιανῇ πέτραν. As soon as spring appeared, he marched forth toward the rock in Sogdiane.

Political details follow, but they do not outlast Alexander’s siege of the Sogdian Rock and in no way explain Alexander’s next move, another attempt to capture a geographical feature (4.21.1). The volatile nature of this section of the narrative, careening between the fight against Spitamenes and other, sometimes entirely unrelated goals before shift ing to an aimless campaign with no identifiable antagonist, underscores the fading coherence of Alexander’s strategy. Alexander’s occupation of the Sogdian Rock is followed by his attempts to occupy not one but two further rocks, and in both cases the rocks themselves will once again be the primary objects, while political motives are only incidentally mentioned in the surrounding context.76 The shift from human antagonists to geographical objectives is easy to perceive and meaningful, for while Alexander began his campaigns with clear and obvious geopolitical goals, he now begins to move through space with few obvious motives and no noteworthy human opponents until at last he meets with Porus in India (Anab. 5.8.4). When Alexander begins pursuing geographical goals for their own sake, Arrian’s primary source of exempla is mythology. The three rocks of book 4 all in some way involve heroic narratives, and the fi nal one, the Rock of Aornus, is most explicit, since Arrian goes out of his way to compare Alexander to Heracles there.77 Book 5, in turn, opens with the Nysaean embassy (Anab. 5.1.1–5.2.7), which links Alexander to Dionysus, and so the Herodotean kings slide to the sidelines just as polis politics did when Alexander

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fi rst took up the throne of Persia.78 The clustering of exempla in different segments of the narrative thus allows Arrian to use familiar structures of thought to orient his readers in his analysis of Alexander’s career.

C onc l u s ion The existence of a strong tradition of exemplary discourse was a great aid to Arrian’s composition of a history of Alexander. Not only could he depend on a readership that was broadly familiar with a number of useful historical comparisons, but he could use these comparisons to enter productively into existing debates over Alexander’s career. His deployment of a shift ing series of exempla allowed him to raise different historical issues at different points in Alexander’s career while also casting backward glances at material already narrated. The introduction of more heavily Persian overtones to the narrative after Alexander’s accession to the throne of Persia neatly fl ipped the retributive expedition of the opening books into an analysis of royal power that was sustained over a series of challenging historical circumstances. In this way, Arrian built up a body of historical material that was relevant to one of the key issues of his own time: the relationship between monarchy and individual character. Placing Alexander in rivalry with Heracles and Dionysus instead of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes initiated a new series of historical questions. Alexander’s alleged divinity only rarely cropped up in the early books of the Anabasis, but the undeniable fact of his mortality raised the issue in a way that could not be avoided. Arrian’s own world and political circumstances involved not only the need to defi ne good royal behavior but an evolving imperial cult that fl irted with deification of the Roman emperor while drawing on Hellenistic models initiated by Alexander. Just as Arrian used Alexander’s history to explore issues of kingship that were relevant to contemporary debate, so too he would look into the human nature of the king and the importance of remembering the king’s humanity while discussing his role in a political system.

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4 / S ic k n e s s , De at h, a n d V i r t u e

I n t h e pr e v ious c h a p t e r , I f o c u s e d on A r r i a n ’s use of Alexander as a political exemplum in exploring the nature of kingship within existing rhetorical and historical traditions. In this chapter, I will look at how Arrian uses Alexander as an exemplum of personal virtue and at how his efforts differ from near-contemporary accounts. In so doing, I will show that the two types of exempla are inseparable in Arrian’s understanding of monarchy. Th is is another area in which Arrian offers his readers a fresh, new perspective on ancient history, this time by reinterpreting familiar material in light of contemporary standards of elite male behavior, with particular attention to the distinctly Roman obsession with physical composure and dignified appearance. In designing his characterization of Alexander, Arrian takes full advantage not only of the materials available to him for research but also of contemporary frameworks for understanding human behavior. Although Greeks and Romans of all periods saw a connection between outward, physical traits and invisible, interior virtues, subtle differences in such att itudes could radically alter the cultural implications of a given physical factor.1 Alexander offers to the historian a variety of avenues for pursuing the illustration of virtue or vice through his abused, battered, but also powerful and disciplined body. Arrian exploits these possibilities in a way that raises the issue of Alexander’s att itude toward death and turns the king into a nuanced philosophical exemplum, thus complicating the relationship between individual virtue and the politics of one-man rule. As was the case with Alexander as a historical exemplum, the king’s body as such was already famous when Arrian began writing. Alexander himself seems to have used his body as a source of authority. The surviving accounts of his life record numerous instances of flagging troops rallying at

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the sight of their king leading a charge, the king pointing to the wounds on his body to demonstrate his own commitment to his wars, feats of physical self-control being used to encourage strong performances from the troops in difficult situations. Th is physical style of leadership seems to have been very effective and to have left an impression on later commanders, particularly in the Roman army.2 Even at the time of Alexander’s death, however, the ideological importance of his body was not lost on his Successors. The attempts of Ptolemy and Perdiccas to gain control of Alexander’s corpse reveal the close association between the body of Alexander and political power in the immediate aftermath of his death.3 Similarly, the tendency of Hellenistic rulers to imitate Alexander’s physical appearance suggests that this association continued long afterward as well.4 Th is way of thinking also made its way into the literary tradition and was evident in stories told by both Plutarch and Curtius. For instance, both authors mention the tale, omitted by Arrian, of Alexander’s inviolable body failing to decompose for days after his death, in spite of the hot, humid conditions in Babylon.5 Plutarch also includes a detailed description of Alexander’s appearance that carries erotic and divine overtones. He discusses a glowing complexion and pleasant smells from both the skin and the mouth.6 Given what is known of living conditions in the urban areas of antiquity, it should come as no surprise that pleasant smells were associated with divinity and high social status, since only powerful individuals would have had the resources to control the odors of their surroundings. The heavily urbanized environment of the Roman Empire entailed an intensified interest in the topic of smells, particularly smells produced by the bodies of human beings.7 Arrian chose not to include anecdotal material about Alexander’s body odor, in part owing to his full participation in Roman public life and concomitant attention to Roman social norms. It is telling that Curtius also avoided the topic. While pleasant smells had positive associations and implied membership in a social class that was able to control its body to a greater extent than the urban poor, excessive attention to smell (particularly in the form of perfumes) could earn censure from moralizing Romans in a way that would have been foreign to Greeks.8 Perhaps as a consequence of moving in elite Roman circles across the empire, this is an area where Arrian shows a close affi nity with Roman thought. However, as is often the case, Roman traditions were themselves informed partly by the influence of Greek literature, making it difficult and perhaps unhelpful to draw a sharp division between the two. Instead, a malleable discourse of physicality emerged that could be exploited in a variety of ways. Arrian’s handling of the interplay between contemporary public ideologies and existing liter-

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ary traditions is typical of his approach to writing history. Using a contemporary analytical framework, he reorganizes traditional materials to construct an unconventional argument about the past. Th is dynamic is most apparent in several key episodes in the Anabasis in which Alexander must react to the realities of his own frail and mortal body, or those of his closest companions. In these episodes, Arrian creates a system of values centered on the human body that blends contemporary bodily discourse with wellknown rhetorical models, ultimately preparing the way for a dramatic demonstration of Alexander’s virtue in his fi nal days. In this chapter, I will show that Arrian’s use of Alexander as a moral exemplum works together with his understanding of monarchy as a system of government, as elucidated in the previous chapter.

R om a n A p p r oac h e s t o P h y s ic a l i t y In recent decades, much work has been devoted to explicating the central role of the body in elite male self-fashioning in the Roman Empire.9 In particular, physical self-control was an important way for a man to display his status in relation to his peers. By contrast, an inability to control the physical manifestations of one’s emotional state was a frequent and effective target for rhetorical invective, as were less controllable physical factors such as baldness, obesity, birthmarks, and the like.10 Although similar concerns are evident in earlier Greek literature as well, the specific issue of bodily control seems to have increased in importance during the early years of the Principate.11 Complete mastery of the material self became an indispensable part of the masculine ideal in the context of Roman public discourse. Arrian’s own participation in the Roman discourse of physicality was influenced by his training in Stoicism.12 While it is difficult to impart to Stoicism as a school of philosophy any specific doctrine concerning the body, one area of widespread agreement is that Stoics in general viewed the body as a universalizing element of the human experience, a limiting factor shared by all people.13 Stoic views of the body therefore intersect with more general Roman tendencies in some challenging ways. According to what Arrian tells us about the views of Epictetus, who is by far the most important Stoic influence on him, the body is beyond the individual’s control. It is the very fi rst item listed in the Enchiridion of things that cannot be controlled (Ench. 1.1).14 Th is is not to say that Stoics, Arrian, or Epictetus believed that individuals could not influence their physical well-being at all. One can of course control to some degree what one eats, how much one

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sleeps, how often one bathes, and so on in that fashion. However, one cannot completely control bodily weaknesses. For all human beings, wounds cause pain, and sickness causes suffering. It is the endurance of such suffering that constitutes Stoic virtue, and the Stoic veneration of that endurance accords well with the ideology just discussed, which perhaps explains its popularity in elite Roman circles.15 However, the fact that the body is beyond the individual’s control means that the sought-after perfect mastery of the physical self is and must always be impossible to attain, even for the most disciplined individual. It is precisely this universalizing limitation that makes the body a site of both great triumph and monumental failure. To succumb to bodily weakness is to be a human being, but to do so with dignity is to show one’s moral worth.

P h y s ic a l W e a k n e s s i n t h e A n a b a s i s Arrian’s narrative of Alexander’s campaigns highlights the value-laden nature of the body through two primary types of physical vulnerability: injury and sickness. These two types of vulnerability are closely related but defi nitely distinct categories of bodily limitation. On the one hand, both wounds in batt le and serious illness can underscore the frailty of the human body and the ultimate mortality of its possessor. On the other hand, the result of batt le wounds, if survived, is tangible evidence of bravery, whereas physical illness leaves no such evidence and can even bring stigma in some circumstances.16 Thus the cultural implications of these two types of limitation are oriented differently. Illness and disease are often connected with weakness and invisible moral failings. Batt le wounds, however, are more often connected with positive attributes such as courage, strength, devotion, and, for a person in a leadership position, excellent leadership abilities. In the case of injury, the Anabasis is fairly straightforward. It is a narrative of warfare, and so injury is most frequently the result of action on the batt lefield. Wounds in batt le are almost never represented as a product or a symptom of any negative character trait in Greek and Roman literature. The chief exception to this tendency is the suspicion occasionally cast toward the motives of a warrior too eager to rush into batt le, which could ultimately diminish the effect of such feats of bravery. For instance, Herodotus reports that the Spartans did not wish to recognize the valor of Aristodemus at Plataea because he was motivated by an irrational desire to atone for his survival of Thermopylae.17 In the Anabasis, Arrian comes closest to this kind of criticism in his report of Alexander’s rash actions among the Mal-

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lians (Anab. 6.9.5–6.11.1), for which the king was upbraided by a group of his highest-ranking friends, who feared for the empire in the event of his death (6.13.4). Significantly, Arrian adds the weight of his own authority to the criticisms of Alexander’s friends (6.13.4): καί μοι δοκεῖ ἄχθεσθαι Ἀλέξανδρος τοῖσδε τοῖς λόγοις, ὅτι ἀληθεῖς τε ὄντας ἐγίγνωσκε καὶ αὐτὸν ὑπαίτιον τῇ ἐπιτιμήσει. καὶ ὅμως ὑπὸ μένους τε τοῦ ἐν ταῖς μάχαις καὶ τοῦ ἔρωτος τῆς δόξης, καθάπερ οἱ ἄλλ ης τινὸς ἡδονῆς ἐξηττώμενοι, οὐ καρτερὸς ἦν ἀπέχεσθαι τῶν κινδύνων. And it seems to me that Alexander was vexed by these words because he knew that they were true and that he himself was open to the criticism. All the same, bested by rage in batt le and by love of glory, just like those who are bested by any other pleasure, he was not strong enough to keep away from dangers.

Th is is not a strictly negative assessment—perhaps more like too much of a good thing—but it does raise the issue of the contrasting needs of the individual and the community in a way that underscores one of Arrian’s major concerns about monarchy as a system of government. Certain individuals are so important to the survival of the community that their ability to submerge their pleasure to the needs of the group is indispensable. The personal and the political therefore interlock in a challenging way here. Alexander’s individual exploits were an important part of his leadership strategy, but his single-minded quest for individual glory underscored his lack of long-range planning and concern for the wider community.18 A comparison with Arrian’s handling of the defeat of Porus at the Hydaspes makes clear the importance of individual restraint in Arrian’s understanding of good government. Porus was a famously large, brave, and fearsome adversary of Alexander, and in many ways he can be seen as an exemplary figure in his own right. In other extant accounts of the batt le, Porus tends to appear as a wild man who has to be beaten into submission, to the point that he could literally not move well enough to continue fighting.19 By contrast, Arrian has created a character who, though unquestionably fierce, has a defi nite sense of restraint. After being wounded, Porus agrees to a parley, at which he surrenders with dignity. Arrian presents his famous one-word reply to Alexander when asked how he wants to be treated—βασιλικῶς—with maximum ambiguity, rendering it unclear whether Porus means that he wishes to be treated as a king himself or that he wishes Alexander to behave like a king. In this way, Arrian suggests an

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equivalence between the two kings, encouraging a comparison and introducing a consideration of how a king should behave. Moreover, the precise words he uses to assess Porus’s performance on the batt lefield are reminiscent of those reported at Alexander’s injury among the Mallians. There, Arrian says (Anab. 6.13.4), Νέαρχος δὲ λέγει, ὅτι χαλεποὶ αὐτῷ τῶν φίλων ἐγένοντο ὅσοι ἐκάκιζον, ὅτι αὐτὸς πρὸ τῆς στρατιᾶς κινδυνεύοι· οὐ γὰρ στρατηγοῦ ταῦτα, ἀλλ ὰ στρατιώτου εἶναι. Nearchus says that it was hard for him to bear that some of his friends spoke ill of him because he was endangering himself before the army. For these were not the deeds of a great general, [they said,] but of a soldier.

Similarly, of Porus Arrian says (5.18.4), Πῶρος δὲ μεγάλα ἔργα ἐν τῇ μάχῃ ἀποδειξάμενος μὴ ὅτι στρατηγοῦ, ἀλλ ὰ καὶ στρατιώτου γενναίου . . . Porus, displaying great deeds in batt le, not just of a general but of a noble soldier too . . .

Because of the obvious similarity of these two statements, and because one of them includes a citation of Nearchus, it has been suggested that both passages derive from Nearchus.20 However, there is no citation of Nearchus in Arrian’s narrative of the batt le at the Hydaspes, and the ability of a superior general to perform the duties of a good soldier was a historiographical topos to which any author, including Arrian, could have appealed at any time.21 It is therefore more likely that Arrian deliberately crafted these two statements to recall each other in order to draw a comparison between Alexander and Porus.22 A direct comparison between Porus and Darius strengthens this hypothesis. At the close of the batt le, Arrian describes Porus’s experience and distinguishes him from Darius explicitly (Anab. 5.18.4–5): ὡς τῶν τε ἱππέων τὸν φόνον κατεῖδε καὶ τῶν ἐλεφάντων τοὺς μὲν αὐτοῦ πεπτωκότας, τοὺς δὲ ἐρήμους τῶν ἡγεμόνων λυπηροὺς πλανωμένους, τῶν δὲ πεζῶν αὐτῷ οἱ πλείους ἀπολώλεσαν, οὐχ ᾗπερ Δαρεῖος ὁ μέγας βασιλεὺς ἑξάρχων τοῖς ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν τῆς φυγῆς ἀπεχώρει, ἀλλ ὰ ἔστε γὰρ ὑπέμενέ τι τῶν Ἰνδῶν ἐν τῇ μάχῃ ξυνεστηκός, ἐς τοσόνδε ἀγωνισάμενος, τε90 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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τρωμένος δὲ τὸν δεξιὸν ὦμον, . . . τότε δὴ καὶ αὐτὸς ἀπεχώρει ἐπιστρέψας τὸν ἐλέφαντα. When he saw the slaughter of the cavalry and that some of the elephants had fallen on the spot while others, bereft of their drivers, were wandering around in pain, and that most of his infantry had perished, he did not depart like the Great King Darius, leading the fl ight for his company. Instead, for as long as any part of the Indians remained united in the batt le, for so long he remained fighting, but when he was wounded in the right shoulder, . . . then at last even he turned his elephant and departed.

Darius was an obvious counterpoint to Alexander throughout Arrian’s narrative of the war of retribution, and his inclusion here in a statement evaluating the behavior of Porus puts Porus on a par with Alexander.23 Thus, the positive sentiments expressed in relation to Porus’s behavior must be kept in mind when assessing Alexander’s similar behavior among the Mallians. Arrian is not simply condemning Alexander for taking risks on the batt lefield; Porus has shown us that such actions can be praiseworthy. The problem with Alexander in the Mallian town is not taking the risk itself but the fact that it was motivated by an excessive lust for glory and a slip in rational judgment caused by Alexander’s perverse delight in slaughter. The Mallian town is an extreme example, however, and Alexander incurs many injuries in the Anabasis that Arrian reports either without comment or with a comment that praises him for his qualities as a military leader.24 Even the injury among the Mallians is not represented as an entirely negative event, inasmuch as the incident is reported in full epic dress and only afterward analyzed by cooler heads.25 Indeed, the physical presence of Alexander is once more able to cheer his troops when, feared dead or dying from the wound, he makes an extraordinary effort to master his pain and appear personally before the men, who, when they see him, are ecstatic with joy and have their confidence completely restored.26 Injuries sustained in batt le, then, are in the Anabasis, as elsewhere, generally evidence of positive personal qualities. They are proof of devotion, bravery, and, at worst, a desire for glory. Scars could be worn as badges of honor, as we see in the demonstrative actions of Alexander during his speech at Opis.27 In the Anabasis, when the physical ill effects of war on Alexander are discussed at all, they tend overwhelmingly to redound to his credit. However, the straightforward connotations of batt lefield injuries are only one part of Arrian’s interest in the physical display of virtue. Far more complicated and easily noticed because they are less frequent are instances of illness sustained by important characters in the narrative. S ic k n e s s , De a t h , a n d V i r t u e / 91

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De a t h s a n d A i l m e n t s Arrian reports very few instances of physical hardship that does not arise from injuries in batt le, but where he does, he often uses such instances to explore, illustrate, or defi ne virtue in much the same way as he does with the sufferings of the human body in batt le.28 However, whereas injury or death in batt le offered the possibility of a desirable outcome via glory and renown, illness is less fertile territory for the display of virtue. Indeed, the veteran commander Coenus underscores this point in his speech during the Hyphasis revolt. There, speaking on behalf of the soldiers who have grown weary of constant campaigning, Coenus suggests that the chief motivations of soldiers in any campaign are material gain and a good reputation at home (Anab. 5.27.8). These goals contrast sharply with the situation of the soldiers on campaign with Alexander, as Coenus stressed slightly earlier in the same speech (Anab. 5.27.5–6): τῶν δὲ ἄλλ ων Ἑλλ ήνων οἱ μὲν ἐν ταῖς πόλεσι ταῖς πρὸς σοῦ οἰκισθείσαις κατῳκισμένοι οὐδὲ οὗτοι πάντῃ ἑκόντες μένουσιν· οἱ δὲ ξυμπονοῦντές τε ἔτι καὶ ξυγκινδυνεύοντες, αὐτοί τε καὶ ἡ Μακεδονικὴ στρατιά, τοὺς μὲν ἐν ταῖς μάχαις ἀπολωλέκασιν, οἱ δὲ ἐκ τραυμάτων ἀπόμαχοι γεγενημένοι ἄλλ οι ἄλλ ῃ τῆς Ἀσίας ὑπολελειμμένοι εἰσίν, οἱ πλείους δὲ νόσῳ ἀπολώλασιν, ὀλίγοι δὲ ἐκ πολλ ῶν ὑπολείπονται, καὶ οὔτε τοῖς σώμασιν ἔτι ὡσαύτως ἐρρωμένοις, ταῖς τε νώμαις πολὺ ἔτι μᾶλλ ον προκεκμηκότες. Of the rest of the Greeks, some stay sett led in the cities founded by you, and not entirely willingly. Others, still striving together and sharing risks, both [Greeks] and the Macedonian army, have lost some in batt le, while others who have become unfit for batt le because of wounds have been left behind in various places in Asia. Yet the greater number have died from sickness and, out of many, few are left remaining. These are no longer so strong in their bodies, and in their minds they are all the more exhausted.

The statement that “the greater number” of the Macedonian and Greek troops have died from sickness, while straining credulity, nevertheless emphasizes the fact that the soldiers’ bodies are not capable of continuing Alexander’s quest for glory, even if their minds are.29 Alexander’s failure to recognize the limitations of other men’s bodies is a source of tension between him and his troops, both in the narrative of the Anabasis and, it would seem, in the historical context of the campaign. So long as the issue is courage or even stamina in batt le, Alexander can attempt to convince his men that they can push themselves harder, using the clear context of 92 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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a near-universal appreciation for military glory, but the murkier waters of sickness introduce an aspect of uncertainty that even Alexander cannot control. The intersecting issues of universal human limitations, personal self-control, and the obligations of a leader to respect the needs of his followers thus structure Arrian’s analysis of this event. In fact, this nexus of concerns is a theme that runs through the Anabasis and adds an element of human interaction to Arrian’s narrative of political and personal success. These concerns appear in numerous key incidents throughout the history.

A l e x a n de r’s F i r s t I l l n e s s Of these incidents, the most straightforward is the story of Alexander’s sickness in Tarsus, which is cured by Philip of Acarnania in desperate and uncertain circumstances (Anab. 2.4.7–11). Like other extant accounts, Arrian’s is clearly designed to emphasize Alexander’s virtues as a friend, a king, and an individual man, although Arrian has woven into his story a demonstration of several specific virtues that are relevant to his portrait of an ideal leader.30 All accounts agree in the basic sequence of events: Alexander falls ill, and his illness progresses to the point that all his doctors except Philip are convinced he will die. At that point, Philip mixes a medicinal treatment for Alexander, but before he can drink it, a note from Parmenion arrives warning Alexander that Philip is trying to poison him. Alexander drinks the medicine anyway and eventually recovers. The various accounts differ in detail, but all are attempting to accomplish the same goal of demonstrating Alexander’s virtues. Arrian’s account lacks the high drama of Plutarch’s and the rhetorical display of Curtius’s, but as often, the spare brevity of his narrative crystallizes his point. The relationship between Philip and Alexander is revealing, because it involves a personal relationship within the power structure of Alexander’s closest circle of advisers and thus is relevant to his personal style of leadership. Moreover, Alexander’s trust in his friends prevails over his fear of betrayal, while Philip’s confidence reveals the trustworthiness of Alexander himself. All these issues coalesce at the decisive moment (Anab. 2.4.10–11):31 καὶ ὁμοῦ τόν τε Ἀλέξανδρον πίνειν καὶ τὸν Φίλιππον ἀναγινώσκειν τὰ παρὰ τοῦ Παρμενίωνος. Φίλιππον δὲ εὐθὺς ἔνδηλον γενέσθαι, ὅτι καλῶς οἱ ἔχει τὰ τοῦ φαρμάκου· οὐ γὰρ ἐκπλαγῆναι πρὸς τὴν ἐπιστολήν, ἀλλ ὰ τοσόνδε μόνον παρακαλέσαι Ἀλέξανδρον, καὶ ἐς τὰ ἄλλ α οἱ πείθεσθαι ὅσα ἐπαγγέλλ οιτο· σωθήσεσθαι γὰρ πειθόμενον. καὶ τὸν μὲν καθαρθῆναί τε S ic k n e s s , De a t h , a n d V i r t u e / 93

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καὶ ῥαΐσαι αὐτῷ τὸ νόσημα, Φιλίππῳ δὲ ἐπιδεῖξαι, ὅτι πιστός ἐστιν αὐτῷ φίλος, καὶ τοῖς ἄλλ οις δὲ τοῖς ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν, ὅτι αὐτοῖς τε τοῖς φίλοις βέβαιος εἰς τὸ ἀνύποπτον τυγχάνει ὢν καὶ πρὸς τὸ ἀποθανεῖν ἐρρωμένος. And at the same time Alexander drank [the medicine] and Philip read the note from Parmenion. Immediately Philip made clear that the contents of the medicine were fi ne for him. For he was not driven to panic because of the letter but only encouraged Alexander and said to obey whatever instructions he might give him in other matters too, for in obedience he would be saved. And he was cleansed and overcame his illness. He showed Philip that he was a trustworthy friend to him, and to the others with him he showed that, as it turns out, he was fi rm in his lack of suspicion and strong before death.

Philip’s calm demeanor is one of the most telling elements of this episode. Arrian highlights it by saying he did not panic, which is exactly what Plutarch’s Philip did. Meanwhile, the friendship between Alexander and Philip is at the center of the episode, and the trust built up over years, since Philip was also a boyhood friend of Alexander’s, is unshakable.32 Similarly, Alexander’s total lack of hesitation demonstrates both trust and courage in a way that is absent from Curtius’s account, where Alexander’s inner turmoil is related at length. Here Alexander meets his illness and the prospect of death with the acceptance and courage of a strong-minded individual. He is ἐρρωμένος, precisely the quality Coenus said the troops lacked at the Hyphasis (Anab. 5.27.6). Alexander’s virtues are thus on display in three areas of Stoic living. As an individual, he has the strong mind necessary to accept the vagaries of fortune. As a social creature, he has developed a trusting att itude toward those people with whom his life is interconnected. Finally, as a king, he lacks the paranoid suspicion that is characteristic of the tyrant, showing instead the confidence in his inner circle that is born of a wise king’s careful selection of a trustworthy court.33 Th is is the fi rst major instance of a circumstance beyond Alexander’s control in the Anabasis, and early appearances of major themes are often less complex than later developments of that theme. The rest of this chapter will consider more challenging scenarios.

H u m i l i at ion i n S c y t h i a Alexander’s invasion of Scythia, already discussed for other purposes, makes use of the king’s body in a more nuanced way.34 The episode was 94 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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popular, appearing in most surviving accounts of Alexander’s life, and the versions of Plutarch, Curtius, and Arrian agree enough in their details to allow the narrative priorities of their authors to show clearly.35 All authors agree that Alexander crossed the Tanaïs in order to attack the Scythians and met with military success tempered by physical suffering—from an illness in some accounts, but an injury in others.36 The implications and exact nature of that physical discomfort differ from author to author, however, and the choices made by each one owe something to the ideology of selfcontrol discussed above. A brief comparison will show that, while other authors are concerned to use this episode to highlight Alexander’s virtue, Arrian has manipulated the story to make an argument about the human limitations placed on Alexander by his mortality. Arrian creates this effect by foregrounding Alexander’s failure to achieve his strategic aims in Scythia rather than the single successful batt le he fought there, and by emphasizing the role of Alexander’s illness in canceling the campaign. Plutarch tells the story both in his biography of Alexander and in On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander, and while both versions involve illness, they present the events as an exemplary instance of physical self-control. In each case, Plutarch includes the Scythian tale not as part of a continuous narrative but in a brief catalog of incidents that reflect positively on Alexander’s ability to overcome physical hardship. In the biography, the context is the Macedonian reaction to Alexander’s adoption of Persian and Median traditions.37 There Plutarch tells us that the Macedonians were indulgent toward Alexander’s controversial behavior on account of the valor he had shown in batt le (Al. 45.1–6). As evidence, he cites two serious injuries sustained in batt le and the diarrhea Alexander contracted in Scythia, which did not prevent him from routing the Scythians. Alexander presses on despite his physical discomfort, and Plutarch makes no distinction between perseverance amid an intestinal episode and the survival of wounds incurred while fighting. He has thus collapsed two categories of physical hardship to bolster his claim of Alexander’s superior discipline. Since both types of hardship required the same fortitude of Alexander, they both entailed a commendable display of virtue. In the oratorical version, Plutarch is even more explicit about the equivalence of sickness and injury. While downplaying the role of Fortune in Alexander’s successes, Plutarch asserts that Fortune granted Alexander neither the easy victories nor the favorable circumstances enjoyed by other kings (Mor. 340E–341A). He goes on to list several areas of bad fortune in Alexander’s life: a troubled accession, superlative enemies in batt le, difficult geography, and, most important, many injuries (Mor. 341A–C). Th is last point comes with a list of several of Alexander’s most famous injuries. S ic k n e s s , De a t h , a n d V i r t u e / 95

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Significantly, the list concludes with and thus emphasizes Alexander’s diarrhea in Scythia, the only instance of sickness on the list. In this way, Plutarch marks the invasion of Scythia both as a success and as a display of virtue without a trace of concern for the unflattering loss of bowel control that Alexander’s condition entailed or for the latent associations with Darius I’s famous invasion of Scythia that other authors saw in this incident. Thus Plutarch has avoided potentially damaging readings of the Scythian episode by grouping it with more obviously favorable episodes and focusing on the ultimate victory of Alexander’s army. Curtius, too, viewed the incident as positive, but his assessment arises from a set of values more familiar to Roman traditions. While his account is much longer, the details of Curtius’s narrative of Alexander’s invasion of Scythia differs from Plutarch’s chiefly in the nature of the physical hardship affl icting Alexander. Curtius does not mention illness but instead explains that Alexander was slowed during his invasion of Scythia by a wound suffered in a recent batt le.38 Like Plutarch, Curtius sees this invasion as a success, and he goes even further than Plutarch when he claims that the conquest of Scythia instantly ended resistance throughout Asia (7.9.17). While Curtius is clearly exaggerating, it is significant that he has placed such emphasis on Alexander’s endurance of a wound at this pivotal moment in his narrative. He even explicitly states the effect he believes it had on the outcome of events (7.9.11–12):39 ipse rex, quod vigori aegro adhuc corpori deerat, animi fi rmitate supplebat. vox adhortantis non poterat audiri, nondum bene obducta cicatrice cervicis, sed dimicantem cuncti videbant. itaque ipsi quidem ducum fungebantur officio, aliusque alium adhortati in hostem, salutis inmemores, ruere coeperunt. The king himself supplied by the fi rmness of his mind what was still missing from the strength of his body because of his suffering. His voice could not be heard as he was urging his men on because the wound on his neck was not yet completely healed, but everyone saw him fighting. And so the men themselves played the role of leaders, and urging one another on, they began to rush against the enemy, forgetful of their own well-being.

Th is passage describes the decisive moment in the batt le against the Scythians using the same topos we saw earlier in the discussion of Arrian’s description of the batt le at the Hydaspes River. The roles of soldier and general intertwine here, but the appearance of Alexander on the batt lefield 96 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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fighting through his injury suffices to unify his forces, and the Macedonians go on to drive the Scythians in fl ight even after Alexander is forced to withdraw from the batt le. The visual element of Curtius’s narrative is striking, and his rhetoric draws on Roman ideologies of generalship in a way that casts Alexander as an exemplary leader. For Curtius, as for Plutarch, the invasion was a success, but what was for Plutarch only one among many illustrations of Alexander’s toughness was for Curtius a defi ning moment in Alexander’s career. By crossing the Tanaïs, Curtius argues, Alexander has reentered Europe, and his victory therefore amounts to a second transcontinental conquest. Although doing so implicitly, Curtius is leaning heavily on a traditional sharp division between Europe and Asia that Herodotus exploited in his famous account of Darius I’s earlier failed invasion of Scythia, a division Arrian rejected.40 Herodotus went to great lengths to demonstrate the futility of Darius’s efforts, focusing in particular on the notion that certain geographical boundaries serve as natural limits on the expansion of an empire.41 By stressing Herodotean themes, Curtius has set up a comparison that will flatter Alexander. Not only did Alexander do what Darius could not, but he did it twice. Moreover, the decisive factor in this confl ict, as elsewhere, was the personal involvement of the king in a way that was visible to his men and involved mastering a terrible pain to be able to participate. The centrality of this physical display to Curtius’s narrative of the war goes beyond Plutarch’s use of the same incident and reveals Curtius’s greater interest in contemporary Roman discourses of self-control. Whereas Plutarch focuses on the actions Alexander undertook, Curtius is especially concerned with Alexander’s ability to conceal his pain, thus emphasizing the importance of performing virtue before a viewing audience inclined to look for signs of weakness. Th is concern reappears at another point in the narrative, where Curtius is even more explicit about the effects of Alexander’s appearance. Striving to keep some bad news from his troops to avoid harming their morale, Alexander’s façade began to crumble (7.8.1): ceterum, cum animo disparem vultum diutius ferre non posset, in tabernaculum super ripam fluminis de industria locatum secessit. But, when he could no longer hold his countenance in a way that was inconsistent with his mental state, he withdrew into the tent that had been placed intentionally above the riverbank.

Alexander’s assumption that his face would reveal what he had concealed in his mind is reminiscent of the tactics of contemporary orators, who had beS ic k n e s s , De a t h , a n d V i r t u e / 97

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gun to take an interest in the science of physiognomy as a means to gain an edge in face-to-face interactions in public settings.42 Curtius is, to a greater extent than Plutarch, concerned with the needs of a contemporary Roman audience, who valued and understood a code of public comportment involving the concealment of weakness. Arrian drew on this same discourse but arrived at a different conclusion as to the meaning of events in Scythia in his own narrative, to which I now turn. Arrian’s account of these events offers yet a third perspective on the same basic narrative. Arrian shares with Plutarch the detail of the king’s intestinal illness, and like Curtius he craft s his narrative in such a way as to encourage a comparison with Darius I. However, unlike Plutarch and Curtius, Arrian presents the invasion as a failure. The Herodotean elements he shares with Curtius and the specific illness suffered by Alexander, which he shares with Plutarch, suggest that Arrian has not been led to his conclusion by his source but instead has arrived at it through his own historical analysis. Arrian agrees that Alexander overcame suffering to win a batt le, and so his own narrative offers the possibility of presenting the incident as successful, like the other two authors. Because Arrian could have presented the invasion as a success but did not, and because he specifically linked the failure of the expedition to a bodily incident that both Curtius and Plutarch used as a catalyst to discuss Alexander’s virtue, that is the divergence that most requires explanation. Arrian’s account of the invasion, to a greater degree than even Curtius’s, has taken full advantage of the obvious connection to Herodotus. I discussed this connection in detail in chapter 3, but in order to understand the implications of Arrian’s departure for the accounts of Plutarch and Curtius, it will be helpful to review briefly some of the main points. First, Arrian alone includes a speech of Alexander in which the king directly compares himself to Darius (Anab. 4.4.3). In so doing, Arrian immediately calls up the memory of that famous section of Herodotus’s narrative. Second, Arrian borrows a Herodotean motif when he uses a river crossing to highlight the ideological significance of the moment. To these points, I add here the important role of prophecy in Arrian’s account as another Herodotean element. The prophet Aristander repeatedly reports negative omens that insist Alexander will be doing something wrong by crossing the river.43 Alexander himself also utters an unintentional prophecy when he expresses a willingness to go to the furthest bounds of danger (Anab. 4.4.3, ἐς ἔσχατον κινδύνου) in order to avoid the fate of Darius. His very words reappear at the end of the episode in the narrator’s voice (Anab. 4.4.9), thus offering a sense of closure through a narrative trick common in Herodotus but nearly un-

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paralleled in Arrian.44 Th rough these means Arrian has activated a latent intertext with Herodotus and built up a Herodotean structure for his narrative of this episode. Whereas Curtius drew on Herodotus simply to sharpen the contrast between Alexander and Darius, Arrian has used it to create a subtly unsett ling effect. After telling of a successful military action, complete with strategic details, Arrian reports that the Scythians were put to fl ight and pursued by the Macedonians. However, in another Herodotean touch, Arrian tells us that Alexander was laid low by the local water (Anab. 4.4.9): καὶ ἦν γὰρ πονηρὸν τὸ ὕδωρ, ῥεῦμα ἀθρόον κατασκήπτει αὐτῷ ἐς τὴν γαστέρα· καὶ ἐπὶ τῷδε ἡ δίωξις οὐκ ἐπὶ πάντων Σκυθῶν ἐγένετο· εἰ δε μή, δοκοῦσιν ἄν μοι καὶ πάντες διαφθαρῆναι ἐν τῇ φυγῇ, εἰ μὴ Ἀλεξάνδρῳ τὸ σῶμα ἔκαμεν. For the water was bad; a thick flow att acked his stomach, and for this reason the pursuit did not come upon all the Scythians. Otherwise, it seems to me that they all would have been destroyed in fl ight, if Alexander’s body had not been in distress.

Th is summary of the action in Scythia is less straightforward than what Plutarch and Curtius offer. First, although Arrian entertains an alternative course of events in which Alexander could have conquered all the Scythians, he admits that the invasion was a failure and blames Alexander’s body for the outcome. He gives much more detail about Alexander’s physical ailments than either of the other two authors, and the medical thinking involved in giving both symptom and cause highlights the universalizing effect of having a human body. Despite all the good qualities Alexander displays in this encounter with the Scythians, his own body proves to be a nonnegotiable limiting factor for him, preventing him from achieving his stated desire of surpassing Darius. The focus of Arrian’s Scythian narrative is the king’s physical discomfort, just as it was for Plutarch and Curtius, but Arrian’s manner of relating the story does not yield the same result. Instead of a simple account of exemplary behavior, Arrian has created a complex narrative that suggests multiple readings. His deft handling of the Herodotean overtones of the event is on one level a learned engagement with the subject matter, themes, and narrative techniques of one of his greatest models. However, the narrative also speaks to contemporary political debate for readers inclined to look for it.

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It is always a difficult task to expose the politics lurking beneath the surface of a historical narrative, particularly when the author, like Arrian, is writing about the distant past.45 Nevertheless, if, as seems likely, Arrian was writing in the early years of Hadrian’s reign, a contemporary debate over needless expansionism could well have colored a reading of the history of Alexander; Arrian and his fi rst readers would have just witnessed Hadrian’s abandonment of the conquests of Trajan, who himself had consciously pursued a persona modeled on Alexander.46 Hadrian’s change in policy was not universally admired.47 Arrian’s brief narrative presents Alexander as a legendary conqueror suffering from an imprudent, unnecessary invasion and endangering the health of his empire by taking such an ill-advised risk. Such a situation may indeed have sparked in readers’ minds a consideration of the wisdom of an endless series of conquests, particularly when the stability of the empire depended so much on the wellbeing of a single human body.48 Hadrian’s accession was hardly smooth, and the stability of Roman government was certainly an issue to be considered carefully by Arrian, whose political career was by this time in full swing, and by his readers, who were most likely from a similar sociopolitical background. Whether such a precise identification with contemporary politics was intended by Arrian or noticed by his readers is a question that must be left open, but even if we assume its absence, that does not spoil the effect of Arrian’s carefully crafted narrative. As I noted in chapter 3, the Scythian invasion is embedded within a larger series of episodes that announce Alexander’s accession to the Persian throne. The Scythian narrative is especially heavy with Herodotean themes and helps to introduce the notion of Alexander as a Persian king, but Arrian’s focus on the king’s sickness has further implications for the broader narrative of his later years. Alexander is, of course, as famous for dying of a sudden illness as he is for anything else, and here Arrian has presented his readers with a conqueror at the height of his power, before the revolts and scandals, before the messy campaigns in India and the disastrous march through Gedrosia, when virtually all that Arrian reports of Alexander is military success; but it is here, in Scythia, where Alexander’s body fi rst cheats him of further glory. Th roughout the Anabasis, the king shows no fear of death or bodily harm, but this episode illustrates just how litt le he appreciates the fragility of his body and the impact that such fragility can have on affairs of state. Alexander does not fear death, but he also appears not to understand its fi nality. Th is consideration becomes most evident in his reactions to the bodily weaknesses of his closest companions.

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H e p h a e s t ion a n d Buc e p h a l a s The deaths of Hephaestion and Bucephalas both inspire noteworthy reactions from Alexander. Arrian portrays each one as a parallel Alexander, stressing the similarity of their paths through life and the defi ning qualities they share with the king. As such, they provide useful counterpoints to Alexander’s reactions to his own mortal peril at other points in the history, even though neither one otherwise plays a major role in Arrian’s narrative. The responses shown in these two incidents prefigure Alexander’s att itude in his fi nal days and the harsh realism of Arrian’s account. In particular, Arrian highlights the problem of what to do with a hero who dies an unheroic death. Hephaestion’s death blatantly prefigures Alexander’s own, just as Arrian has elsewhere used Hephaestion as a doublet for Alexander.49 At one point, he tells us that Alexander himself insisted that Hephaestion was “also Alexander.”50 Although Hephaestion’s death occurs just after a large lacuna, the full account of the death survives, as well as a detailed account of Alexander’s response.51 In fact, the narrative of the death itself is quite brief: Hephaestion simply gets sick and dies, and Arrian seems uninterested in the causes.52 He does, however, explore the nature and extent of Alexander’s grief at length, acknowledging that critics and apologists alike found useful material here and continuing on to report a number of uncertain stories.53 He introduces this section as follows (Anab. 7.14.2–3): Ἔνθα δὴ καὶ ἄλλ οι ἄλλ α ἀνέγραψαν ὑπὲρ τοῦ πένθους τοῦ Ἀλεξάνδρου· μέγα μὲν γενέσθαι αὐτῷ τὸ πένθος, πάντες τοῦτο ἀνέγραψαν, τὰ δὲ πραχθέντα ἐπ’ αὐτῷ ἄλλ οι ἄλλ α, ὡς ἕκαστος ἢ εὐνοίας πρὸς Ἡφαιστίωνα ἢ φθόνου εἶχεν ἢ καὶ πρὸς αὐτὸν Ἀλέξανδρον. ὧν οἱ τὰ ἀτάσθαλα ἀναγράψαντες οἱ μὲν ἐς κόσμον φέρειν μοι δοκοῦσιν οἰηθῆναι Ἀλεξάνδρῳ ὅσα ὑπεραλγήσας ἔδρασεν ἢ εἶπεν ἐπὶ τῷ πάντων δὴ ἀνθρώπων φιλτάτῳ, οἱ δὲ ἐς αἰσχύνην μᾶλλ όν τι ὡς οὐ πρέποντα οὐτ’ οὖν βασιλεῖ οὔτε Ἀλεξάνδρῳ. Here indeed, various people have written various things about the grief of Alexander. Everyone has written that a great grief came upon him. But as to the deeds done because of it, various people have written various things as each one was disposed in positive feeling or hatred toward Hephaestion, or even toward Alexander himself. Of those who wrote down his reckless deeds, some seem to me to have thought that whatever Alexander did or said, grieving heavily for the one who was dearest to him of all people, was fair enough, but others that these things were

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rather shameful, on the grounds that they were not appropriate either for a king or for Alexander.

Th is statement is an invitation to linger over the many stories that follow and to evaluate Alexander’s reaction in moral terms. The various tales that Arrian relates emphasize the heroic magnitude of Alexander’s grief, and Arrian even approves of one tale in which Alexander specifically emulates Achilles’s grief for Patroclus (7.14.4).54 These details have been discussed many times and need no further rehearsal here, but one point is worth mentioning before comparing this episode to the death of Bucephalas. The brief campaign that follows Arrian’s excursus on grief draws a direct connection between Alexander’s grief and his prowess on the batt lefield in a way that inverts Alexander’s desired Iliadic model. Arrian juxtaposes Alexander’s display of Iliadic grief with a brief, unmotivated campaign against an insignificant opponent (Anab. 7.15.1–2, thereby highlighting the differences between Patroclus’s death and Hephaestion’s and destabilizing Alexander’s emulation of Achilles. Hephaestion doubles for Alexander as Patroclus does for Achilles, but whereas Patroclus dies fighting in a recognizably heroic context, Hephaestion simply dies, an unexplained illness cutt ing his life short without an equivalent feat of heroism. Parallels with Achilles include the scale of mourning just mentioned and the funeral games Alexander establishes for his friend, and the parallels spill over into the following episode. The passage opens with a clear transitional statement (7.15.1): χρόνος τε ἦν συχνὸς τῷ πένθει καὶ αὐτός τε αὑτὸν ἤδη μετεκάλει ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ καὶ οἱ ἑταῖροι μᾶλλ όν τι ἐν τῷ τοιῷδε ἤνυτον. There was a lot of time for grief, and he himself began to recall himself from it, and the companions succeeded somewhat more in this respect.

Just as Homer reports that after the funeral games of Patroclus the other heroes withdrew and returned to normal activities before Achilles could (Il. 24.1–3), here Arrian marks Alexander’s grief as surpassing that of the other companions. In the Iliad, Achilles goes on grieving and raging until at last the gods bring him into contact with Priam, and the two men’s conversation fi nally allows Achilles to release his grief.55 In the Anabasis, however, Alexander has no one to blame for the loss of Hephaestion and no Priam figure to help him process his pain. Alexander returns from grief by recalling himself (μετεκάλει) from it, but his next action is unmotivated. Elsewhere, Arrian is clear about the reason for a new campaign, and he reg102 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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ularly uses motivation as a motif to highlight Alexander’s most important character traits. Here, however, he merely launches a campaign against the Cossaeans, who do not appear anywhere else in the narrative, with no reason given and no connection to the action that follows.56 Arrian gives only the details that the Cossaeans were warlike (πολεμικόν, Anab. 7.15.1) and skilled in stealth attacks, and he then tells us that Alexander obliterated the tribe (ἐξεῖλεν αὐτῶν τὸ ἔθνος, 7.15.3). Arrian uses this campaign to stress Alexander’s ability to achieve anything he wanted in war (7.15.3), but the violence of the campaign and its lack of motivation, combined with Alexander’s excessive grief for a friend who died an unheroic death, give the phrasing an undertone of critique. In military affairs, Alexander is invincible, but Arrian’s silence about Alexander’s abilities away from the batt lefield highlight his limitations. The contrast between Alexander’s willingness to risk death in batt le and his total inability to cope with the death of a friend is striking. There is a disjuncture between Alexander’s heroic aspirations and the brutally realistic world Arrian has placed him in. The contrast comes out fully when considered in the context of two stories about Alexander’s horse, Bucephalas, earlier in the Anabasis. Bucephalas, too, in some ways has a story parallel to Alexander’s and imperfectly reminiscent of epic themes.57 Arrian mentions him only once, in passing, before his death (Anab. 5.14.4), but he elaborates on the horse’s death in a way that captures some of the same themes discussed in connection with Hephaestion. Arrian reports the death of Bucephalas in the context of Alexander’s defeat of Porus (5.19.4–5), the last major pitched batt le reported in detail in the Anabasis and an especially difficult victory. There are two versions of the horse’s death of which Arrian is aware: one in which Bucephalas dies of wounds sustained in the batt le against Porus, and one in which he simply dies of old age.58 It is important to emphasize that the whole discussion of the horse’s death is born directly from the narrative of the batt le at the Hydaspes River, and that Arrian rejects the more heroic version, in which the horse dies in the batt le, favoring the more prosaic tale of an old horse growing worn out. The choice Arrian makes here is similar to the epic choice between a glorious death at a young age or a long life of obscurity. Alexander attempts to commemorate the horse in an epic mode but, as with Hephaestion, the way Arrian tells the story punctures the grandeur of the gesture. Arrian reports that after the batt le, Alexander founded two cities: Nicaea to commemorate the victory and Bucephala to commemorate the horse.59 In insisting that the horse died not in batt le but from natural causes, Arrian is drawing a distinction between two otherwise equivalent commemorative acts. The hard-won, bloody victory of the Macedonian troops warrants the same monument as the quiet death of an S ic k n e s s , De a t h , a n d V i r t u e / 103

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old horse for Alexander, but Arrian points to the disjuncture between glorious and ordinary ends. To underscore the distinction, Arrian follows this report with a digression in which he illustrates the extremity of Alexander’s att itude toward the loss of the horse with a brief narrative of the time he was stolen from him years earlier (5.19.6). The theft of Bucephalas is recorded in all the major sources for the life of Alexander, and all those versions agree in its basic outline.60 At some point during Alexander’s Asian campaigns, probably in the year 330, Bucephalas disappears, and Alexander assumes that he has been stolen. His response is remarkable: he sends a herald around the countryside to announce that unless the horse is returned, he will kill every member of the tribe that inhabits the area. The horse, not surprisingly, is immediately reunited with Alexander, and the threatened genocide never occurs. Even though the basic elements are all in place, Arrian’s version confl icts with the other accounts in two significant ways. First, rather than telling the story, as other authors do, in its correct chronological sett ing, Arrian saves it for a more prominent narrative moment, recounting it together with the death of Bucephalas in 326.61 Second, Arrian names a different nomadic tribe than the other sources do.62 For Arrian, this incident occurs among the Uxians, who live in the mountains near Persepolis; for everyone else, it is the Mardi, who live hundreds of miles to the north, near the Caspian Sea. The second discrepancy could be a simple error, whether Arrian’s, his source’s, or someone else’s. It is not difficult to believe that someone along the way forgot which mountainous nomads were the antagonists in the episode but remembered what is surely the most important part of the story: Alexander’s genocidal rage.63 At the Hydaspes, the loss of one horse to an ordinary death had been for Alexander equal to the loss of hundreds of his own men in batt le, to say nothing of the twenty thousand enemy casualties Arrian reports. Here again Alexander has shown a disproportionate response. Even a Roman audience, accustomed as they were to descriptions of violence in warfare on a massive scale, could justifiably question the validity of such a total lack of regard for human life.64 Thus in both incidents involving the horse, as well as in his reaction to Hephaestion’s death, Alexander shows that his courage in the face of death has its limitations. He can go to meet his own demise, whether in batt le or from sickness, but his understanding of the meaning of the deaths of others is painfully warped. Th is difficulty with comprehending the interpersonal relationships of which his social world was constituted reveals that, for all his mastery of his own physical self, Alexander lacked the perspective needed to assess the value of human life beyond his own closest inner circle.65 Alexander sought

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heroic immortality for himself and his loved ones in a world that did not function according to the heroic code.

Ca l a nus The story of the Indian sage Calanus and his remarkable death by self-immolation draws a similar connection between issues of self-mastery and proper att itudes toward death. Arrian reports the story in a series of episodes involving philosophers at the beginning of book 7 of the Anabasis, which all raise the question whether material gain and political power provide a human being true benefits, two major themes of the book.66 The tale of Calanus, however, is marked as especially important. Arrian tells us that he had to include Calanus because it was necessary to write about him too in a history of Alexander.67 Nowhere else in the Anabasis does Arrian express such a feeling of obligation to record a particular detail, and indeed I have already shown that he chooses to omit details that other authors see as indispensable.68 At the conclusion of the episode, Arrian offers the following explanation (Anab. 7.3.6): ταῦτα καὶ τοιαῦτα ὑπὲρ Καλάνου τοῦ Ἰνδοῦ ἱκανοὶ ἀναγεγράφασιν, οὐκ ἀχρεῖα πάντα ἐς ἀνθρώπους, ὅτῳ γνῶναι ἐπιμελές, [ὅτι] ὣς καρτερόν τέ ἐστι καὶ ἀνίκητον γνώμη ἀνθρωπίνη ὅ τι περ ἐθέλοι ἐξεργάσασθαι. Competent men have written these things and others like them about Calanus the Indian that are not entirely useless to humanity, not for anyone who wants to know that human will to accomplish whatever it may wish is a strong and invincible thing.

The statement that it is Calanus’s powerful will (γνώμη) that makes him necessary to the history at fi rst seems at odds with the way Arrian introduces him. The brief narrative of Calanus’s death is preceded by the information that the other sages Alexander met in India considered Calanus to be a man of weak will, lacking in self-control (αὑτοῦ ἀκράτορα) and devoted to the wrong master (7.2.4). The sharp contrast between Arrian’s introductory and concluding statements in the Calanus episode has been seen as clumsy or accidental.69 Arrian is rarely incautious, however, and the contrast adds depth to the narrative of Calanus’s remarkable feats of endurance by offering two different perspectives on them and encouraging the reader to consider which is correct.

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Calanus was famous in antiquity for the memorable scene of his death, a suicide by fi re that he chose for himself when he fell ill in preference to any treatment or change in his daily routine.70 Apart from the sheer spectacle of the magnificent pyre and military parade prepared for him by Alexander, the sight of the sage placidly allowing himself to be engulfed in flames evidently stunned those in attendance (Anab. 7.3.5; Diodorus 17.107.5). The notion of suicide as an escape from worldly problems inspired a voyeuristic fascination and became a standard feature of Indian philosophy in the Greek imagination.71 The Calanus incident was for Arrian, however, more than just a tantalizing bit of exotica to be dangled before his readers. As I have mentioned, the episode occurs in a cluster of philosophical exchanges that stress human mortality and the limited utility of material possessions.72 The story of Calanus expands on this theme and dramatizes the stakes, thus making the philosophical advice less abstract. The confl icting values of philosophers and kings structure an exploration of ambition in which Calanus plays a vital role. A contrast with another Indian philosopher, Dandamis, establishes a spectrum of behavior that Arrian uses to carry forward his analysis of the relationship between individual quests for glory and the universalizing human limitation of mortality. Arrian reports that when Alexander arrived in Taxila in 326, he met a group of philosophers whom he found impressive (Anab. 7.2.2). Their leader, Dandamis, harshly criticized Alexander, refusing the king’s invitation to join his court and forbidding his pupils from doing so. Dandamis ridicules Alexander’s claim to be the son of Zeus and insults his wandering spirit. Finally, he declares his freedom from Alexander in such terms that even Alexander must acknowledge it (7.2.3–4): οὔτ’ οὖν ποθεῖν τι αὐτὸς ὅτου κύριος ἦν Ἀλέξανδρος δοῦναι, οὔτε αὖ δεδιέναι, ὅτου κρατοίη ἐκεῖνος, ἔστιν οὗ εἴργεσθαι· ζῶντι μὲν γὰρ οἱ τὴν Ἰνδῶν γῆν ἐξαρκεῖν φέρουσαν τὰ ὡραῖα, ἀποθανόντα δὲ ἀπαλλ αγήσεσθαι οὐκ ἐπιεικοῦς ξυνοίκου τοῦ σώματος. οὔκουν οὐδὲ Ἀλέξανδρον ἐπιχειρῆσαι βιάσασθαι γνόντα ἐλεύθερον ὄντα τὸν ἄνδρα. [It is said that he said that] he therefore neither yearned for anything that Alexander had the power to grant, nor in turn did he fear that there was anything over which Alexander might be master from which he might be shut out. For while he lived the land of the Indians sufficed for him, producing fruits in season, but once he died he would be set free from the body, an unsuitable companion. Therefore Alexander did not attempt to use force, knowing that the man was free.

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The words used here to describe Dandamis’s asceticism pick up several recurring themes of the Anabasis. First, the use of the word ποθεῖν for desire connects to Alexander’s πόθος, which drives him at key points in the narrative but does not motivate Dandamis.73 Moreover, fear and benefit featured in Arrian’s preface, where he displayed a traditional concern that these two motivations can distort historical narratives (Anab., praef. 2). Fear and benefit returned again in Arrian’s critique of Callisthenes, as well as his parallel narratives of the Celtic and Roman embassies to Alexander. In all these episodes, other human beings use the traditional terminology of fear and benefit to circumscribe Alexander’s power and emphasize their own freedom from him. Thus Danadamis is partaking of a large-scale evaluation of the extent of Alexander’s power that runs throughout the Anabasis and turns here toward the inescapable fact of Alexander’s mortality, which dominates book 7. Dandamis’s lack of interest in the areas of life that motivate Alexander underscores the contrast Arrian is drawing between the subordination of physical concerns to a life of self-mastery and the individual ambition that leads to glory. Alexander’s acknowledgment that Dandamis was truly free shows that another path through life could be equally as praiseworthy as the one that he has chosen, or perhaps more so. As in the case of the Celtic embassy, Alexander acknowledges the lesson without accepting it, and here he seeks further understanding by enlisting the participation of an inferior philosopher, Calanus. The different choices made by Dandamis and Calanus and an explicit comparison between the two demonstrate to what degree self-control can be applied to human situations. Immediately following the contentious interview with Dandamis, Arrian tells us that Calanus was persuaded to join Alexander’s entourage. He also cites the eyewitness account of Megasthenes, who reports that Calanus is known among his people as especially lacking in self-control.74 That detail introduces Arrian’s account of the sudden illness Calanus develops in Persia (Anab. 7.3.1), the fi rst of his life. It is here that Calanus begins to display exactly the kind of self-control we have just been told he lacks. He refuses to alter his daily regimen (δίαιτα), even welcoming death in preference to further suffering. He then prevails upon Alexander to allow him to die, whereupon Alexander orders the construction of a huge funeral pyre (7.3.2).75 An elaborate celebration ensues, culminating with Calanus’s death on the pyre, during which, Arrian tells us, Calanus remains perfectly still (7.3.5). Th is is the act of will for which Arrian wishes to commemorate Calanus, and it can hardly be considered the act of a man who lacks control over himself. In fact, it is precisely the sort of control—concealment of pain and weakness—that plays such an impor-

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tant role in public discourse in Arrian’s lifetime, and thus speaks directly to contemporary concerns. The precipitous, unexpected decline in Calanus’s health is similar to the illnesses Hephaestion and Alexander will soon face, and the calm demeanor Calanus takes toward his own failing body is clearly meant to be an ideal response. Arrian’s emphasis on the power of the human will makes plain that he regards Calanus’s actions as not only admirable but attainable. Th is is not some superhuman feat among a catalog of marvels discovered at the ends of the earth but a disciplined mind displaying intelligible virtues.76 Calanus’s philosophical training allows him to be cheerful in the face of death and endure unspeakable physical pain without showing the slightest sign of discomfort. The low opinion the other Indian philosophers have of Calanus only sharpens the point. Calanus shows an excellent response to illness and an admirable att itude toward death. The other philosophers show that even Calanus can be surpassed. Th is episode prepares the ground for the death of Alexander, which is drawn out in much greater detail but involves the same basic issue. Th rough the spectrum of Indian philosophers, Arrian has created a framework for evaluating Alexander’s response to a comparable situation.

T h e De at h of A l e x a n de r Alexander’s sudden illness and death have been subjects of debate and speculation since antiquity.77 A great deal of energy has gone into attempting to determine the nature of the disease that fi nally killed the legendary conqueror, although such attempts have yielded nothing close to a consensus.78 The unusual level of detail concerning Alexander’s last days made available by the sources seems only to have confused matters further. Arrian and Plutarch in particular offer precise accounts of Alexander’s activities in those days, including mundane details such as his bathing schedule. Both authors claim to draw on the so-called Royal Journals, apparently a daybook kept at the king’s court. A raging scholarly controversy has surrounded these Royal Journals, which have been thought to be everything from an outright forgery to a real source available to the general reading public.79 While the controversy over the nature of the journals will doubtless continue, insufficient attention has been given to how Arrian’s use of them fits into his larger narrative of Alexander’s life. Th is section will show how Arrian leverages the existence of this unusual source to craft a relentlessly realistic account of Alexander’s death. The appearance of the Royal Journals in the Anabasis is jarring, for the

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fast-paced march narrative that dominates the entire work suddenly slows to a crawl and includes minute details of Alexander’s daily activities that did not previously feature prominently in it.80 The stories Arrian derived from the journals are an alternating sequence of sleeping, bathing, drinking with friends, and sacrificing to the gods. On two occasions Alexander confers with his officers about the invasion of Arabia he had planned.81 The dominant impression left by the narrative, however, is that nothing out of the ordinary occurred during these days. Alexander’s drinking, so often identified even by Arrian as one of his greatest failings, is not excessive. Arrian merely states without commentary that Alexander drank at the home of his friend Medius (Anab. 7.25.1) and went to sleep.82 In fact, most of what Alexander does in this section is bathe and rest: that is, care for his body. The illness appears with no explanation (7.25.2), but Alexander goes on with his daily routine. Like Calanus, he is not deterred from his regimen. Arrian stresses how ordinary Alexander’s activities are, describing them as customary five times.83 Yet as Alexander continues to perform his ordinary daily tasks, socializing with his friends, caring for his body, sacrificing to the gods, administering his army, his illness progresses unabated. The simplicity of the narrative leaves no room for such speculation as Arrian offers in many other places in the narrative where existing accounts confl ict. It is clear from Arrian’s account that nothing Alexander does can be blamed for his health problems, and there is no hint of foul play. Arrian also records Alexander’s death on the authority of the Royal Journals in a way that emphasizes Alexander’s popularity both with the rank and fi le of the army and with the officers. The men force their way into Alexander’s chambers to see him with their own eyes. Arrian offers several possible explanations for this, ultimately asserting that the majority of the men were compelled by grief and longing for their king (ὑπὸ πένθους καὶ πόθου τοῦ βασιλέως).84 Alexander, by this time unable to speak, nevertheless greets each man even though it requires effort (μόγις).85 The officers, meanwhile, seek the aid of Sarapis by sleeping in his temple and asking the god whether they should bring Alexander as well (Anab. 7.26.2).86 The god’s response, that it would be better for Alexander to stay where he was, immediately precedes Alexander’s death, and so Arrian interprets the meaning of the divine response to be that death was a benefit, a theme he had already introduced in preparation for this moment (7.26.3). Thus in the narrative of Alexander’s death that Arrian att ributes to the Royal Journals, Alexander remains a beloved figure. His troops and his companions are overcome with grief and apprehension at the thought of his death. The portrait offered by Arrian here on the authority of ostensibly unimpeachable docu-

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mentary evidence allows Alexander to die a dignified death in the absence of any scandal or shameful behavior that may have otherwise marred an admirable life.87 It was important for Arrian to assert the dignified nature of Alexander’s death, because there were in antiquity, as there are today, numerous sensationalist accounts that suggested a less respectable end for the king. Arrian’s method of refuting these tales is to juxtapose them with the clear, sober, authoritative account that he derives from the Royal Journals. He cannot, of course, have expected his readers to be ignorant of the rumors attached to Alexander’s death, but he does not entertain them seriously.88 He merely lists several stories that he believes should be rejected out of hand (Anab. 7.27.1–3).89 He does this, he says, to avoid appearing ignorant (ὡς μὴ ἀγνοεῖν δόξαιμι). However, he also states that the stories are not believable (πιστά), and their placement between his own detailed account of Alexander’s last days and the lengthy encomium on Alexander’s life that closes the work (7.28.1–7.30.3) renders them suspect. None of these extravagant stories can have seemed persuasive when read as a part of a brief list at the end of seven books of restrained and realistic narrative of Alexander’s life, especially when they are followed by a virtuoso display of persuasive rhetoric designed to downplay Alexander’s faults and praise his virtues.90 By creating such a context for the competing stories of Alexander’s death, Arrian has made the simple dignity of his preferred version appear by far the most likely and has secured for Alexander a fi nal act of virtue to close the work.

C onc l u s ion Arrian focuses on the body as a locus for discussions of virtue in a way that accords well with contemporary philosophical and rhetorical practice. His treatments of those episodes in which Alexander’s body fails him, or in which Alexander has to watch a beloved body fail, help to characterize Alexander as a man of virtue and strong will who nevertheless, as a human being, struggles with elements of his life that are beyond his control. The death scene benefits from those incidents that went before it in the Anabasis to establish the desirability of an impassive acceptance of death along with the universalizing quality of mortal human bodies. Alexander’s attempts to live out an epic life are routinely subverted by reminders of the real human world in which he lives. These episodes set up the terms of judgment to be used and allow the reader to understand Alexander’s behavior in his last days as an expression of interior virtue. His imperfect virtue in the face of bodily suffering not his own is consistent with Arrian’s 110 / A r r i a n t h e H i s t or i a n

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fi nal judgment on the king’s character, in which he dismisses Alexander’s failings as the product of youth. Th rough his manipulation of Roman attitudes toward the human body, Arrian renders the ancient history of Alexander intelligible to his readers and creates a unique portrait of an exemplary human being, grounding epic tales with an element of reality. By relentlessly showing Alexander’s human limitations, Arrian demonstrates that Alexander’s best qualities are within the grasp of ordinary human beings, and thus that Alexander’s accomplishments are all the more worthy of repeated examination.

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C onc l u s ion

I n t h e for e g oi ng pag e s , I h av e fol l ow e d a s i ng l e author through the experience of writing history in the second century CE, always with an eye to illuminating the intellectual atmosphere in which he was working. Along the way, I have shown how he defi ned himself against popular cultural trends by appealing to a particular vision of research that elevated the study of history above other types of scholarly activity. Th is vision also posited a separation between the historian’s idealized future audience and inferior contemporary audiences who preferred flashy performances over serious historical conversations, a rhetorical gambit with deep roots in Classical Greek historiography. The ancient rivalry between historians and virtuoso literary performers helped Arrian and his colleagues claim ownership of a body of knowledge that intellectuals working in other disciplines clearly valued, even as they refused to compete on the chosen playing field of their rivals. At the same time, I have shown how Arrian deployed narrative techniques and intellectual discourses that were current in his own day to improve the methodologies available to those who wished to master the study of history. In so doing, he not only provided a model for emulation but also authorized continued attempts to create meaningful narratives of real past events, whether recent (as in his history of the Parthian Wars) or ancient (as in his history of Alexander). The field of historical inquiry remained vigorous across the second century and into the third, and whether later historians consciously drew inspiration from Arrian or not, the persona he crafted for himself seems to have worked for others as well.1 I began by exploring the relationship between sophistic oratory on historical themes and narrative history in the Imperial period. Th is discussion looked at defi nitions of historical practice used both by authors who considered themselves historians and by authors who did not. The discourse of 112

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history that emerged exhibits for historians a parallel strand of literary development of which both groups were aware. The superiority claimed by historians and the anxiety displayed by nonhistorians underscore the epistemologically distinct motives of the former. Arrian, who so often claims to be driven by questions about how it is possible to know anything about the past, served as a prime example of someone who actively theorized history amid its narration. A survey of his work made clear that his approach to the past relied upon his awareness of the passage of time, both because the consequences of events become evident through knowledge of their aftermath and because contemporary methods of studying history allowed him to construct better arguments than his predecessors had. Arrian argued that his present built upon the achievements of the past. Two extended case studies showed the dynamics of these processes in a focused way. Using the tools available to him from contemporary rhetorical education and political culture, Arrian crafted an incisive commentary on government as he narrated Alexander’s inspiring yet troubled rise to fame, emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility in a system of government centered on a single individual. He also explored the problems of adapting a culturally specific set of political practices to a large multicultural empire. These issues were relevant to his contemporary audience, and through his narrative of past events he offered that audience a set of abstract principles with which to understand their own world. Nevertheless, by stepping into a crowded field of Alexander historians, Arrian also staked a claim to supreme authority on one of the most consistently popular historical themes of Greek and Roman literature, thus attempting to establish himself as a canonical author. His attempt seems to have been successful, since no analytical history of Alexander produced after Arrian’s has survived from antiquity, and those that are known have not left a strong impression.2 Furthermore, while locking down such a popular topic, he also placed himself in rivalry with the greats of his discipline by discussing and adapting their methods and by questioning some of their most lasting conclusions. In this way, he claimed a position in the canon of historians deemed worthy of sustained study. In the words of the influential medieval critic Photius, Arrian was “second to none of those writing history best.”3 It has been said that “a valuable commentary on the mentality of an age is usually to be found in the sort of history it chooses to write and read and the manner in which the chosen themes are treated.”4 The preceding study has taken up this invitation to dive deep into the work of a historically minded author who was unusually forthright about the problems he encountered in his research and his attempts to solve them. Th rough him and the discourse of history to which he and his contemporaries repeatedly C onc l u s ion / 113

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appealed, it has been possible to observe the concerns of a group of intellectuals who tried hard to separate themselves from popular trends and create a counterculture of sorts. Centering those characters who reveled in forcing problems ahead of enjoyment and constructed a parallel literary universe for themselves and their readers can shed new light on the complexity of intellectual culture in Imperial Greek literature.

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Appendix / T h e Dat e of t h e A n a b a s i s

Disputes concerning a work’s date are familiar in the study of Greek and Roman literature. Unless the work itself gives some indication of when it was composed, external evidence must be brought to bear, and such evidence is often inconclusive, contradictory, or simply unintelligible. Arrian’s Anabasis is no exception: any attempt to pin it to a particular time or even to place it in sequence with Arrian’s other works must rely to some degree on educated guesses. Compounding this problem further, so many scholars have now made the attempt that numerous complete and competing literary biographies, in some cases based more on each other than on the evidence, have obscured the true nature of the available source material, even though it is always scrupulously cited in the notes at the foot of the page.1 In such circumstances, it is tempting to despair of any solution and simply give up. Nevertheless, since no satisfactory answer has yet been proposed, attempts must continue to be made, for there are serious interpretive consequences to placing the Anabasis in the wrong period. Should we see Arrian as a young man working in the intellectual environment of Plutarch, Suetonius, and Tacitus at the beginning of the second century, or is it better to read the words of an old man engaged in the world of Appian, Lucian, and Aelius Aristides some forty years later? Was Arrian analyzing Alexander’s empire in the context of the still-expanding Rome of Trajan (r. 98–117 CE) or the harried empire of Marcus Aurelius (r. 161– 180 CE)? Was he writing as one of the fi rst Greeks to rise to the highest levels of Roman imperial administration or in a world where the presence of Greeks in the senate was entirely unremarkable? The wide range of possible dates and the fast pace of political and cultural change in the second century make the date of this particular work especially crucial for its interpretation.2 In what follows, I will set out my view on the date of the Anabasis, arguing that it is most likely to have been written early in the reign of Hadrian. Because the Anabasis itself offers no explicit indication of when it was written, most scholars have approached the question of the date through chronological relationships between Arrian’s extant and attested works. However, attempts to date the Anabasis from the relative chronology of Arrian’s works are on shaky

115

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ground from the outset. Of those that survive, only three give any concrete internal indication of their dates of composition. Arrian himself states that he wrote the Tactica in 136/137, the twentieth year of the reign of Hadrian (Tact. 44.3). From references to contemporary events, we can infer that the Periplus was composed sometime after 131/132, and the Ectaxis must date to sometime after the events of 135 that it describes, although in neither case is it possible to say exactly how much later these works were composed.3 The uncertainty concerning the dates of all but one of Arrian’s works is precisely what has led scholars to rely on relative chronology, but this method has yielded unsatisfactory results. With the exception of the three works just mentioned, reconstruction of a chronology depends largely on Photius’s ninth-century account of what Arrian says about himself in the lost Bithyniaca. In his summary of that work, Photius reports Arrian’s own mention of other historical monographs he had written (Bib. cod. 93). Much has been made of the fact that he explicitly says that Arrian wrote the Bithyniaca fourth out of these.4 However, when Photius is summarizing Arrian’s very words, he names only two previous monographs: fi rst Timoleon and then Dion. He does not say that he is deriving a sequence directly from Arrian, as is often assumed. In fact, the celebrated “fourth” comes slightly later in the same codex, in a restatement of Arrian’s literary history that not only is marked by unusual syntax but even gives a different order to the works:5 φαίνεται δὲ τετάρτην γράφων τὴν τῆς πατρίδος ἀφήγησιν· μετά τε γὰρ τὰ περὶ Ἀλέξανδρον καὶ Τιμολέοντα καὶ Δίωνα, μετὰ τὰς περὶ αὐτοὺς ἱστορίας ἥδε αὐτῷ ἡ συγγραφὴ ἐξεπονήθη. But he appears to have written the account of his fatherland fourth, for after the material about Alexander and Timoleon and Dion, after the histories about them, this composition was brought to completion by him. In the crucial passage in which Photius names the Bithyniaca the fourth of Arrian’s works, he has changed the order just mentioned so that, if we follow him literally, the Anabasis would actually come fi rst. Arrian’s boast of literary fame in the “Second Preface” is usually read as an indication that he had written at least one other important work before the Anabasis, and so Photius’s sequence is unlikely to be correct.6 Moreover, the information given here by Photius is the result of a deduction. The use of φαίνομαι with the participle regularly indicates a statement of inference, which argues strongly against the notion that this phrasing derives from Arrian himself, since he would presumably not need to draw inferences about his own activities.7 As such, the structure of the sentence demands the conclusion that the designation of the Bithyniaca as fourth was not Arrian’s own.8 The awkward, repetitive sentence that follows further suggests that this statement was not made by Arrian, who is rarely unclear. The evidence of this passage of Photius, then, is not helpful for establishing a relative chronology of Arrian’s works. Photius confuses matters further in a third passage in which he lists some of Arrian’s works (Bib. cod. 58). While introducing his summary of the Parthica, he

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mentions that Arrian also wrote the Anabasis, the Bithyniaca, and a treatise on the Alans, which is probably the Ectaxis, although he does not explicitly address the order of composition.9 Here at least one of the works, the Ectaxis, has a terminus post quem, but Photius has now given three different implicit sequences for Arrian’s works, none of which is complete, and none of which can be independently verified. Photius cannot be blamed for not including Arrian’s entire literary production in his lists, since, as he tells us himself, some of Arrian’s works had not survived even to his own day (Bib. cod. 58). Nevertheless, the lack of a complete list, combined with the fact that those works Photius does list do not occur in a coherent or reliable sequence, means that we should be more skeptical of the evidence of Photius than we have been. From Photius alone, it is impossible to create a defi nitive sequence of Arrian’s works. A. B. Bosworth has attempted to bolster the evidence of Photius by establishing allusive relationships between the Anabasis and other works of Arrian.10 He identifies similarities between the Parthica and the Anabasis in Arrian’s descriptions of Trajan’s trip down the Tigris and Alexander’s trip down the Hydaspes, as well as the moralizing evaluations of Arsaces and Alexander.11 There are further similarities between Arrian’s self-portrait in the Ectaxis and the portrait of Alexander in the Anabasis, particularly in his campaign against the Sacae.12 Bosworth takes it for granted that the passages in the Parthica and the Ectaxis are echoes of models found in the Anabasis, but the flow of allusion could just as easily travel in the opposite direction, and so this relationship proves nothing about the order of composition of these works. Moreover, it is equally possible that Arrian simply drew on the same source material multiple times.13 Although it is true that these passages in the Parthica and the Ectaxis resemble passages in the Anabasis, there is no reason to accept the chronological priority of the Anabasis unless one already accepts the chronology given by Photius, which, as we have seen, is both incomplete and internally inconsistent. A further difficulty is that Bosworth’s reconstruction, as with all others that rely on relative chronology, depends on the assumption that Arrian worked on only one thing at a time without ever overlapping. There is plenty of evidence that ancient authors composed multiple works simultaneously, and indeed it would be more noteworthy if they did not.14 Arrian, again in the “Second Preface,” mentions that the study of Alexander had been a passion of his from a young age. It is at least possible that he composed the Anabasis over the course of many years, during which time he could have been producing other works as well.15 Thus it is not possible to conclude that any of Arrian’s works must have preceded rather than overlapped any other. Moreover, Photius reports a comment that seems genuinely to derive from Arrian himself suggesting that Arrian regarded some of his own works as a form of literary practice before embarking on projects he considered more important (Bib. cod. 93). If this is the case, it would not be surprising to fi nd Arrian reusing material from earlier tracts in his Anabasis. There is no less evidence for this procedure than there is for the reverse, and Arrian does not seem to have been above recycling some of his own material, as two complementary pas-

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sages from the Indica and the Anabasis show.16 Since the dates of most of Arrian’s individual works cannot be established, and since there is no reliable way to establish a chronological relationship between the Anabasis and the other works, the method of using relative chronology to determine the date of the Anabasis will not work. We must therefore turn to the meager evidence contained within the Anabasis itself. The passage that has been most frequently analyzed in the hope of establishing a date occurs in the “Second Preface” (Anab. 1.12.5). It will be best to begin by quoting the passage in full. ὅστις δὲ ὢν ταῦτα ὑπὲρ ἐμαυτοῦ γιγνώσκω, τὸ μὲν ὄνομα οὐδὲν δέομαι ἀναγράψαι, οὐδὲ γὰρ οὐδὲ ἄγνωστον ἐς ἀνθρώπους ἐστίν, οὐδὲ πατρίδα ἥτις μοί ἐστιν οὐδὲ γένος τὸ ἐμόν, οὐδὲ εἰ δή τινα ἀρχὴν ἐν τῇ ἐμαυτοῦ ἦρξα· ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνο ἀναγράφω, ὅτι ἐμοὶ πατρίς τε καὶ γένος καὶ ἀρχαὶ οἵδε οἱ λόγοι εἰσί τε καὶ ἀπὸ νέου ἔτι ἐγένοντο. καὶ ἐπὶ τῷδε οὐκ ἀπαξιῶ ἐμαυτὸν τῶν πρώτων ἐν τῇ Ἑλλ άδι, εἴπερ οὖν καὶ Ἀλέξανδρον τῶν ἐν τοῖς ὅπλοις. But as to who I am, I know these things about myself: I have no need to write down my name, for it is not at all unknown to humanity, nor to write down which fatherland is mine, nor my family, nor whether I have held any magistracy in my own land. But this I do write down: that to me these accounts are and have been since my youth both fatherland and family and magistracies, and for this reason I do not deem myself unworthy of the fi rst rank in the Greek language, just as Alexander is worthy of the fi rst rank in arms. Discussion of this passage in its connection to the date of the Anabasis has focused on the phrase ἐν τῇ ἐμαυτοῦ. The referent of this elliptical phrase has been variously understood to be Nicomedia, Athens, or Rome.17 Depending on which of these cities is chosen, one could argue that the Anabasis was composed at several different points in Arrian’s long career. In particular, Athens would give a very late date to the Anabasis, since Arrian held no office there before 145/146, when he was archon. If we understand ἐν τῇ ἐμαυτοῦ to stand in for ἐν τῇ πατρίδι ἐμαυτοῦ, thus referring to Nicomedia, then we must wonder whether Arrian had yet held any offices in the Roman administration, which may have happened as early as the reign of Trajan.18 The latter is surely the correct reading of the Greek, but to construct an argument founded on this point would be to engage in an overly literal interpretation of Arrian’s literary polemic. In the passage under discussion, Arrian explicitly refuses to use his name and origin as a source of authority for his history, a literary practice with roots in early Greek historiography that was frequently used in Roman historiography as well.19 Although his intent is to encourage his readers to contemplate his already glorious career, we need not see a one-to-one correspondence between the identifying criteria Arrian mentions and the actual facts of his life. By making an utterly conventional list of elements he could have included in his preface but did not, he is mocking those historians who expect their elite status to confer authority on their

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narratives. He has said nothing about what offices he has held, only that his passion for his work should be sufficient to guarantee a fi ne product.20 Th is is an att itude he could have adopted at any point in his career. His eventual peak does not mean that he was not extremely proud of earlier but lesser accomplishments as a young man. It is impossible to infer that, because he does not say, “I will pass over in silence my Roman magistracies,” he had not yet held any Roman magistracies. If the date of the Anabasis cannot be established by the means just discussed, there is more promise in a method explored by Bosworth to demonstrate that Arrian seems in the Anabasis not to have knowledge we may expect him to have had on the basis of known details of his career.21 Because Arrian uses the evidence of autopsy numerous times, we ought to expect him to do so when he has knowledge that pertains to his narrative.22 Nevertheless, at least one passage in the Anabasis seems to call for just such an intrusion where Arrian does not take the opportunity, even though he displays the relevant knowledge in another work. At Periplus 11.5, Arrian reports that he himself saw the peak in the Caucasus where Prometheus suffered his mythical punishment at the hands of Zeus. As luck would have it, the Periplus is one of the works for which we have a date to start from. The terminus post quem is 131/132, and so by that date Arrian should have had something to say about Prometheus’s peak.23 However, when the subject comes up in the Anabasis, Arrian seems to know nothing about the true location of this peak. In a polemical passage, he attacks Eratosthenes for cynically accusing the Macedonians of willfully misinterpreting the mythical past in order to glorify Alexander (Anab. 5.3.1–4). Among the examples he cites is Eratosthenes’s claim that the Macedonians invented a new mythical history, locating the Prometheus story and even the Caucasus itself in the Hindu Kush. If Arrian had already seen the peak in Cappadocia, he surely would have said so here while correcting Eratosthenes, since he would have been able to show through autopsy that the Caucasus had not been relocated to the Hindu Kush. His failure to bring forth this relevant personal experience thus suggests that he had not yet taken his tour of the Black Sea and establishes a tentative terminus ante quem for the Anabasis at 131/132. While an argument from silence can hardly be considered conclusive, the oddness of Arrian’s silence here is more persuasive than the garbled evidence of Photius. Bosworth has attempted, with less success, to push the date of the Anabasis even earlier, using the same method of analysis with three further passages. The fi rst deals with Arrian’s error regarding the location of a statue group by Lysippus.24 The idea is that if Arrian had held office in Rome by the time he was writing the Anabasis, he would have known that the statue group had been moved there from Dium, but he seems to believe they are still in Macedonia. Th is argument has been dismissed on the ground that anyone could have missed one statue group out of the countless monuments on display in Rome. What is more, unlike the case of Prometheus, we have no reference outside of the Anabasis to show that Arrian had seen the statues. Thus it is not possible to conclude that Arrian wrote the Anabasis before his fi rst arrival in Rome, which in any case is itself an event of unknown date.

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The case of Arrian’s acquaintance with Baetica is similar. Although Ar rian’s service in the province is by no means certain, he does seem to demonstrate some specialist knowledge of the area in his discussion of various cults of Heracles (Anab. 2.16.4).25 Whether or not one accepts Bosworth’s conclusion that Arrian displays ignorance of Spanish topography, it is impossible to date Arrian’s proconsulship with any accuracy, since the only evidence for it is a tentatively identified verse inscription found on a third-century altar.26 The awkward fact of this altar’s date means that the inscription itself may have been composed by a different Arrian. Although it is possible that a second-century original was replaced and reinscribed in the third century to celebrate the province’s association with a famous author, the uncertainty of the identification is troubling.27 Even if we accept that this Arrian is our Arrian, we have no fi rm date for his proconsulship. All we can say is that, since the post is less prestigious than the legateship of Cappadocia, it would have come earlier in Arrian’s career. Thus we have essentially the same terminus ante quem as before, but we cannot get more specific than that from Arrian’s knowledge of Spain. Bosworth’s fi nal passage again deals with Arrian’s knowledge of Cappadocia and again cannot help us to move toward a more specific date than we already have, but it is worth mentioning because it adds some force to the suspicions raised by the Prometheus incident already discussed. The passage in question is Arrian’s seemingly inaccurate description of the river Araxes.28 Whereas the river is known to have flowed into the Kur before reaching the Caspian Sea, Arrian reports that the prevailing opinion is that the river flows directly into the sea. Th is was the prevailing opinion in the fourth century BCE, not the second century CE. Thus he seems to have derived his information from literature that was ancient even to him rather than fi rsthand experience.29 In fact, he is likely to have gained such experience during his legateship of Cappadocia, beginning in 131/132. Although the confluence of the Araxes and the Kur was not located in his province, Arrian clearly took a geographical interest in the area, as demonstrated by the Periplus, and in 135 he was engaged in a military action that took place between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, so it seems likely that he would have been up to date on regional geography. Nevertheless, he persists in his incorrect view of the course of the Araxes, and so Bosworth concludes (again) that the Anabasis must predate his legateship in Cappadocia. Again, there is no external confi rmation that Arrian ever saw or heard about the relevant geographical features, as there is for his knowledge of Prometheus’s peak, but his position in Cappadocia would have given him plenty of reason to seek such information out, and this passage can be considered a mild support for the tentative terminus ante quem of 131/132 put forward previously. A thorough review of the available evidence for the date of the Anabasis quickly reveals the distressingly poor state of our knowledge of Arrian’s literary career. In spite of the heroic efforts of the scholarly community, the skeletal remains of the Arrianic corpus simply will not bear the flesh of reconstruction. Nevertheless, Arrian’s evident unfamiliarity with Cappadocia in the Anabasis seems to suggest that

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he wrote this work prior to taking up his post as imperial legate sometime in or shortly before 131/132. How long before this he was writing and how long it took him to compose the full work must remain a mystery, although the confidence with which Arrian asserts his fame suggests that he was at least an established author, if not also an established statesman, when he wrote the Anabasis. Thus, a date sometime in the 120s seems reasonable.

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A bbr e v i at ions i n t h e No t e s a n d Bi bl io gr a p h y

Ancient authors and their works are abbreviated as in H. G. Liddell, Robert Scott , and Henry Stuart Jones, eds. A Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., rev. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pages xvi–xxxviii. In addition, I have used the following for frequently cited texts: BNJ = I. Worthington, general editor. Brill’s New Jacoby. Online: htt ps://refer enceworks.brillonline.com/browse/brill-s-new-jacoby. 2007–present. Bosworth, HC = A. B. Bosworth. A Historical Commentary on Arrian’s History of Alexander. 2 volumes. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1980–1995. Brunt = P.  A. Brunt. Arrian. 2 volumes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976–1983. FGrH = F. Jacoby. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. 3 volumes. Berlin: Weidmann, 1923. LSJ = H. G. Liddell, Robert Scott , and Henry Stuart Jones, eds. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th edition, revised. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996. PIR2 = Edmund Groag, Arthur Stein, Werner Eck, Matt häus Heil, Johannes Heinrichs, Klaus Wachtel, Anika Strobach, Leiva Petersen, Marietta Horster, Andreas Krieckhaus, et al., eds. Prosopographia Imperii Romani. 2nd edition. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1933–2015. Sisti and Zambrini = F. Sisti and A. Zambrini, eds. Arriano: Anabasi di Alessandro. 2 volumes. Rome: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 2001–2004. Smyth = H.  W. Smyth. Greek Grammar. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1920.

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No t e s

I n t r oduc t ion 1. Stadter 1980 and Tonnet 1988 are exceptional in taking a broader approach to Arrian’s literary output. Many more works focus only on the Anabasis. Burliga 2013 has examined the influence of Arrian’s Stoicism on his Anabasis and concluded that philosophical concerns overrode the generic norms of history, leaving an imperfect blend of two traditions. 2. Th is argument centers on Arrian’s prefatory letter to the Discourses, in which he claims to have attempted to represent the very words of Epictetus’s lectures. The question hinges on whether we should take Arrian’s claim at face value, as most scholars have done. For the majority view, see Long 2002, 38–41. T. Wirth 1967 and Selle 2001 argue for a more active Arrian, and I subscribe to this view. 3. Bosworth 1988 is the most sophisticated application of this approach. Earlier scholars, such as Kornemann 1935, sometimes treated Arrian as a mere transcriber of his sources. Montgomery 1965, 162–233, helped to reorient the conversation by demonstrating that Arrian was at least somewhat independent of his sources. Liotsakis 2019 is different and will be discussed later. 4. Bowersock 1969, 112–113; Bowie 1970, 24–28; Reardon 1971, 209–216; Anderson 1993, 113–114; Swain 1996, 242–248; Schmitz 1997, 53; Whitmarsh 2001, 21 and 27; Whitmarsh 2005, 47–49. Anderson sees some areas of contrast but focuses on similarities with the sophists. 5. Most commonly, short discussions of Arrian’s biography and att itude toward Rome take precedence over his literary production within a survey of larger groups of authors. The longest such treatment I have found appears in Reardon 1971, 209–216, and runs to seven pages. 6. Liotsakis 2019. The Second Sophistic material is chiefly limited to his chapter on Arrian’s engagement with Homer (pp. 163–225). 7. PIR2 F 219. For the date of Arrian’s birth, see Stadter 1980, 3; cf. Syme 1982, 183. For his full name, see Leon and Rask 2019.

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8. For the position of Bithynia in the late fi rst century, see Levick 1979. For a longer view of the province’s development, see Madsen 2009. 9. Bosworth, HC 1:1–7; Stadter 1980, 1–18; Syme 1982. Sisti and Zambrini (1:xi– xvi) offer thorough reviews of the evidence for Arrian’s life. 10. Arrian was a priest of Demeter and Kore in Bithynia (Bithyniaca F 1 Roos). For Arrian’s presence in the Danube region and Greece, see Stadter 1980, 7–16. For his consulship, which would have required previous service in Italy, see Syme 1982, 199–200. For his legateship in Cappadocia, see Bosworth, HC 1:2–3; and Sisti and Zambrini 1:xv, n. 1. It is likely that Arrian also participated in Trajan’s Parthian campaigns, for which see Syme 1982, 188–190; it is unknown where else he may have worked on his way up the cursus honorum. It is not likely that he governed the province of Baetica, as is sometimes claimed. The only evidence for his presence there is an inscribed altar from the century after Arrian died, so unless it is a new version created to celebrate the province’s connection to a famous person, it must refer to a different Arrian. For the altar’s date, see Beltrán Fortes 1992 and my further discussion in the appendix. 11. For the confl ict, see especially Bosworth 1977, 217–255. 12. Stadter 1980, 16–17. 13. The main lines of scholarship can be found in Bowersock 1969; Bowie 1970; Gleason 1995; Swain 1996; Schmitz 1997; and Whitmarsh 2001. 14. Here I am indebted to the concept of alternative literary genealogies developed in Whitmarsh 2013, 35–41. 15. For the history of this shift , see Kessler 1982. 16. See the thorough survey of Clark 2004 and the brief but illuminating summary of Carrard 2017, xi–xv. 17. Lendon 2009 reviews the history of scholarship on the intersection of literature and history in Classical historiography. The fact that no specialized schools ever arose for history, as they did for philosophy and rhetoric, has suggested the absence of a profession of history; cf. Gibson 2004, 106–107; Kemezis 2010, 286– 288. It may be that there were no professional historians in the sense of people who made a living by writing and teaching history, but I contend that the concept of historical inquiry was distinct from other types of thought at least for those who practiced it, and the distinction made sense to educated people in antiquity. I will discuss this issue in further detail in chapter 1. 18. König 2017 surveys some examples of special expertise. Eshleman (2012) argues that discourses of expertise were central to the process of defi ning the boundaries of group identity in this period. 19. Particularly Iser’s concept of the implied reader, which I fi rst encountered in Baragwanath 2008; cf. Iser 1974. Maciver (2012, 9–13) offers a thoughtful critique of reader-oriented criticism that I have borne in in mind throughout. 20. My interest in narrative time draws on the insights of Genette 1980; for the importance of plot formulations and the arrangement of story elements, I am indebted to concepts developed in Bal 1985; I have approached story patterns using

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the notion of emplotment most familiar from White 1973, as well as the work of Immerwahr (1966) on narrative patterning in Classical historiography. 21. The dynamics of intertextual relationships have been explained well in Hinds 1998.

C h a p t e r 1 : A m a t e u r s , E x p e r t s , a n d H i s t or y 1. Gibson 2004. 2. Lucian’s How to Write History is a partial exception, as has often been noticed, but its satirical nature differs markedly from the straightforward tracts of Hermogenes or Apsines. For the difficulties of using Lucian’s treatise, see Porod 2013, 128–187. 3. Thuc. 1.22.4; I return to this topic later in this chapter, in the section “Thucydides and Others on Writing History.” 4. Tacitus has received more attention than most historians in the period, and although he was working in Latin, he also has a bearing on Greek conversations about history. See Pagán 2017, 51–76; and Levick 2012 for the main lines of inquiry into Tacitean historical thought. Plutarch, while he famously distanced himself from the writing of history (Al. 1.2), nevertheless had much to say on the topic and has accordingly att racted a number of excellent studies. A good starting point for this body of work is Jacobs 2017. Interest in Herodian and Cassius Dio has begun to further illuminate Greek historical thought in the period, for which see Kemezis 2014, 227–272; and Zecchini 2016, respectively. 5. Arrian, Anab., praef. 3. 6. For the theatrical element of sophistic declamation, see Webb 2006, which emphasizes the role of the audience in constituting the meaning of the performance. 7. Text, translation, and commentary available in Reader 1996. 8. For the available traditions concerning both men, see Reader 1996, 33–40. 9. On the dynamics of this interaction, see Webb 2006. 10. L. Jones (2019) discusses a parallel phenomenon in contemporary sports entertainment. Using the theatrical world of professional wrestling, she argues that belief in the reality of the spectacle is unnecessary to the emotional engagement of the audience. 11. Discussed at length in Korenjak 2000, 68–169. 12. Philostratus, VS 574; cf. Webb 2006, 32–42. 13. For Greekless audiences, see Philostratus, VS 491; for the difficulty of acquiring the requisite level of proficiency in Greek, see Swain 1996, 33–42. 14. Kemezis 2014, 203–218; Webb 2006, 33–42. 15. For the earlier view, see particularly Bowersock 1969 and Bowie 1970. 16. Key texts in the development of this line of analysis are Gleason 1995; Swain 1996; Schmitz 1997; and Whitmarsh 2001. 17. See in particular Swain 1996, 33–42; cf. Webb 2017, 141–142.

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18. Eshleman (2012) effectively discusses this phenomenon in a variety of contexts. 19. On this issue, see especially Whitmarsh 2001. 20. Cf. Webb 2017, 146–150. 21. For performance as advertisement, see Eshleman 2012, 25–28. 22. See, for example, Krumeich 2008 on portraits in the gymnasium; Robinson 2012 on public art; and Salas 2014 on medicine. 23. So Schmitz (2017, 178) concludes, “Hence, sophists were much more than simple professionals; they were representatives of what an entire culture found important about itself.” 24. Hose (1994) and Kemezis (2014) are notable exceptions, and a growing surge in interest in Cassius Dio suggests that opinions may be changing. For the latter, see, for example, Lange and Madsen 2016 and Fromentin et al. 2016. See also Asirvatham 2017. 25. On the shared educational background of historians and other literary figures, see Gibson 2004. 26. The classic studies of this influence are Wiseman 1979 and Woodman 1988. For subsequent developments, see Lendon 2009. 27. Gunderson (2003, 3–4) offers a brief sketch of rhetorical education, rightly stressing in his surrounding discussion the role of declamation in popular entertainment and literary culture, to which I will return. Webb (2017, 140–150) and Heath (1995, 11–18) give more detail, and Cribiore (2007, 32–39) provides a rich account centered on the school of Libanius in Antioch. 28. Text from Mayer’s edition of 2001. 29. See discussions in Bernstein 2013, 3–13; Reinhardt and Winterbottom 2006, 162; Hömke 2002, 45–82; and Bonner 1949, 71–77. 30. Text from Radermacher, 1965. 31. Text from Thackeray’s edition of 1926. 32. According to the Aspen Institute’s Project Play (htt ps://www.aspenproj ectplay.org/kids-sports-participation-rates), nearly 70 percent of school-aged children in the United States participate in some form of sport, and almost half of high school students do. 33. Galily 2019 discusses a recent example involving basketball superstar LeBron James and political commentator Laura Ingraham, who told him to “shut up and dribble” when he criticized a sitt ing president of the United States. See also the nuanced discussion of Domínguez 2018, 104–109. 34. See, for example, Schiavone 2015, 1–3. 35. Tilly (2011) analyzes Josephus’s targets in this treatise; see also Labow 2005, lvi–lxxxiv. 36. JA 1.1.2–3, 1.5.16. Josephus’s intended audience is a complex issue, but it is clear that he presents himself in opposition to Greek traditions; cf. Landau 2006, 34–35. For the possibility that he may be posing as more of an outsider than he really was, see C. P. Jones 2005.

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37. Text of Thucydides is drawn from J.  E. Powell’s 1942 revision of H.  S. Jones’s Oxford Classical Text edition. 38. Clearly stated in Gomme 1945, 148; Hornblower 1991, 61; and Thomas 1993. Guthrie (1971) argues that the passage refers not to Herodotus but to the class of sophists generally, and Boedecker (1995) has interpreted the passage as a reference to poets. Thomas (2000, 267) briefly discusses these interpretations; cf. Moles 1999, 53–56. Thomas and Moles are surely right to suggest that Thucydides need not have a single specific target here. Johnson (1994) questions whether this passage is indeed meant to invoke a contrast between writing and performance rather than simply emphasize the listening aspect of reading aloud in groups, but clearly the performance element was available to later biographical traditions, as I will show later. 39. Thomas (1992; 2000) discusses the fi ft h-century context effectively. See also Yunis 2003. Greenwood (2006, 6–10) addresses Thucydides’s future audiences. 40. For the place of Classical historians in rhetorical schools, see Gibson 2004. 41. Long ago Powell (1939, 32–34) showed that all such evidence has serious problems, but at times his own conclusions go beyond what the evidence permits. Johnson (1994) and Bakker (2002, 8–13) offer excellent overviews of the history of scholarship on Herodotus’s performances. 42. For the orality of Herodotus, see Thomas 1992, 102–104. 43. Plutarch, On the Malice of Herodotus 862B (= Diyllus, BNJ F 3 and T 5). 44. For the influence and methods of Diyllus, see Cooper’s commentary in BNJ. 45. The text is from Häsler’s Teubner (1978) but includes Pearson’s supplement from Pearson and Sandbach (1965, ad loc.) in brackets and the widely accepted conjecture of ἕκτῃ for the manuscripts’ Ἑκάτῃ. 46. For Plutarch’s methods of citation, see Pelling 1980; de Romilly 1988; and Titchener 1995, 191–194. 47. Powell 1939, 33–34. Powell also points out the massive size of the award and, assuming it to be accurate, suggests that Diyllus must be discussing a different individual named Herodotus who performed some significant service to the city. Th is conclusion would entail Plutarch’s willful misrepresentation of a straightforward narrative found in a historian he himself identifies as well known. That seems unlikely. It would be better to conclude that the Athenians did give Herodotus some award, that perhaps the number was distorted in transmission, or perhaps it was for some other purpose or after the written text became widely read, but the evidence is in any case slender. 48. Jerome, Chronicle Ol. 83.4; Eusebius, Chronicle Ol. 83.3 (Armenian translation); Syncellus 470 (according to Mosshammer’s 1984 Teubner numbering). 49. The classic study of the biographical tradition is Lefkowitz 1981. More recently, Platt (2016, 281–285) has explored the role of anecdotes in fabricating a biographical tradition.

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50. All quotations from Lucian come from Macleod’s 1980 Oxford Classical Text. 51. For Lucian’s interaction with Thucydides in this passage, see Porod 2013, 288 and 365–367. 52. Sophists did of course sometimes write history (cf. Bowie 2010), just as historians, many of whom were prominent politicians, must surely have sometimes given speeches, but this does not disturb the general trend identified here. Genre is a slippery category by nature, but it would be an oversimplification to insist that Cicero’s poetry, for example, is most naturally understood as an extension of his oratory. 53. Webb 2006 effectively discusses the dual consciousness of the sophists’ audience; cf. Kemezis 2014, 203–218. 54. Text from Lucarini’s 2005 Teubner edition, omitt ing the suspect ἀληθοῦς. In what follows on Herodian, I am indebted to the reading in Kemezis 2014, 229–234. 55. Livy, praef. 5 expresses precisely this sentiment. 56. Kemezis (2014, 239–280) has argued that the orderly form also highlights the speed and relentlessness of the dramatic shift s in imperial politics during the period Herodian covers. 57. See, for example, Levy 2019. 58. There is something of Aeneas’s speech (Virgil, Aen. 1.198–207) in this consideration of destiny. The famous line “forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit” similarly ties present and future together through an imagined future memory of contemporary events, made more potent by the poet’s retelling of events in his own contemporary audience’s distant past, which they are now in a position to fi nd helpful; cf. Bostick 2019. 59. For a brief overview of various forms of historical discourse that might be loosely considered performance, see Schmitz 1999. 60. Frisch 1978, 15–39; Batt istoni (2008, 83–92) provides a useful commentary, with bibliography. 61. For the interaction between sophistic performers and their audiences, see Korenjak 2000, 68–169. 62. See further Leon 2016, 52–55. 63. See the nuanced discussion in Johnson 2010, 42–56, with essential bibliography collected in n. 24; Mason (2016, 92–94) offers a useful sketch of this step in the creation of a work of historical literature. 64. See Kelley 1996, 154–163, for a discussion of private recitations of history focused on Xenophon. 65. Text from Ihm’s 1908 Teubner edition. 66. The opening line of Arrian’s Epistula ad L. Gell. implies that he partook in such activities, since his claim is that someone else got hold of his Discourses of Epictetus and circulated them without his permission, which could only have happened if Arrian was circulating his works informally among friends. See further discussion in chapter 2.

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67. Marincola (1997, 148–157) discusses this traditional element of historiography; cf. Pitcher 2009, 5–14. 68. Some readers have found Arrian’s comment about kings troubling or even naïve, and exculpations have been sought (see Sisti and Zambrini 1:303; Bosworth, HC 1:43). It is certainly possible that traditions of truthful kings—evidently favored by Ptolemy, for whom see Howe 2018, 165–170—may have influenced Arrian’s composition of this sentence, and it is probable that Bosworth is right to stress the proportionally greater shame for an individual of the highest social status to be caught in a lie or error. To these observations I would add that we do not know the exact date or circumstances of Arrian’s unveiling of this history. We do know, however, that his friends included powerful people with literary tastes (Stadter 1980, 13–15), and the Anabasis is peppered with comments on kings and their courts (e.g., 2.6.4; 4.8.3, 4.9.8; 7.29.1), and so it is possible that Arrian intended this remark as an admonition to best practice for a reigning monarch and those in a position to influence him. 69. Marincola 1997, 161–163 (for impartiality), 281–282 (for autopsy). 70. For a full discussion of Arrian’s methods of engaging active reader responses, see chapter 2. 71. On the historicity of this episode, see Collins 2012. Whether Arrian is right to treat the story as real is immaterial to the question of how he uses it to explore Callisthenes’s character, however. 72. See tables 1.1 and 1.2 for a full list of correspondences. 73. Liotsakis (2019) has called this device “framing”; see his discussion on pp. 86–87. 74. Howe (2008) has suggested that Ptolemy’s primary rationale for distortion of the record was his reliance on Egyptian historiographic traditions, about which Arrian seems to have known nothing. 75. For Thucydides and others as unchallenged authorities on their subject matter, see Gibson 2004, 126–128. In the preface to his Life of Nicias, Plutarch shows a clear anxiety about rehashing material covered by Thucydides, for which see further discussion on pp. 37–38.

C h a p t e r 2 : Nov e lt y a n d R e v i s ion i n t h e Wor k s of A r r i a n 1. Th is view has been most clearly articulated in Bowie 1970, 10–28. Although Bowie’s scheme has been modified repeatedly, the general trend he identifies has been largely accepted. 2. The division is in any case muddier than it may seem at fi rst glance, as Arrian’s own interests show. Many of his works cover topics from the Hellenistic period or later. The Events after Alexander covers the Wars of the Successors; the Order of Battle against the Alans is a contemporary history of events in which Arrian himself participated; the Parthica deals at least in part with contemporary or

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nearly contemporary wars; the Tactica explores Hellenistic and (in the lost section) Roman tactics; the Bithyniaca is a local history ending in the fi rst century BCE. Arrian’s other literary activities are all concerned with the contemporary world. His Epictetan works are entirely contemporary philosophy. His own treatise on comets was apparently an example of real, innovative scientific thinking. In fact, the bulk of Arrian’s work focused on material that was not obviously related to the Classical period. 3. The works are Cynegeticus (responding to Xenophon’s Cynegeticus), Discourses of Epictetus (responding to Xenophon’s Memorabilia), and Anabasis (responding to Xenophon’s Anabasis). Bosworth (HC 1:7–8) rightly cautions that there is no evidence that Anabasis was the formal title of Arrian’s Alexander history until the Byzantine period, but Arrian clearly states (1.12.3) that he saw his work on Alexander as a counterpart to Xenophon’s Anabasis. The phalanx batt le is described in Arrian’s Ectaxis, on which see Bosworth 1977; Bosworth 1993, 264– 72; Wheeler 2004, 152–59; Lendon 2005, 266–69. Arrian calls himself Xenophon at Cyn. 1.4, 16.6, 22.1, and Ect. 10, 22; Stadter (1967; 1980, 2–3) proposed that Xenophon was actually part of Arrian’s name, but this view has not been generally accepted. Nevertheless, Xenophon seems to have served as a nickname for Arrian; cf. Photius, Bib. cod. 58, Suda s.v. Ἀρριανός. On Arrian’s name, see Leon and Rask 2019. Oliver (1972) argues that a third-century double herm found in Athens shows Arrian and Xenophon together, but while this identification is tempting, Oliver’s argument is too briefly stated to supplant the careful and detailed work of Minakaran-Hiesgen (1970), who tentatively proposed Isocrates instead of Arrian. 4. On this anxiety, Whitmarsh 2001, 41–89, is fundamental; cf. Anderson 1993, 69–85; Schmitz 1997, 220–331. 5. Arrian was not alone in this regard. Using Florus, Appian, and Cassius Dio as his chief examples, Hose (1994) has shown that new histories of familiar material written with a view to contemporary concerns were desired by the reading public in the second and third centuries. 6. Plutarch wrote biographies of Dion, Timoleon, and Alexander less than a generation before Arrian covered the same subjects. Aelian wrote a tactical manual in the reign of Trajan. To judge from Lucian, How to Write History 14–32, Parthian history was an extremely popular topic; Arrian’s Parthica may have been a response, depending on when it was written. On the date of the Parthica, see Stadter (1980, 179–87), who discusses the many insoluble problems preventing the establishment of a fi rm date for this work. 7. Liotsakis (2019) has done much to show Arrian’s independence from his sources by explaining numerous elements of compositional design in the Anabasis that cannot have been taken over from a source. 8. See, for example, Breebart 1960, 24–27; Brunt 2:540–541; Bosworth, HC 1:104–105; Bosworth 1988b, 38–40; Tonnet 1988, 1:223–224. Stadter (1980, 212 n. 15) sees no contradiction between the two, and Schepens (1971) views them as inseparable, but they must be considered in the minority on this topic. Earlier schol-

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ars were more willing to see in Arrian a desire to pursue historical accuracy; see, for example, Krueger 1835–1848, 2:50–51; Sintenis 1849, 32; Meyer 1898. Hammond (1993) has more recently advocated this view as well; see especially pp. 313–333. Marincola (1997, 115–117) indicates that a promise of greater accuracy was quite common among historians as a justification for a new treatment of old material; he invokes the “Second Preface” to show that Arrian was especially concerned with style but expressly denies that Arrian (or any other historian) was concerned with style alone; cf. Moles 1993a, 144. 9. Reardon 1971, 210; my translation of “Il n’est pas, réellement, historien.” 10. Lucian (How to Write History 7–13) makes this point quite clearly; cf. Porod 2013, 319–328; and Avenarius 1956, 13–29. On the false dichotomy, see especially Moles 1993b. 11. The relevant passages are Anab. 3.3.6; 4.10.2, 4.14.3–4, 4.28.2; 5.3.1–4, 5.4.3– 4, 5.6.1–8, 5.7.1, 5.14.5–6; 6.2.3, 6.11.2–8, 6.28.1–2; 7.13.2–6, 7.14.2–7, 7.19.1, 7.27.1–3. Th is list does not include the many occasions when Arrian mentions irreconcilable accounts without choosing a side. On Arrian’s devotion to factual accuracy, see Hammond 1993, 315–316. 12. A second possible reference to style comes at Anab. 6.28.6, where Arrian reiterates his intention (fi rst announced at 5.5.1) to write a separate work about India. Here he says he will write a “Greek history” (Ἑλλ ηνικὴν τὴν συγγραφήν) of Alexander’s activities in India using Nearchus as his chief source. Since Nearchus wrote in Greek, it is hard to see why Arrian chose to stress this particular aspect of his promised composition. Brunt (2:191) translates the phrase, “an account of Alexander in pure Greek,” suggesting that a reference to Arrian’s Att icist purism may be intended, but purity is nowhere evident in Arrian’s actual words. It is perhaps better to side with Sisti and Zambrini 2:571 in seeing this statement as a declaration of his intention to complete his own project, already begun in the Anabasis, of writing a full account of Alexander’s deeds. The use of the term “Greek,” then, becomes simply a reference to the Roman world in which Arrian lived rather than an attack on Nearchus. He is stating that he will write in Greek, not in Latin, as he sometimes did (e.g., Periplus 6.2). 13. Marincola (1997, 63–86) traces the development of this tradition from Homer through Ammianus. See also Fornara 1983, 47–50; Fehling 1989, 167–168; Moles 1993a, 146–149; Pitcher 2009, 47–64. 14. See Stadter 1981, 161, and previous note. 15. See, for example, Herodotus 6.14.1; Thucydides 1.22.3; Polybius 12.28a.3– 10; Josephus, BJ 1.1.1–3; Herodian 1.1.3. 16. Whatley (1964, 120–121) demonstrates this point succinctly with a discussion of confl icting anecdotes from patrols in World War I. Woodman (1988, 16–23) has made good use of modern war narratives and psychological research to show the difficulty of working with eyewitnesses. See also Scott 1991, which discusses the problems of using individual experiences to write the history of marginalized groups. 17. Mnookin 2015 offers an overview of the problem from a legal perspective.

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18. For a discussion of this problem in the context of Greek historiography, see Porod 2013, 216–224. 19. See further Pelling 2002; Stadter 1988, 286. 20. The quoted text is from Ziegler’s 1964 Teubner edition. Polybius devotes virtually all of his book 12 to an extended exposition of his great contempt for Timaeus, an assault that may have prepared the ground for Plutarch’s easy dismissal of Timaeus’s pedantry; for Polybius’s views on Timaeus, see Walbank 1985, 272– 279; for other responses to Timaeus, see Marincola 1997, 223. 21. The use of polemic as a tool for self-defi nition is not an altogether uncommon feature of historical literature, for which see Marincola 1997, 225–236. Candau Morón (2005) has approached this passage somewhat less charitably, arguing that the whole of Plutarch’s prefatory polemic is an elaborate attempt to conceal his extensive use of Timaeus. 22. The bold words relate to the discussion that follows. 23. On the relationship between Arrian’s and Xenophon’s treatises on hunting generally, see Stadter 1976; Stadter 1980, 50–59; Tonnet 1988, 1:266–83; Bosworth 1993, 233–242. 24. Cf. Stadter 1980, 59. 25. Text drawn from Marchant’s 1901 Oxford Classical Text. Arrian explicitly states at Cyn. 1.5 that Xenophon’s repetition of Simon’s material justifies Arrian’s repetition of Xenophon’s. What I am arguing for here is a subtler reference in the structure of Arrian’s preface that enriches the explicit comment. 26. Arrian, too, uses a compound of λείπω (ἐλλ είπειν) to describe Xenophon’s “omissions,” seemingly in imitation of Xenophon’s παρέλιπεν. 27. On the notion of self-fashioning through literary appropriation and imitation, see especially Hinds 1998, 99–144; and Whitmarsh 2001, 90–130. Tonnet (1988, 1:273) noticed the similarity but saw both passages as cautious attempts to avoid appearing ignorant. To my mind, Arrian’s imitation of Xenophon’s preface is too precise to be anything other than a deliberate allusion, particularly given the explicit reference to the same passage that comes in the very next sentence. 28. Arrian seems to have written the Cynegeticus around the time of his eponymous archonship in Athens in 145/146, and so when he was about sixty years old; for a discussion of the work’s date, see Tonnet 1988, 1:65–67. 29. For the date of the Anabasis, see the appendix. 30. Bosworth, HC 1.16; cf. Marincola 1997, 66–79, 95–112. 31. Simplicius (In. Ench. 1) says that a similar letter was appended to the Enchiridion, but that letter has been lost. For the general tendencies of epistolary prefaces, see Janson 1964, 19–23, 106–112; cf. Alexander 1986, 58–59. 32. Pagán 2010, enlarging on Johannsen 2006, 38–45. 33. Plato, Parm. 126b–c and Symp. 172a–173b; Cic. De or. 1.4 and De re pub. 1.13.2; Tac. Dial. 1.2–3; cf. Mayer 2001, 89–91. 34. T. Wirth (1967) demonstrated clearly the connection with Xenophon, but his conclusion that the Discourses is entirely the work of Arrian has struck some as extreme. On the authorship of the Discourses, see Stadter 1980, 26–29; Long 1982; I. Hadot 1996; P. Hadot 2000, 30–35; Selle 2001; and Long 2002, 38–41, 64. 132 / No t e s t o Pa g e s 37 –43

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35. On Arrian’s imitation of Thucydides, see Meyer 1877; Bosworth, HC 1:35– 36; Tonnet 1988, 1:284–296 and 382–387. 36. Stamatopoulou (2017, 118–121) suggests that this type of allusion may shift an intertextual relationship into a register of conventional or traditional values, and perhaps that is what is happening with this passage from Arrian. If so, his reliance upon more generalized historical tradition argues all the more strongly for the wide influence of Thucydides’s prefatory remarks. 37. Thuc. 1.1.1: Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραψε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων. On the meanings of συγγράφω and related words, see Hornblower 1987, 8 n. 2; cf. LSJ s.v. συγγράφω II. 38. Th is is a notoriously vexed passage, but its problems do not affect my argument, since I am interested only in Arrian’s adaptation of it. For discussion of the issues pertaining to Thucydides’s method of composing speeches, see Finley 1942; Gomme 1945, 140–150; De St. Croix 1972, 5–14; Lisle 1977; Dover 1981, 393–399; Woodman 1988, 10–15; Hornblower 1991, 59–60; Badian 1992; Moles 1993b, 104– 106; Garrity 1998; Pelling 2009; Jaffe 2017, 14–15. 39. Arrian’s ὅσα δὲ ἤκουον αὐτοῦ λέγοντος is similar to Thucydides’s ὅσα μὲν λόγῳ . . . αὐτὸς ἤκουσα. 40. Arrian’s ταῦτα αὐτὰ ἐπειράθην αὐτοῖς ὀνόμασιν ὡς οἷόν τε ἦν and διαφυλάξαι τῆς ἐκείνου διανοίας καὶ παρρησίας answer Thucydides’s ἐχομένῳ ὅτι ἐγγ ύτατα τῆς ξυμπάσης γνώμης τῶν ἀληθῶς λεχθέντων and ὡς δ’ ἂν ἐδόκουν ἐμοὶ ἕκαστοι περὶ τῶν αἰεὶ παρόντων τὰ δέοντα μάλιστ’ εἰπεῖν, respectively. 41. Kiechle (1964) shows that Arrian’s discussion of cavalry exercises includes material from the reign of Hadrian, and thus very recent. For the lost treatise on infantry tactics, see Tactica 32.2–3. Bosworth (1993, 254 n. 147) argues against the position of Wheeler (1977, 356) that this passage refers to a future treatise on infantry tactics rather than one already written. In either case, the treatise does not survive. 42. For the contextualization of ancient military practices, see especially Stadter 1978. 43. The major examples of confl ict between Ptolemy and Aristobulus can be found at Anab. 3.4.4; 4.3.5, 4.14.3; 5.20.2. 44. Bosworth, HC 1:272–273; Sisti and Zambrini 1:471–472. 45. The version followed by the greater number of authorities was often considered superior by ancient historians; cf. Marincola 1997, 282. Arrian might have pursued this strategy to resolve the confl ict but chose not to. 46. Probability was another extremely common test used by ancient historians to establish the value of an account; cf. Marincola 1997, 282–283. 47. Similar reasoning can be found at Anab. 2.3.7, 2.12.8; 6.26.1. 48. The structure of Arrian’s complaint and his use of distinctly Thucydidean language (e.g., ἀταλαίπωρος) indicate a conscious engagement with Thucydides as a model; cf. Bosworth 1988b, 75–76; Sisti and Zambrini 2:533–535. 49. Bosworth (1988b, 77–83) shows that all three of Arrian’s complaints were justified by citing appearances of these precise errors in other authors but concludes that he was interested in “a purely literary theme” and suggests that the errors Arrian discusses in this section were themselves stock examples of historiNo t e s t o Pa g e s 43 –47 / 133

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cal inaccuracy. Th is argument would be more persuasive if the authors Bosworth cites (Lucian, Dial. Mort. 12.5; Pausanias 1.6.2; Plutarch, De Al. fort. 343D; Curtius 9.4.24) made the same complaints as Arrian, but on the contrary, they simply make the mistakes without comment. 50. Hesk 2007, 366. Brunt (1994, 45), writing of commonplaces in another literary context, states eloquently that “a commonplace reflects common belief, and that belief may be strongly held by some who voice it, and then it is not simply a rhetorical embellishment.” 51. LSJ s.v. ἔπειτα I.2. 52. Anab. 5.6.7–8; the wording is slightly ambiguous, and Arrian may actually be saying that the Indus was greater than all the rivers of Asia plus the Nile and the Danube, a truly extravagant claim. Arrian gets the great majority of his geographical material about India from Megasthenes, but his discussion of these rivers at Indica 4.6 and 4.12 reveals that Megasthenes made more modest claims about the size of the Indus, and this estimate must be regarded as Arrian’s own judgment; cf. Bosworth, HC 2:253–254; Hammond 1993, 253. 53. Curtius 8.10.2–3 and Diodorus 17.86.3 indicate that the bridge involved boats, but no detailed description survives; cf. Bosworth, HC 2:255; Sisti and Zambrini 2:473–474. The fact that Curtius and Diodorus mention boats does not mean, as Brunt (2:23 n. 1) says, that Arrian “read his sources carelessly.” Evidently, Diodorus and Curtius, who cite no sources in this case, have not derived their information from Ptolemy or Aristobulus, the only sources Arrian claims to have consulted on the issue. Certainly neither of them went out of his way to shape the episode as a Herodotean inquiry as Arrian does. 54. Xerxes’s bridge over the Hellespont: Hdt. 7.33–36; Darius’s bridge over the Bosporus, Hdt. 4.89; and over the Danube, Hdt. 4.97. Arrian also cites Herodotus by name slightly later in this discussion (Anab. 5.7.2), leaving no doubt that he is deliberately invoking the earlier historian throughout. 55. For a discussion of Herodotus’s concept of ἀτρέκεια, see Crane 1996, 50– 65; for Herodotus’s (and his contemporaries’) appeals to probability and use of vocabulary related to τὸ εἰκός, see Thomas 2000, 168 n. 1. 56. The bridge was in actuality built under the command of Hephaestion, as Anab. 5.3.5 shows, but here Arrian presents it as an accomplishment of Alexander’s, and so I will do the same. 57. It is not clear where Arrian got his information about Roman bridging methods, but all indications are that the process he describes was well known in his own time, and he may simply have been familiar with it from his own personal experience. He does not say as much, but he does describe the Roman practice as something that had been done for a long time (ἐκ παλαιοῦ), and by saying that they did so “as often as the need took them” (ὁσάκις κατέλαβεν αὐτοὺς ἀνάγκη) he indicates that the Romans used it frequently; cf. Bosworth (HC 2:256–259), who sees in this passage a reference to Trajan’s Parthian campaigns, in which Arrian presumably took part. 58. The verb ξυμβαλεῖν is a further Herodotean touch. Herodotus uses it

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(without the Att ic ξ-, of course) twenty-five times with a sense of drawing rational conclusions. See Powell 1960 s.v. συμβάλλ ω 5. 59. The two most recent commentaries on this passage agree that Arrian speculates on the bridge for the sole purpose of providing a Thucydidean technical excursus with Herodotean stylistic features. They deny that Arrian has any goal beyond that: Bosworth, HC 2:254–255; Sisti and Zambrini 2:473. 60. There are other examples, although Arrian is less forthcoming about his methods in those passages, e.g., Anab. 5.20.9, 6.19.5, 7.15.6. 61. Authors use this narrative device for a variety of reasons and use a variety of techniques, but generally it is considered a part of the creation of a trustworthy narrative persona. Marincola (1997, 280–286) examines the many forms it can take and determines that no consistent method can be identified across different ancient authors. 62. The example of Herodotus shows the versatility of this technique. Perhaps no other ancient historian is as constant in his citation of alternative accounts as Herodotus, and for that reason his methods have been thoroughly studied, revealing the many ways these citations condition the narrative and guide the reader. See Baragwanath 2008, 122–159, and the important contributions of Lateiner (1989, 76–90) and Shrimpton and Gillis (1997). 63. Plutarch, Al. 38; Curtius 5.7.3–11; Diodorus 17.72; cf. Bosworth, HC 1:331. 64. On Arrian’s knowledge of the Alexander-Caesar dyad, see Buszard 2010. Thaïs was also, of course, famous in her own right; cf. Ogden 2009, 208–209. 65. His silence concerning Thaïs allows Arrian to create a significant tension between Alexander’s stated motivation (revenge) and Arrian’s preferred explanation (stupidity). The fact that Arrian elsewhere eagerly seizes the opportunity to show that irresponsible courtiers harm the ability of a king to rule well (e.g., Anab. 2.6.4; 4.8.3, 4.9.8; 7.29.1) only adds to the strangeness of Arrian’s omission of Thaïs. 66. Some key examples are the episode of the Gordian knot (Anab. 2.3.7), Alexander’s behavior when he captured Darius’s wife and mother (2.12.6), Alexander’s visit to the oracle of Ammon at Siwah (3.3.1–3.4.5), the death of Parmenion (3.26.1–4), the capture of Bessus (3.30.5), the murder of Cleitus (4.8.8–9), the death of Callisthenes (4.14.3–4), Alexander’s wound in the Mallian town (6.11.1– 8), the march through the Gedrosian desert (6.24.1–3), the death of Hephaestion (7.14.2–9), and the death of Alexander (7.27.1–2). 67. Seibert (1972, 172–173) discusses the earlier bibliography. More recently, see Bosworth 1988b, 83–93; Bosworth 2007, 447–448; Sisti and Zambrini 2:619–624. 68. Th is type of large-scale narrative patterning has been identified in Herodotus, who was one of Arrian’s main intellectual and stylistic models. The technique will be discussed again several times in this book; for the use of this technique as a connection to Herodotus, see Leon 2019a. For Herodotus and narrative patterning, the fundamental works are Immerwahr 1966 and Lateiner 1989 (163–186). On Arrian as an imitator of Herodotus more generally, see Grundmann 1884; Bosworth, HC 1:34–35; Chaplin 2011.

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69. Yet another Herodotean touch, for which see especially Lateiner 1989, 145– 162; and Munson 2001. 70. For the history of the campaign, see Heckel 2009, 28–29. 71. Arrian says explicitly in the “Second Preface” (Anab. 1.12.2) that no one has yet adequately celebrated Alexander’s glorious deeds as Homer had done for Achilles and announces that this will be one of his goals in writing the Anabasis. 72. Strabo (7.3.8) also records this story, but he places it at a symposium and does not report Alexander’s frustrated response. The fear of the sky may have a greater significance to Celtic cosmology than Alexander recognized, although it is impossible to be sure whether Arrian would have been aware of such fi ne details of Celtic religion or philosophy; cf. Rankin 1987, 59–60, 252. 73. Asclepiades (FGrH 144) is known only from this citation, and Aristus (FGrH 143) is only slightly better attested since Strabo (15.3.8) gives a few details of his life, and there are several more fragments as well; cf. Bosworth 1988b, 83–84. 74. The Celts would of course seem more important just a few decades after Alexander’s death, when they invaded much of northern Greece, but that encounter was represented in the Greek historical record as a great Greek triumph, and so does not disturb the opposition Arrian is drawing between Celts and Romans; cf. Rankin 1987, 83–102. 75. The phenomenon of characters in a history behaving like the historian himself is familiar from Herodotus. Baragwanath (2008, 64–81) makes a compelling argument along these lines regarding Herodotus’s use of Leonidas as a model for his own activities as a historian, and Munson (2003, 59–62) does the same with Cambyses. More generally, see Christ 1994 and Branscome 2013. 76. Hdt. 7.33–40; cf. Dewald 1997. For the importance of this moment to the historical Alexander, see Instinsky 1949. For the difficulty of separating Alexander’s own appropriations of history from the literary comparisons made by later historians, see McGroarty 2006 and Jacob 1991. See also Pelling 2013. 77. For boundary crossings as ideological markers in Herodotus, see Immerwahr 1966; Lateiner 1989, 163–186. 78. Flower and Marincola 2002, 302–309; cf. Dewald 1997. 79. Cf. Instinsky 1949, 44–53; Bosworth (HC 1:101) suggests that Alexander’s rituals were standard Macedonian practice. 80. Hdt. 4.83–142 (esp. 4.122–124, where Darius’s own crossing of the Tanaïs is narrated); cf. Bosworth, HC 2:28. 81. See further discussion in Leon 2019a. 82. Hdt. 4.44.1.

C h a p t e r 3: A l e x a n de r a mong t h e K i ng s of H i s t or y 1. For traditions originating the Hellenistic period, see Fears 1974. For Alexander as a popular subject of Greek declamations, see Russell 1983, 107; Bowie 2004, 82–83; Gibson 2004, 110–118. For Roman declamatory themes connected

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with Alexander, see Baynham 1998, 25–30; Bonner 1966, 273–275. There are many surveys of the narrative histories that were written about Alexander—Atkinson 2000; Bosworth 1988b, 1–15; and Pearson 1960 are accessible and thorough. 2. Plutarch, Pyrrhus 8.2. For the Successors’ imitation of Alexander, see Meeus 2009; Stewart 1993, 229–323; Bohm 1986. Tisé (2002) discusses the same phenomenon in the context of the Roman Republic. Spencer 2009, Kühnen 2008, and Isager 1993 offer broader surveys of Roman material. 3. For Trajan’s imitation of Alexander, see Syme 1958, 770–771; Bosworth 2007, 447–448; Kühnen 2008, 165–172; Spencer 2009, 265–266; Monaco-Caterine 2017, 407–408. 4. Alexander is mentioned in Discourses of Epictetus 2.13.24, 2.22.17; 3.22.92, 3.24.70. On the role of Epictetus in Arrian’s education, see Brunt 1977. For Arrian’s devotion to Alexander from his youth, see Anab. 1.12.5. 5. On the centrality of contestation in exemplary discourse in general, see Langlands 2018, 47–66; cf. Roller 2004, 7, and 2018, 12–13. For Alexander specifically, see Pomeroy 1991, 76–77. Muccioli (2018) surveys some contrasting views in the early Roman Empire. 6. Langlands (2018, 128–140) discusses the relationship between broad agreement on some key aspect of an exemplum and vigorous debate over its interpretation. Alexander’s role in debates over kingship can be seen, for example, in Dio Chrysostom’s Kingship Orations and Plutarch’s orations On the Fortune or Virtue of Alexander. For Dio, see especially Moles 1990; for Plutarch, see Anderson 1993, 114–117. 7. Such discussions grew out of a Hellenistic tradition of political analysis that included theories of ideal kingship but also entertained a greater variety of constitutional forms than was possible under the empire. Noreña 2009 traces the development of this phenomenon. For the earlier tradition, see Hahm 2000. Significantly, Arrian’s teacher Epictetus himself spent time at the court of several Roman emperors and had much to say on the relationship between private individuals and imperial power (e.g., Discourses 1.10, 1.19, and 4.1; cf. Acton 2011, 113 and 118– 119; Millar 1965; Starr 1949). 8. Ahl (1984) discusses the dynamics of using analogy and other types of figured speech to avoid giving offense while discussing sensitive issues. 9. See Bosworth, HC 1:14–16, for the encomiastic view. Stadter (1980, 89) advocates a complex approach that allows for more criticism in Arrian’s presentation, a view that Bosworth (2007) later adopted as well. Leon (2019a) argues that Alexander’s character changes significantly in the latter half of the Anabasis, showing that Arrian employed a notion of character development. Liotsakis (2019, 14–80) argues for an even sharper division between the two halves of the Anabasis occurring precisely at the division between books 3 and 4. 10. Leon 2019a, 552–557. Alexander’s contemporaries, Darius III and Porus, perform a similar but distinct narrative function, as discussed in greater detail in chapter 4. 11. Langlands (2018, 91–95) argues that the implicit claim of exemplary tales

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to be grounded in historical reality better fosters emulation by positing that extraordinary human behavior is both possible and plausible. 12. For instance, Herodotus (9.122), one of Arrian’s chief literary models, famously deploys the figure of Cyrus the Great at the end of his Histories to explain the characteristics of the Persian people that made them such a formidable enemy for the Greeks; cf. Dewald 1997. Similarly, Athenian funeral orations regularly reviewed a standard series of exempla from both the distant and the more recent past that reflected the virtues Athenians wished to see in the present community, in particular the exploits of Theseus and the heroic collective action of the Athenian army at Marathon in 490 BCE; cf. Steinbock 2013, 49–58; Gehrke 2003; Parker 1996, 131–141; Thomas 1989, 196–237; Loraux 1986. For a full discussion of the development of the Greek tradition, see Dillery 1995, 127–130; cf. Cairns 2014. To judge from his use of Dionysus and Heracles, Alexander himself seems to have recognized the power of historical exempla in craft ing a narrative of his own identity and public persona; cf. Brunt 2:435–442. 13. On the Roman exempla tradition in general, see Langlands 2018; Roller 2004, 2009, and 2018; Chaplin 2000, 5–31; Stemmler 2000; Hölkeskamp 1996; Litch field 1914. 14. They were, however, less likely than their Roman counterparts to invoke models from the Republic. For the complicated relationship between the Greek and Roman traditions, see Gowing 2009, 333–336; cf. Asirvatham 2017, 481–482. Arrian, as a high-ranking official in Roman government and the Roman army, is likely to have had a more extensive Latin rhetorical education than many Imperial Greek authors. For Latin as virtually the official language of the army, see Adams 2003, 760–761. For Arrian’s knowledge of Latin, see Periplus 6.2 and 10.1, with Marenghi 1957; and Rochette 1997, 124–125. 15. The impact of the Persian invasions of Greece in 490 under Darius I and, especially, in 480/479 under Xerxes on the development of Greek identity cannot be overstated. See E. Hall 1989, 56–69; J. Hall 2002; Rhodes 2007. 16. McClure 2006 explores this theme in light of Greek att itudes toward emotions and gender. For Xerxes in literature generally see Bridges 2014. 17. Bridges 2014, 163–170. 18. Bridges 2014, 119–121; Squillace 2010, 76–80; Poddighe 2009; Flower 2000. The sincerity of Alexander’s public position has been debated but lies beyond the scope of this book. Borza (1972b) gives a good summary of the main lines of scholarship. After Borza’s summary, Bosworth (1988a, 187–197) offers one of the strongest arguments for cynicism. Seibert (1998) gives an account of several competing interpretations. 19. Asirvatham (2008, 245–251) discusses Philip’s reputation in fourth-century Athenian rhetoric. 20. As, for instance, in his continued invocation of his elected position as hēgemōn of the Corinthian League, for which see Poddighe 2009, 109–115. 21. Anab. 1.1.1–3; for the historical events glossed over by Arrian here, see Bosworth, HC 1:45–51; cf. Worthington 2008, 181–186.

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22. For the Lacedaemonian confl ict, Badian 1967 is still fundamental; cf. Bosworth 1988a, 198–204. 23. Anab. 1.1.4–1.6.11; on the narrative function of this virtuoso performance, see Stadter 1980 (91) and 1981. 24. Diodorus 17.14.1–4; Plutarch, Al. 11.3–12; and Justin 11.4.1–8 all stress the extreme violence employed and the casualties the Thebans suffered. 25. Bosworth, HC 1:74–75 and 78–79; cf. Hamilton 1969, 29–30. See Liotsakis 2019, 24–25, for further strategies employed here by Arrian. 26. On the role of Greeks in Alexander’s army, see Bosworth 1988a, 264. 27. Arrian’s account is again at variance with Diodorus 17.13.1; cf. Brunt 1:39 n. 3 and Bosworth, HC 1:90–91. Plutarch (Al. 11.11–12) places the responsibility on Alexander, saying that he was acting on behalf of the Plataeans and Phocians. 28. Bosworth, HC 1:84–89. For Bosworth, this engagement with Thucydides is a “purely literary exercise,” but the surrounding context makes clear that he is using Thucydides to establish a specific analytical framework for his audience. See also Sisti and Zambrini 1:329–333. For Arrian’s use of Thucydides as a literary model more generally, see Tonnet 1988, 1:283–294; and Meyer 1877. 29. Thuc. 1.1.2; Arrian may also be imitating similar phrasing used by Thucydides at 1.23.1: Τῶν δὲ πρότερον ἔργων μέγιστον ἐπράχθη τὸ Μηδικόν, καὶ τοῦτο ὅμως δυοῖν ναυμαχίαιν καὶ πεζομαχίαιν ταχεῖαν τὴν κρίσιν ἔσχεν. τούτου δὲ τοῦ πολέμου μῆκός τε μέγα προύβη, παθήματά τε ξυνηνέχθη γενέσθαι ἐν αὐτῷ τῇ Ἑλλ άδι οἷα οὐχ ἕτερα ἐν ἴσῳ χρόνῳ. A focus on the magnitude of events such as these is a topos of historiography originating with Herodotus and Thucydides; cf. Herkommer 1968, 165–167. On the theme of greatness in Thucydides in particular, see Woodman 1988, 30–32; cf. Cawkwell 1997, 10–11. 30. The Ambracians, Thuc. 3.113.5–6: ἐκπλαγεὶς τῷ μεγέθει τῶν παρόντων κακῶν. . . . πάθος γὰρ τοῦτο μιᾷ πόλει Ἑλλ ηνίδι ἐν ἴσαις ἡμέραις μέγιστον δὴ τῶν κατὰ τὸν πόλεμον τόνδε ἐγένετο. The Sicilian Expedition, Thuc. 7.87.5: ξυνέβη τε ἔργον τοῦτο τῶν κατὰ τὸν πόλεμον τόνδε μέγιστον γενέσθαι, δοκεῖν δ’ ἔμοιγε καὶ ὧν ἀκοῇ Ἑλλ ηνικῶν ἴσμεν, καὶ τοῖς τε κρατήσασι λαμπρότατον καὶ τοῖς διαφθαρεῖσι δυστυχέστατον. 31. His emphasis on surprise (παραλόγῳ) may also be a reference to the surprise inspired by the Spartan surrender at Sphacteria, although Thucydides (4.40.1) uses slightly different language to describe that event (παρὰ γνώμην). Almost as famous and closer in phrasing is Thucydides’s appraisal of the Syracusan victory over the Athenian fleet (7.70.1). For surprise as a theme in Thucydides generally, see Finley 1942, 167–168 and 237–238, on the Syracusan victory in particular. 32. Thucydides’s famous account of the siege is woven into his narrative of the years 429–427, but the fi nal decision as to the fate of Plataea is given at 3.68.1–5; it should be noted that Thucydides represents the slaughter of Plataeans and subsequent destruction of their city as actions of the Lacedaemonians undertaken on behalf of the Thebans and not, like Arrian here, as actions of the Thebans themselves; cf. Bosworth, HC 1:88–89; and Sisti and Zambrini 1.331. On the significance of Plataea to Thucydides’s historical outlook, see Bruzzone 2015.

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33. In addition to the incident at Thebes, Arrian’s thoroughly Hellenic representation of Alexander for the fi rst two and a half books of the Anabasis is best exemplified by Alexander’s speeches before the batt les of Issus (2.7.3–9) and Gaugamela (3.9.5–8). Arrian offers an additional strong endorsement of this representation in the “Second Preface,” where he compares Alexander exclusively to other Greek leaders (1.12.1–5); cf. Marincola 1989, 187. 34. Briant (2015) provides an important corrective to this characterization, found not just in Arrian but in other Greek and Latin authors as well. 35. Arrian’s characterization of Darius may be more complex than it appears. The eulogy for Darius (Anab. 3.22.2–6) suggests that fortune dealt him a series of insuperable obstacles. Bosworth (HC 1:346–347) sees a strong contradiction between the eulogy and the narrative, however. 36. That the batt le was a real turning point in the career of the historical Alexander can hardly be doubted, and space does not permit a full discussion here. I mention by way of example that after the batt le, Alexander’s administration was no longer solely composed of Greeks and Macedonians but began to include Persians and other perceived foreigners as well. On this point, see Bosworth, HC 1:314–315. Cf. Badian 1965, 172–174; Briant 2002, 848–850. 37. Alexander’s comments on Issus: Anab. 2.7.4–6. On Gaugamela: Anab. 3.16.3. 38. On Arrian’s manipulation of chronology, see the excellent synthesis in Liotsakis 2019, 122–162. 39. River crossings frequently signal ideologically important moments in Herodotus. Cf. Immerwahr 1966; Lateiner 1989, 126–135. For the significance of geographical boundaries in Arrian’s compositional method, see Stadter 1980, 79–80; and Leon 2019a. Although dozens of rivers are crossed in the Anabasis with seemingly no ideological significance attached, it is at least worth noting that in this passage, which is marked by distinctly Herodotean overtones, Arrian chose not to mention Alexander’s crossing of the Tigris on his way to Susa, a much more significant river than its tributary, the Pasatigris, or the unnamed river that Alexander crosses to get to Persepolis. The mention of these last two river crossings seems to have a strong narrative purpose, well suited to the effect that I believe Arrian is trying to create by other means. 40. Bosworth, HC 1:314; Sherwin-White 1987, 8–9; Briant 2002, 962–963. 41. For the tradition, see Kuhrt and Sherwin-White 1991; cf. Naiden 2019, 124– 129 and 240–243. 42. For the difficulties of dating this event, see Bosworth, HC 1:318. 43. Badian 1967. 44. In contrast to Arrian’s presentation, both Diodorus 17.67 and Curtius 5.3.4–15 stress the role of Madates, the local satrap. Bosworth (HC 1:321–323) discusses some problems with the geography and chronology of Arrian’s account and posits that there may have been two meetings with the Uxians. If Arrian has in fact collapsed multiple episodes, I take that as further evidence that he was attempting to draw out the ideological significance of the confl ict.

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45. On the theme of nomads as a limit for despotic expansion, see Hartog 1988, 193–206; cf. Hunter 1982, 176–225. On the continuity of the representation of nomads in Greek and Roman thought, see Shaw 1982, 11–26. 46. Anab. 3.17.2; Alexander’s use of trickery can be compared to Cyrus’s (Hdt. 1.207), for which see Hartog 1988, 166–167. 47. That Arrian feels the need here to bring to bear the weight of Ptolemy’s authority suggests that he expects his audience to view this detail as a remarkable change in Alexander’s demeanor. The phenomenon of women’s power in Eastern court politics is most clearly demonstrated in Herodotus, for a discussion of which see Lateiner 1989, 138–140; see also McClure 2006, which discusses a similar phenomenon in Aeschylus’s Persians, and more generally see E. Hall 1989, 95. 48. The gift s: Hdt. 7.29.2. The son: Hdt. 7.39. The word is primarily associated with gift s of honor in the world of epic and with religious ceremonies (LSJ s.v. γέρας), associations that only enhance the flagrant violation of propriety displayed by both Xerxes and Alexander. 49. For Darius, see Hdt. 4.83–142; for Cyrus, see Hdt. 1.201–216. 50. The constant revolts that plagued both Darius I and Xerxes exemplify this phenomenon; see Briant 2002, 114–122 (for Darius), 524–525 (for Xerxes). For an overview of the power structure of Achaemenid Persia, see Kuhrt 1994, 2:686– 692. 51. The chronology of the events here and Alexander’s motivations are both under debate, but I am primarily concerned with unpacking the argument Arrian is making, not with determining whether he is right. I have argued earlier in this discussion that he is willing to distort chronology to establish an analytical framework, and here he has patterned his account to a degree that suggests that the burning of the palace should be read ideologically and in parallel with the other symbolic acts performed by Alexander at this point in the narrative. For good discussions of the historical issues, see Hammond 1992 and Borza 1972a. 52. On the motif of the wise advisor in Herodotus, see Bischoff 1932, Latt imore 1939, and Pelling 1991. Chaplin (2011) looks at Parmenion as a wise advisor in this episode and connects it with Herodotus. 53. Smyth §787. 54. For Herodotus as a source of information about the Persian Wars in rhetorical schools, see Gibson 2004, 126–127. 55. For Herodotus’s patterning techniques, see Lateiner 1989, 163–186; Immerwahr 1966; and my subsequent discussion. 56. Bosworth (HC 2:46) points out that Arrian seems to be unique in his objection to Bessus’s treatment. 57. Curtius 7.7.1–7.9.19; Plutarch, Al. 45.6 and Moralia 341C; and Justin 12.2 all represent the incident as an example of Alexander’s ability to triumph over physical hardship and thus as an illustration of his virtues. See pp. 58–59 and 94–100, as well as Leon 2019a. 58. Darius’s invasion of Scythia was a massive undertaking (Hdt. 4.83–142), but Alexander’s was a brief, one-day affair that was almost immediately aban-

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doned. For Alexander’s campaign, see Bosworth 1988a, 110–111; cf. Fuller 1958, 236–241. 59. As argued in Leon 2019a. 60. Baragwanath (2008) has shown the importance of interior motivation in the construction of historical narrative. 61. E.g., Alexander’s conduct during the mutiny at the Hyphasis (Anab. 5.25.1– 5.29.3), his poorly motivated crossing of the Gedrosian desert (Anab. 6.24.1– 6.25.5), and his attempted deification of Hephaestion, which Arrian associates with bad governance of the empire (Anab. 7.23.6–7). For the digression, see especially Stadter 1980, 103–114; and Liotsakis 2019, 18–24; cf. Bosworth, HC 2:45–101. 62. Working independently, Liotsakis (2019) arrived at a conclusion somewhat parallel to my own, although he focuses on an emerging negativity in Arrian’s explanations of Alexander’s motivation; see especially pp. 35–43. Langlands (2018, 86–111, but esp. 105–111) shows that Roman exemplary narratives regularly employed contestable lessons rather than simplistic moralizing, a practice with which Arrian appears to have aligned himself. 63. Jacob 1991 effectively brings out this aspect of Arrian’s writing. 64. Stadter 1980, 76–78, drawing on Immerwahr 1966, 130–133. Liotsakis (2019, 81–121) has shown how march narratives contribute to Arrian’s characterization of Alexander. 65. Bosworth (HC 1:376) notes a high degree of parallelism in these two narratives, suggesting that they are designed to be read together, and Liotsakis (2019, 92–118) explores the effects in detail. 66. Indeed, the circumstances of the advance into Hyrcania are considerably more complex than Arrian lets on. Alexander may have felt the pursuit of Bessus was a natural next move, and Arrian may have agreed, but the troops evidently saw things differently; cf. Liotsakis 2019, 98–100. 67. For the relationship of geography and cultural determinism in Herodotus, see, for example, Pelling 1997. 68. See my subsequent discussion; cf. Leon 2019a. 69. Bosworth (HC 1:377–378) gives more detail on the ancient debate. 70. See generally McCoskey 2012, 46–69; Isaac 2004, 56–109. For Herodotus’s place in this system of thought, see Thomas 2000, 75–101. 71. Pace Liotsakis (2019), who regards these events as clearly taking place at Maracanda. If that is so, Arrian has muddied the picture considerably, since he clearly states that Alexander moved fi rst to Maracanda (ἐπὶ Μαράκανδα, Anab. 3.30.6) and from there to the Tanaïs (ἔνθεν δὲ ἐπὶ Τάναϊν, 3.30.7), meaning that he had left Maracanda behind. 72. Curtius 6.1–10; for Arrian’s use of ἐπιχώριοι to describe local barbarians, see, for example, 1.12.1, 1.26.5, 1.29.1; 6.1.5, 6.9.3, 6.24.2. 73. The verb appears thirteen times in the Anabasis, but this is the only place where it appears twice in the same chapter. Other appearances can be found at 1.15.3, 1.16.2; 3.15.6, 3.18.9; 4.2.6, 4.27.4; 5.17.7, 5.18.2, 5.23.5; 6.2.5, 6.25.2. 74. See note 1 in this chapter.

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75. For details of the campaign, see Lane Fox 1973, 303–309. 76. The Rock of Chorienes (Anab. 4.21.1–4.21.10) and the Rock of Aornus (4.28.1–4.30.4.) 77. For heroic touches in the rock narratives, see Liotsakis 2019, 35–43. On Alexander’s rivalry with Heracles, see Bosworth, HC 2:180–181. 78. For Alexander and Dionysus, see Bosworth, HC 2:197–199.

C h a p t e r 4 : S ic k n e s s , De a t h , a n d V i r t u e 1. Garland (2010) surveys such views across a range of times and places. 2. Personal involvement in the dangers of a campaign was a topos in descriptions of the ideal general, for which see Woodman 1983, 198–199; Kraus 1994, 135. Nevertheless, Alexander seems genuinely to have engaged in such behavior; cf. Fuller 1958, 301–305. Campbell (1987) shows that Roman military commanders acted in accordance with expectations created by literary traditions. Arrian’s own career as a general would certainly have been informed by such traditions. For Alexander as an inspirational leader, see Lendon 2005, 132–138. 3. Erskine (2002, 167–171) gives a thorough overview of these events. 4. See Plutarch, Al. 4.2; and Pyrrhus 8.2. Cf. Hamilton 1969, 10; Bohm 1986; Stewart 1993, 229–323; Meeus 2009. 5. Plutarch, Al. 77.5; Curtius 10.10.9–13. Curtius is more skeptical than Plutarch, but the fact that both authors mention it suggests the story still had resonance for early Imperial audiences. 6. Plutarch, Al. 4.4–5. Hamilton (1969, 11) cites numerous examples of this tendency in Greek and Roman literature. 7. Potter (1999) offers an evocative discussion of this issue in the context of the Roman Empire. 8. For subtle differences between Roman and Greek att itudes toward artificial smells, see Potter 1999, 176–179. 9. See, for example, Gleason 1995; Barton 1999; Harris 2001; Leon 2019b. 10. Leon 2016, 50–59. 11. For a history of the tradition, see Harris 2001, 80–88; for the increased emphasis on bodily control during the Principate, see Foucault 1986, 84–86; Edwards 1999, 255–257. Cf. Gleason 1995, xxv. 12. Burliga (2013, 80–103) shows how Stoic thought influenced even Arrian’s historical writing. 13. On Stoicism and the body in general, see Grahn-Wilder 2018, 101–133; Reydams-Schils 2005, 34–37; Edwards 1999, 254–256. 14. Arrian treats the issue more extensively in Discourses 1.3; cf. Long 2002, 157–158. 15. For the place of Stoicism in Imperial culture, see Gill 2003. 16. See the nuanced discussion of Penrose 2015. For the heroic potential of injury in the Anabasis, see Liotsakis 2019, 171–172.

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17. Hdt. 9.71.3. Cf. Flower and Marincola 2002, 234; Asheri et al. 2006, 268. See further examples at Josephus, BJ 5.365; and Thucydides 4.126.5. 18. Plutarch shows some of the same concerns in his Life of Pyrrhus, for which see Leon 2019b, 186–191. 19. On the other versions, see Bosworth, HC 2:308. 20. Bosworth, HC 2:306; Sisti and Zambrini 2:490–491. 21. Indeed, Hammond (1993, 253–260) has argued that Arrian’s narrative of the whole campaign depends chiefly on Ptolemy, with a few scattered remarks from Aristobulus. See also Howe 2008. For the topos, see Woodman 1983, 228. 22. For Arrian’s use of parallelism in narrative, see Leon 2019a. 23. As does the implicit contrast between Porus’s face-to-face meeting with Alexander after the batt le and Darius’s protracted cowardly fl ight after Gaugamela. See pp. 75–84. 24. See, for example, 1.15.7–8; 2.12.1, 2.27.2; 3.30.11; 4.3.3, 4.23.3, 4.26.4. 25. For the epic elements, see Liotsakis 2019, 195–200; cf. Sisti and Zambrini 2:530–533. 26. Anab. 6.13.1–3. The impact of Alexander’s physical presence can be traced at a number of batt les and other military situations in the Anabasis: e.g., 2.10.2, 2.12.1; 3.14.3, 3.21.9; 6.26.2–3. 27. Anab. 7.10.1–2. The speech failed, but the implication is clearly that Alexander was surprised to fi nd that his personal involvement in batt le was no longer sufficient to sway the minds of the troops; cf. Sisti and Zambrini 2:604–605. For an analysis of the rhetorical effect of visible scars, see Leigh 1995. 28. I have left aside several instances of illness or sudden death that are reported only in passing, such as the many occasions on which Alexander releases sick and wounded troops or the death of Arrhybas at Anab. 3.5.5, which is mentioned only as an explanation for a change in administrative staff. The topic of Alexander’s veterans is fascinating in its own right, but given the brevity of their mention and their relative unimportance to Arrian’s narrative, they do not belong in the same categories as the events I am discussing here. For the logistical issues brought about by wounded veterans, see Sternberg 1999; for the use of wounded soldiers in Alexander’s sett lements, see Briant 1978; for the political importance of the soldiers, see Roisman 2012. Of the events I have omitted, only the death of Memnon (Anab. 2.1.2) had a major impact on the war, but Arrian downplayed that incident by contrast with the accounts of Diodorus (17.29.3–4) and Curtius (3.2.1), both of whom identify the event as a decisive factor; cf. Tonnet (1988, 1:453–455), who seeks to connect the death of Memnon to a broader program of Stoic fatalism in the Anabasis. I have discussed the death of Callisthenes elsewhere; see pp. 27–32. 29. They were not, of course, as Coenus points out. Bosworth (HC 2:351–354) gives a useful analysis of the factual basis of Coenus’s complaints. 30. Curtius 3.5.1–3.6.20; Justin 11.8.3; Diodorus 17.31.4–6; Plutarch, Al. 19.1.10. Bosworth (HC 1:190–191) outlines the discrepancies; cf. Sisti and Zambrini 1:402–

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404. The sickness is generally thought to have been a form of malaria, for which see Engels 1978, 224–225; Borza 1987. 31. Th is section of the narrative is given in reported speech because Arrian is openly relaying the account of others, but he appears to be synthesizing multiple narratives. 32. For the friendship between these two men, see the entry for Philip in Berve 1926, no. 788; cf. Heckel 2006, 213–214. For the importance of trust in Roman conceptions of friendship, see Williams 2012, 14–15. 33. For lack of fear in the face of fortune, see Frede 2003, 204–205. For interconnected lives, see Reydams-Schils 2005, 53–82. For the standard features of the tyrant as a stock character, see Dunkle 1971, 12–15. Arrian repeatedly stresses the importance of a trustworthy court, for which see Anab. 2.6.4; 4.8.3, 4.9.8; 7.29.1. 34. See pp. 58–59 and 76–78. The discussion that follows also draws in part on Leon 2019a. 35. Plutarch, Al. 45.6, and Mor. 341C; Curtius 7.7.1–7.9.19. The author of the Metz Epitome (11–12) also mentions the incident in what appears to be a heavily condensed version of the account preserved by Curtius. Justin 12.2 gives an account so distorted that it is not even clear he is describing the same events. 36. All authors make clear that Alexander at least believed that he was crossing the Tanaïs, but some doubt about whether he was right was present already in antiquity. Plutarch (Al. 45.6) and Arrian (Anab. 3.30.7) both noted confusion about the identity and location of the Tanaïs, a dispute that has att racted more attention than any other aspect of the episode; cf. Hamilton 1969, 116–119; Bosworth, HC 1:377–379 and 2:22–31; Sisti and Zambrini 2:380–383. 37. Th is cultural shift was a major source of displeasure for Alexander’s Greek and Macedonian subjects and left a powerful mark on rhetorical traditions. For an overview of the policies inspiring this reaction, see Weber 2009, 90–92. 38. Curtius reports the wound at 7.6.22 and refers to it several times during his account of the invasion of Scythia. The references are at 7.7.5–7, 7.7.9, 7.7.18–20, 7.8.3, 7.8.7, 7.9.11, and 7.9.13. Source criticism has not securely revealed the origin of any of the three accounts under discussion here, but plainly Curtius saw the event as important and was careful in his composition. For Curtius’s use of sources, see Baynham (1998, 57–100), who stresses the variety of sources that can be detected in the narrative and the historian’s tendency to blend together multiple sources for the same event. 39. Quotations from Curtius come from Lucarini’s 2001 Teubner edition. 40. On the Europe/Asia division in Herodotus’s account of Darius’s invasion of Scythia, see Immerwahr 1956, 261–264. 41. Hdt. 4.83–142. On Darius’s Scythian invasion, see Hartog 1988, 193–206; Hunter 1982, 176–225. On boundary crossing in general, see Lateiner 1989, 126–135. 42. Leon 2016, 50–59. 43. Curtius (7.7.22–29) also reports Aristander’s prophecies, but his account differs in that the seer gets favorable omens on his second attempt, and Alexander

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appears to be consulting him as an act of private devotion rather than in any official capacity. 44. Leon 2019a, 556–558. 45. Syme (1958, 473–474) captures this problem well while introducing his own discussion of the political background of Tacitus’s narrative in the Annals: “The search for allusions is liable to be deprecated as a mere exercise of ingenuity. They can seldom be caught and fi xed with certitude; and it is open to anybody to argue that Tacitus would have written much as he did if Trajan had never invaded Mesopotamia, if Hadrian had never inherited the imperial power.” 46. For Hadrian’s withdrawal, see Birley 1997, 78 and 178. For Trajan’s imitation of Alexander, see chapter 3, note 3. 47. HA, Hadrian 9.1–2. See also Birley 1997, 178–183. 48. For the relationship of Arrian’s narrative to contemporary events, see Bosworth 2007. For Arrian’s concern with death and its consequences as a motif, see Stadter 1980, 86–88 and 219 n. 81. 49. Stadter (1980, 87–88) details the many links between these two episodes; cf. Liotsakis (2019, 139–143), who regards all of book 7 as preparation for Alexander’s death. 50. Anab. 2.12.7. Alexander’s odd statement recurs in a less ambiguous form at Diodorus 17.37.6 and Curtius 3.12.17. The phrase is likely to have derived from the Stoic notion of a friend as another self, for which see Welles 1963, 225 n. 1; cf. Sisti and Zambrini 1:431. Bosworth (HC 1:221) notes that this defi nition was not restricted to Stoic philosophy and was actually a commonly held opinion, for which see also Williams 2012, 15–16. On Alexander’s relationship with Hephaestion, see Ogden 2009, 210–213; Reames-Zimmerman 1999. 51. The lacuna occurs just after 7.12.7, for which see Roos’s note ad loc.; cf. Sisti and Zambrini 2:610. 52. Liotsakis (2019, 201 n. 93) expands on Arrian’s lack of interest in Hephaestion, tentatively suggesting that Arrian was uncomfortable with homosexuality. There is no positive evidence for such att itudes in Arrian’s work, and ReamesZimmerman (1999, 90) points out that Arrian refers to Hephaestion as Alexander’s ἐρώμενος in one of his Epictetan works (Disc. 2.22.17–18). 53. For the various unnamed sources Arrian may be referring to here, see Sisti and Zambrini 2:614–615; Hammond 1993, 294–297; Bosworth 1988b, 64–65; Tarn 1948, 2:4, 57, and 78. For some key considerations regarding Hephaestion’s real funeral, see Palagia 2000. 54. Liotsakis (2019, 201–205) argues that Arrian rejects stories that make Alexander seem irrational while accepting those that contribute to his epic characterization of Alexander. 55. On the connection between grief and anger in the Iliad, see Austin 2015. For the interplay of these two emotions in traditions concerning Alexander, see Maitland 2015. 56. Bosworth (1996, 146–147) offers some possible motives in his narrative of the campaign, none of which is given by Arrian.

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57. In his eulogy for the horse (Anab. 5.19.5), Arrian stresses that Alexander and Bucephalas labored together and shared dangers for a long time and that Bucephalas deemed no one else worthy to ride him, perhaps an echo of Arrian’s worthiness to record the deeds of Alexander expressed in the “Second Preface” (1.12.5). 58. Bosworth (HC 2:313–314) discusses the variants in detail. 59. The precise locations of the two cities have proven difficult to fi x; cf. Sisti and Zambrini 2:493–494. 60. Diodorus 17.76.5–8; Curtius 6.5.18–21; Plutarch, Al. 44.3–5. Cf. Bosworth, HC 2:314; Bosworth 1996, 28–29; Sisti and Zambrini 2:494–495. 61. Bosworth (HC 2:314) briefly discusses the effect of chronological distortion on this episode. 62. Th is departure has received a great many scholars’ attention, for which see Sisti and Zambrini 2:494; Bosworth, HC 2:314–315; Hamilton 1969, 120. 63. Bosworth (HC 2:315) is too quick to accept the notion that a Roman audience would fi nd Alexander’s behavior commendable. None of the passages he lists is an exact parallel, and many of them do not in fact seem to view the eradication of an entire people as a desirable outcome to the situations they describe. A full examination of Greek and Roman att itudes toward genocide lies beyond the scope of this book, but among the nuanced accounts that can be found are those of Konstan (2007), who focuses specifically on Greek att itudes, and van Wees (2010), who analyzes mass violence and threats thereof as part of a policy of intimidation designed to reduce resistance. 64. Indeed, both Plutarch and Curtius say that Alexander’s reaction was inappropriate. Plutarch, Al. 44.4: “οὐ μετρίως.” Curtius 6.5.19: “maiore ergo quam decebat ira.” 65. On the importance of the embedded self in contemporary Stoicism, see Reydams-Schils 2005, 53–82. 66. On the unity of book 7, see Stadter 1980, 86–88; cf. Liotsakis 2019, 319– 143. On the collocation of these episodes, which all occur out of chronological sequence, see Badian 1968, 192–193; Bosworth 1988b, 72–75; and Bosworth 1998. On the difference between Arrian’s account and other versions, see MuckensturmPoulle 1998, 195–213. 67. Anab. 7.3.1: ταῦτα ἐγὼ ἀνέγραψα, ὅτι καὶ ὑπὲρ Καλάνου ἐχρῆν εἰπεῖν ἐν τῇ περὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου συγγραφῇ. 68. For Arrian’s decision to omit the influence of Thaïs at Persepolis, see pp. 51–52. Other important episodes left unnarrated by Arrian include the circumstances of Philip’s death and Alexander’s failure to put an adequate succession plan in place at the end of his life. 69. Bosworth (1988b), implies that the contrast is unintentional and ineffective. Zambrini (at Sisti and Zambrini 2:586) argues that Calanus’s suicide is meant to create a significant connection with Alexander but does not elaborate. 70. Diodorus 17.107.1–5; Strabo 15.1.68; Plutarch, Al. 69.6–70.2; Aelian, VH 5.6. 71. Muckensturm-Poulle 1998, 201–213. Stoneman (1994 and 1995) investigates the accuracy of Greek stories of Indian philosophy and identifies several possible

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schools of thought that may have been the origins of such stories; cf. Bosworth 1998, 177–178. The spectacle of Calanus’s death was apparently reenacted centuries later for a Roman audience in Athens, for which see Strabo 15.1.73 and Plutarch, Al. 69.9. 72. Alexander meets with another group of Indian philosophers at Anab. 7.1.5– 6; they chastise him for seeking to control so much territory and remind him that he will soon die. At 7.2.1 Arrian briefly tells the famous story of Alexander’s unsuccessful conversation with Diogenes of Sinope, who has no interest in the king or his ambitions. On these two episodes, see the thorough commentary in Sisti and Zambrini 2:582–84. On the Diogenes anecdotes specifically, see Hamilton 1969, 34–35. 73. For discussions of Alexander’s πόθος, see Brunt 1:469–470; and Montgomery 1965, 191–217. 74. For Megasthenes’s account, see Bosworth 1998, 181–182. For the traditional contrast between Dandamis and Calanus, see Muckensturm-Poulle 1998, 200. 75. Calanus’s desire to die before suffering greater misfortunes may be intended to prefigure Arrian’s own comment, following Hephaestion’s death, that Alexander would have preferred to die before his friend and avoid the suffering of grief (Anab. 7.16.8). 76. See Langlands 2018, 91–95, on the importance of presenting plausible attainability in exemplary tales. 77. Arrian (Anab. 7.27.1–3) expresses frustration with the number of salacious rumors surrounding Alexander’s death. 78. Bosworth (1971) and Milnes (1968, 256–258) have argued that Alexander was poisoned. They are not alone but are usually regarded as the most persuasive to argue in this way. Most other scholars have attempted to identify a naturally occurring illness of some sort. Atkinson et al. (2009) offer a thorough overview of the leading theories, none of which is secure. Most recently K. Hall (2018) has made a case for Guillain-Barré syndrome. Borza and Reames-Zimmerman (2000, 27–28) are almost certainly correct to posit that a combination of factors contributed to Alexander’s demise, and without an examination of Alexander’s actual physical remains, it seems unlikely that a precise identification of those factors will ever emerge. 79. Pearson (1954–1955, 429–439) fi rst advanced the theory that the journals were large-scale forgeries. Hammond (1993, 306–311) argues that such a forgery would have been impossible and posits widely available copies in libraries across the oikoumenē. It is nevertheless true that Arrian (Anab. 7.25.1–7.26.3) and Plutarch (Al. 76.1–9) do not give identical accounts from the journals and therefore cannot have simply transcribed them; cf. Bosworth 1988b, 158–167. Samuel (1965) has argued convincingly that the Royal Journals covered only Alexander’s last days and that journals exist from that period because Alexander spent it in Babylon, where a preexisting tradition of detailed recordkeeping can be shown to have been in place. In fact, the astronomical diaries of the Babylonian court survive on large numbers of cuneiform tablets, one of which fi xes the date of Alexander’s death;

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cf. Sachs and Hunger 1988, 322. The mechanism by which such Babylonian diaries could have reached Greek sources remains obscure. For further general discussions of the Royal Journals, see Badian 1968; Bosworth 1988b, 157–184; Sisti and Zambrini 2:649–652. 80. For the march-based structure of Arrian’s narrative, see Immerwahr 1966, 130–133; Stadter 1980, 76–78; Liotsakis 2019, 81–121. 81. Anab. 7.25.2 and 7.25.4. For the invasion, see Bosworth 1988b, 187–190; cf. Badian 1968. 82. For example, Arrian reports complaints about Alexander’s drinking at Anab. 4.14.2. It should be noted that Arrian was aware of the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption. He earlier acknowledges the possibility that too much drink may have put Hephaestion in mortal peril (7.14.4). The absence of any such comment here, pace Bosworth (1988b, 173–175), suggests that Arrian was not attempting to implicate alcohol in Alexander’s illness. If anything, he seems to have manipulated the narrative to reduce the impression of wild debauchery by spreading Alexander’s drinking out over two nights, not the one long night given by Plutarch (Al. 75.4–5); cf. Sisti and Zambrini 2:652. 83. The words used are all some variation on νόμος or τεταγμένα, and on all five occasions the customary action in question is sacrifice. 84. Anab. 7.26.1. The other explanations are not entirely incompatible: a desire to see Alexander alive and a fear that he was already dead. Arrian explicitly states that these motivations are guesses (ὡς ἔγωγε δοκῶ), thus inserting his own voice into this narrative drawn from a prosaic source and encouraging a thoughtful response from his readers. 85. Anab. 7.26.1. Individual greetings were a topos of ideal generalship that Alexander seems to have embraced (2.10.2; cf. Lendon 2005, 132). The effort put forth by Alexander to master his pain in order to perform the duties of a general is reminiscent of the Scythian episode discussed on pp. 94–100. It seems likely that at least some elements of the Macedonian army met Alexander’s death more with relief than with sorrow; cf. Atkinson et al. 2009, 37–41. 86. The mention of Sarapis is one of the most serious impediments to viewing the journals as genuine court documents, since the cult of Sarapis was not instituted until the reign of Ptolemy I, for which see Fraser 1967; Fraser 1972, 246– 250. Cf. Brunt 2:292–293 n. 2; Bosworth 1988b, 167–170; Sisti and Zambrini 2:654. 87. The moment of death was frequently used in historiography and biography as a means of capturing the essence of the life that was coming to an end. Often, a summary statement conventionally called a “death notice” accompanies the narrative. Pomeroy 1991 surveys such statements. For the notion of death as a confi rmation or contradiction of the way one has lived one’s life, see Woodman 1983, 234–235. 88. Perhaps he did not have to. Plutarch (Al. 77.5) asserts that most writers viewed the various claims that Alexander was poisoned as complete fiction. It is possible, then, to imagine a readership that was inclined to doubt this and other salacious tales as well, and thus to be amenable to Arrian’s version.

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89. The stories are that Antipater and Cassander poisoned Alexander, that Aristotle assisted them as revenge for the death of his nephew Callisthenes, that the poison was delivered in a mule’s hoof, that the host of the drinking parties Alexander had been attending poisoned his wine because Alexander had outraged his lover, and that Alexander had tried to commit suicide by drowning himself in the Euphrates so that when his body could not be found he would appear to have ascended into heaven. I have given these stories in the same order as Arrian does, and I suggest that they are deliberately arranged in order of increasing absurdity. Arrian makes only one explicit comment about any of these stories, otherwise preferring to let them speak for themselves: he expresses surprise that the author of the story about drowning in the Euphrates was not ashamed of himself. 90. Arrian’s long closing statement evaluating Alexander’s life is discussed in detail by Brunt (1977, 36–48), Bosworth (1988b, 113–114), and Sisti and Zambrini (2:659–661).

C onc l u s ion 1. Cassius Dio allegedly wrote a biography of Arrian, which would indicate high esteem for a fellow historian. See Suda s.v. Δίων ὁ Κάσσιος, with Bosworth, HC 1:37 n. 20. Lucian certainly took notice of Arrian’s historical work, although there is dispute about how positive his evaluation was; cf. Anderson 1980 and Macleod 1987. 2. Photius (Bib. cod. 131) hints at why in his summary of Amyntianus, who wrote soon after Arrian. Photius’s comments are brief and harsh, stating that Amyntianus compared poorly with those who came before him (i.e., Arrian). 3. Photius, Bib. cod. 92: ἔστι μὲν ὁ ἀνὴρ οὐδενὸς τῶν ἄριστα συνταξαμένων ἱστορίας δεύτερος. 4. Bowie 1970, 10.

A p p e n di x 1. Youtie (1963, 30–32) describes this phenomenon eloquently in the context of papyrology. 2. For changes in literary outlook in the second century, see Kemezis 2014, 34–74. For the circumstances of Marcus’s reign, see Potter 2004, 74–76. 3. At Periplus 17.3, Arrian mentions the death of the Bosporan king Cotys II, an event known to have occurred in 131/132; cf. PIR2 176. For Arrian’s military response to the invasion of the Alans, see Bosworth 1977, 217–255. 4. See discussions in Jacoby, FGrH 2B:552–553; G. Wirth 1964, 223–231; Bosworth 1972, 178–182; Brunt 2:535; Stadter 1980, 179–182; Zecchini 1983, 13–15; G. Wirth 1985, 240–241, with n. 128; Bosworth 1988b, 28–29 (largely a restatement of Bosworth, HC 1:8–9); and Burliga 2013, 71–73.

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5. The text comes from the second volume of Roos and Wirth’s 2002 Teubner edition of Arrian, where it appears as Fragment 1 of the Bithyniaca. I have deliberately attempted to retain Photius’s awkward repetition of μετά, to which I return later. 6. I will discuss the “Second Preface” in more detail later on, but the relevant point is that Arrian had been devoted to literary work since his youth (Anab. 1.12.5; cf. Cynegeticus 1.4). 7. For this use of φαίνομαι, see Smyth §2143. 8. Brunt (2:535) and Stadter (1980, 182–183) assert that the deduction was made by Photius himself, but G. Wirth (1964, 223–231) suggests that a scribal gloss giving the names of Alexander, Timoleon, and Dion as an explanation for the phrase μετὰ τὰς ἱστορίας has intruded into the text; cf. Burliga 2013, 72–73. It is true that the two phrases beginning with μετά seem repetitive, which can arouse suspicion of a text, but it is equally possible that Photius has simply produced an inelegant sentence. 9. There is a dispute as to whether the Ἀλανική mentioned here is a separate ethnographic or historical work about the Alans. In discussing the problem, Stadter (1980, 162–163) argues the minority view that they are separate works. 10. Bosworth 1977, 252; Bosworth, HC 1:9–10. 11. The two river journeys are Parthica F 60–63 (Roos) and Anab. 6.3.3; the encomia can be found at Parthica F 19 and Anab. 7.28.1–3. 12. See full discussion by Bosworth (1977, 247–255), who also cites Arrian’s use of Macedonian military terminology to describe a Roman army, although that contributes litt le to his argument, since Arrian could have familiarized himself with such terms by reading about Alexander before he decided to attempt a composition on Macedonian history. 13. For the flow of allusion, see Brunt 2:537; for repeated use of source material, see G. Wirth 1963, 298. 14. A few examples should suffice to establish this point. Statius (Silvae 4.7.13– 24) indicates that the Achilleid was already in progress when he was composing the Silvae. Cicero wrote the Academics and De finibus at the same time, for which see Marinone 1997, 214; he elsewhere mentions that he had a whole volume of prefaces ready for use in various compositions already under way (ad Att. 16.6.4 = S.B. 414.4). Pelling (1979) has argued that Plutarch composed multiple biographies simultaneously; cf. Buszard 2008, 185 n. 1. 15. Anab. 1.12.5. 16. Ind. 32.10–13 and Anab. 7.20.9, discussed by Stadter (1980, 128–130). 17. Bosworth (HC 1:106; 1988a, 35–37) has argued for Nicomedia; Brunt (2:538) and Stadter (1980, 64–66) argue for Rome; and G. Wirth (1985, 29), for Athens. See also Burliga 2013, 67–69. 18. Th is is Bosworth’s line of reasoning; see previous note. 19. For the tradition, see Marincola 1997, 136–147, where the author emphasizes that the use of status as a guarantee of authority was particularly popular with Romans.

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20. See Schepens 1971, 265–266, for an analysis of Arrian’s att itude toward the convention. 21. First advanced in Bosworth 1972, refi ned in Bosworth 1976, 62–64, and fully articulated in Bosworth 1988b, 29–32. Bosworth takes this argument further than I believe the evidence allows, as I will demonstrate, but the method itself is more persuasive than those already discussed. 22. Examples include his discussions of the Athenian agora (Anab. 3.16.8), an excellent breed of ox (Anab. 2.16.6), and the Danubian frontier (Ind. 4.15–16). 23. It is true that Romans sometimes preferred knowledge of geography gained from authoritative books over personal experience, for which see Syme 1958, 126; Mattern 1999, 1–80. Arrian, however, did not behave this way, as the previous note shows. In fact, he regularly sought to improve upon the information available to him in literary texts, for which see chapter 2. 24. Anab. 1.16.4. Cf. Bosworth, HC 1:125–126, relying on Reuss 1899, 459; see Stadter 1980, 184–185; and Hammond 1980, 461, for arguments against. In response to these criticisms, Bosworth himself has expressed uncertainty about this evidence, for which see Bosworth 1988b, 30, with n. 72. 25. Bosworth (1976, 62–64) and Stadter (1980, 10) come to opposite conclusions regarding Arrian’s knowledge of Baetica at the time when he was composing the Anabasis, but both accept his presence there at some point. See also Bosworth, HC 1:2. 26. For the altar’s date, see Beltrán Fortes 1992. The altar’s original archaeological context is not well documented, but see Ventura Villanueva 1991, 262–263, for the available information, discussed in the context of a later salvage excavation at an adjacent site. I am grateful to Professor Beltrán Fortes for his generous correspondence on this matter. 27. Plácido (1996) argues that the inscription is a third-century recreation of a second-century original. Fernández Nieto (2007) has proposed a different identification for the Arrian mentioned in this inscription. 28. Anab. 7.16.1–4; cf. Bosworth 1988b, 30–32. 29. See n. 23.

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Aelian Varia Historia 5.6: 147n70

1.12.5: 29, 118–119, 137n4, 147n57, 150n6, 151n15 1.15.3: 142n73 1.15.7–8: 144n24 1.16.2: 142n73 1.16.4: 152n24 1.26.5: 142n72 1.29.1: 142n72 2.1.2: 144n28 2.3.7: 133n47, 135n66 2.4.7–11: 93 2.4.10–11: 93–94 2.6.4: 129n68, 135n65, 145n33 2.7.3–9: 140n33 2.7.4–6: 140n37 2.10.2: 144n26, 149n85 2.12.1: 144n24, 144n26 2.12.6: 135n66 2.12.7: 146n50 2.12.8: 133n47 2.14.1–3: 70 2.16.4: 120 2.16.6: 152n22 2.27.2: 144n24 3.3.1–3.4.5: 135n66 3.3.6: 45–46, 131n11 3.4.4: 133n43 3.5.5: 144n28 3.9.5–8: 140n33 3.10.2: 73

Arrian Anabasis 1.praef.1: 23–25, 29, 41 1. praef.2: 25–26, 29, 35, 107 1. praef.3: 26, 35, 125n5 1.1.1–3: 138n21 1.1.2: 31, 65–66 1.1.4–5: 53–54 1.1.4–1.6.11: 139n23 1.3.1–1.4.5: 77 1.4.7: 54 1.4.8: 54–55 1.7.10–11: 66–67 1.8.1–2: 67 1.8.7–8: 67–68 1.9.1: 68 1.9.6–7: 69 1.9.10: 68 1.11.3–8: 58 1.11.5: 58 1.11.6: 58 1.11.7: 58 1.12.1: 142n72 1.12.1–5: 140n33 1.12.2: 29, 35, 136n71 1.12.2–3: 29 1.12.2–4: 35 1.12.3: 130n3

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3.14.3: 144n26 3.15.6: 142n73 3.16.3: 70, 140n37 3.16.3–5: 71 3.16.6–11: 72 3.16.8: 152n22 3.16.9: 72 3.17.1: 73 3.17.1–6: 72–74 3.17.2: 141n46 3.18.1–12: 51, 74 3.18.9: 142n73 3.18.12: 74–75, 81–82 3.19.1: 78 3.21.9: 144n26 3.22.2–6: 83, 140n35 3.23.1: 79 3.23.2: 79 3.26.1–4: 135n66 3.30.5: 79, 135n66 3.30.6: 81, 142n71 3.30.6–11: 79–80 3.30.7: 142n71 , 145n36 3.30.8: 80–81 3.30.10–11: 81 3.30.11: 144n24 4.2.6: 142n73 4.3.3: 144n24 4.3.5: 133n43 4.3.6–4.4.9: 77 4.4.1–4.4.9: 58–59 4.4.3: 59, 76–77, 98 4.4.9: 59, 98–99 4.7.4: 76 4.8.1–4.14.4: 77–78, 83 4.8.3: 129n68, 135n65, 145n33 4.8.8–9: 135n66 4.9.8: 129n68, 135n65, 145n33 4.10.1: 29 4.10.1–2: 27–28 4.10.2: 29, 131n11 4.10.3–4: 30 4.11.2–9: 27 4.11.5: 29

4.12.4–5: 27 4.12.6: 29 4.12.7: 30 4.13.1: 30 4.13.2–7: 30 4.14.1: 29, 30 4.14.2: 30, 149n82 4.14.3: 29, 31, 133n43 4.14.3–4: 31, 131n11, 135n66 4.14.4: 29 4.17.7: 82–83 4.18.1–3: 83 4.18.4: 83 4.21.1: 83 4.21.1–10: 143n76 4.23.3: 144n24 4.26.4: 144n24 4.27.4: 142n73 4.28.1–4.30.4: 143n76 4.28.2: 131n11 5.1.1–5.2.7: 83–84 5.3.1–4: 119, 131n11 5.3.5: 134n56 5.4.3–4: 131n11 5.5.1: 131n12 5.6.1–8: 131n11 5.6.7–8: 134n52 5.7.1: 48–49, 131n11 5.7.2: 49, 134n54 5.8.1: 49–51 5.8.4: 83 5.14.5–6: 131n11 5.15.4: 103 5.17.7: 142n73 5.18.2: 142n73 5.18.4: 90 5.18.4–5: 90–91 5.19.4–5: 103–104 5.19.5: 147n57 5.19.6: 104 5.20.2: 133n43 5.20.9: 135n60 5.23.5: 142n73 5.25.1–5.29.3: 142n61

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Arrian Anabasis (continued) 5.27.5–6: 92–93 5.27.6: 94 5.27.8: 92 6.1.2: 59–60 6.1.5: 142n72 6.2.3: 131n11 6.2.5: 142n73 6.3.3: 151n11 6.9.1–6.11.8: 46 6.9.3: 142n72 6.9.5–6.11.1: 88–89 6.11.2: 46–47 6.11.1–8: 135n66 6.11.2–8: 131n11 6.11.3: 47 6.11.4: 47 6.11.5: 47 6.11.8: 47–48 6.13.1–3: 144n26 6.13.4: 89–90 6.19.5: 135n60 6.24.1–3: 135n66 6.24.1–6.25.5: 142n61 6.24.2: 142n72 6.25.2: 142n73 6.26.1: 133n47 6.26.2–3: 144n26 6.28.1–2: 131n11 6.28.6: 131n12 7.1.5–6: 148n72 7.2.1: 148n72 7.2.2: 106 7.2.3–4: 106–107 7.2.4: 105 7.3.1: 107, 147n67 7.3.2: 105 7.3.5: 106, 107 7.3.6: 105 7.10.1–2: 144n27 7.13.2–6: 131n11 7.14.2–3: 101–102 7.14.2–7: 131n11

7.14.2–9: 135n66 7.14.4: 102, 149n82 7.15.1: 102–103 7.15.1–3: 102 7.15.3: 103 7.15.4: 55–56 7.15.5: 56 7.15.6: 52–53, 56, 135n60 7.16.1–4: 152n28 7.16.8: 148n75 7.17.2: 71 7.19.1: 131n11 7.19.2: 72 7.20.9: 151n16 7.23.6–7: 142n61 7.25.1: 109 7.25.1–7.26.3: 148n79 7.25.2: 109, 149n81 7.25.4: 149n81 7.26.1: 149nn84–85 7.26.2: 109 7.26.3: 109 7.27.1–2: 135n66 7.27.1–3: 110, 131n11, 148n77, 151n11 7.28.1–7.30.3: 110 7.29.1: 129n68, 135n65, 145n33 7.30.2: 54 7.30.3: 63 Bithyniaca F1 (Roos): 124n10 Cynegeticus 1.1: 39 1.4: 39–40, 130n3 1.5: 132n25 16.6: 130n3 22.1: 130n3 Enchiridion 1.1: 87 Epicteti Dissertationes 1.3: 143n14 1.10: 137n7 1.19: 137n7 2.13.24: 137n4 2.22.17: 137n4 2.22.17–18: 146n52 3.22.92: 137n4 3.24.70: 137n4 4.1: 137n7

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Epistula ad L. Gellium 1: 128n66 1–3: 42–43 5: 43 Expeditio contra Alanos 10: 130n3 22: 130n3 Indica 4.6: 134n52 4.12: 134n52 4.15–16: 152n22 32.10–13: 151n16 Parthica F 19 (Roos): 151n11 F 60–63 (Roos): 151n11 Periplus maris Euxini 6.2: 131n12, 138n14 10.1: 138n14 11.5: 119 17.3: 150n3 Tactica 32.2–3: 133n41 44.3: 116 C ic e r o de Oratore 1.4: 132n33 de Republica 1.13.2: 132n33 Epistulae ad Att icum 16.6.4 (= SB 414.4): 151n14 C u r t i u s 3.2.1: 144n28 3.5.1–3.6.20: 144n30 3.12.17: 146n50 5.1.1–2: 72 5.1.4: 70 5.1.39: 71 5.3.4–15: 140n44 5.7.3–11: 135n63 6.1–10: 142n72 6.5.18–21: 147n60 6.5.19: 147n64 7.6.22: 145n38 7.7.1–7.9.19: 141n57, 145n35 7.7.5–7: 145n38 7.7.18–20: 145n38 7.7.22–29: 145n43 7.8.1: 97–98 7.8.3: 145n38 7.8.7: 145n38 7.9.11: 145n38

7.9.11–12: 96–97 7.9.13: 145n38 7.9.17: 96 8.10.2–3: 134n53 9.4.24: 134n49 10.10.9–13: 143n5 Diod or u s S ic u l u s 17.9.1–6: 67 17.13.1: 139n27 17.14.1–4: 139n24 17.29.3–4: 144n28 17.31.4–6: 144n30 17.37.6: 146n50 17.64.1: 70 17.64.4: 71 17.67: 140n44 17.72: 135n63 17.76.5–8: 147n60 17.86.7–8: 134n53 17.107.1–5: 147n70 17.107.5: 106 Dion y s i u s of H a l ic a r n a s s u s de Compositione Verborum 22.226– 236: 16 Di y l l u s F3 (BNJ): 127n43 T5 (BNJ): 127n5 E p ic t e t u s . See Arrian, Enchiridion; Epicteti Dissertationes Eusebius Chronicle Ol. 83.3: 127n48 H e r odi a n 1.1.3: 20–22, 131n15 H e r od o t u s 1.1–5: 82 1.87–88: 74 1.201–216: 141n49 1.207: 141n46 4.36.2–4.45.5: 80 4.44.1: 136n82

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H e r od o t u s (continued) 4.57: 80 4.83–142: 136n80, 141n49, 141n58, 145n41 4.89: 134n54 4.97: 134n54 4.122–124: 136n80 6.14.1: 131n15 6.109.2: 10 6.114: 10 7.29.2: 141n48 7.33–36: 134n54 7.33–40: 136n76 7.34.1–7.36.5: 58 7.35: 58 7.39: 141n48 9.71.3: 144n17 9.116–120: 58 9.122: 138n12

Herodotus 3: 19 Quomodo historia conscribenda sit 5: 19–20 7–13: 131n10 14–32: 130n5 M a rcellinus Vita Thucydidis 53: 19 Pau s a n i a s 1.6.2: 134n49 Philo Legatio ad Gaium 349–372: 22–23 368: 23 Philostr atus Vitae Sophistarum 542: 9 574: 125n12 P ho t i u s Bibliotheca codex 58: 116–117; 130n3 codex 92: 150n3 codex 93: 116, 117 codex 131: 150n2

Hom e r Iliad 24.1–3: 102 J e r om e Chronicle Ol. 83.4: 127n48 Jo s e p h u s Antiquitates Judaicae 1.1.2–3: 126n36 1.5.16: 126n36 Bellum Judaicum 1.1.1–3: 131n15 contra Apionem 1.50: 15 1.53: 13–14

Plato Parmenides 126b–c: 132n33 Symposium 172a-173b: 132n33 P l i n y t h e E l de r Naturalis Historia 3.57–58: 52 P l i n y t h e You ng e r Epistulae 8.21.2–5: 23

Justin 11.4.1–8: 139n24 11.8.3: 144n30 12.2: 141n57, 145n35 Livy praef. 5: 128n55 L uc i a n Dialogi Mortuorum 12.5: 134n49

P l u ta r c h Moralia de Alexandri Magni Fortuna aut Virtute 340E-341A: 95 341A-C: 95–96 341C: 141n57, 145n35 343D: 134n49

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de Herodoti Malignitate 861F-862B: 17–19 862B: 127n43 de Recta Ratione Audiendi 46A-B: 23 Vitae Alexander 1.1: 25 1.2: 125n4 4.2: 143n4 4.4–5: 143n6 11.3–12: 139n24 11.7–8: 67 11.11–12: 139n27 19.1–10: 144n30 38: 135n63 44.3–5: 147n60 44.4: 147n64 45.1–6: 95 45.6: 141n57, 145n35, 145n36 69.6–70.2: 147n70 69.9: 148n71 75.4–5: 149n82 76.1–9: 148n79 77.5: 143n5, 149n88 Nicias 1.1–2: 37–38 1.5: 37 Pyrrhus 8.2: 137n2, 143n4 P ol e mo Declamationes B 11–12: 9 B 61: 10 P oly b i u s 12.28a.3–10: 131n15 Qu i n t i l i a n Institutio Oratoria 2.10.5: 13 Qu i n t u s C u r t i u s R u f u s . See Curtius S c r i p t or e s H i s t or i a e Aug u s ta e Hadrian 9.1–2: 146n47

S i m p l ic i u s In Enchiridion Epicteti 1: 132n31 S ta t i u s Silvae 4.7.13–24: 151n14 Str a bo 7.3.8: 136n72 15.1.68: 147n70 15.1.73: 148n71 15.3.8: 136n73 S u e t on i u s Claudius 41.1: 23 S u i da s s.v. Ἀρριανός: 130n3 s.v. Δίων ὁ Κάσσιος: 150n1 S y nc e l l u s 470: 127n48 Ta c i t u s Dialogus de Oratoribus 1.2–3: 132n33 35.4–5: 13 T h uc y di de s 1.1.1: 44, 133n37 1.1.2: 139n29 1.20.1–3: 47 1.22.1: 43–44 1.22.3: 131n15 1.22.4: 15–16, 125n3 1.23.1: 139n29 3.68.1–5: 139n32 3.113.5–6: 139n30 4.40.1: 139n31 7.70.1: 139n31 7.87.5: 139n30 Virgil Aeneid 1.198–207: 128n58 X e nop hon de Equitandi Ratione 1.1: 40

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G e n e r a l I n de x

Achilles, 102–103 Alexander III: Celtic embassy to, 52– 55; character development of, in Arrian’s Anabasis, 54–57, 69–75, 77, 81, 82–84; court culture of, 30, 73; death of, 108–110, 148n78, 150n89; as ethnographer, 53, 59–60; fame of, 54, 56; grief of, 101–105; imitation of, 62, 100; as king of Persia, 70–75, 77, 79; last plans of, 109; limits on power of, 53–55, 71–73, 107; as model reader, 57–60; physical style of leadership of, 85–86, 91, 96; Roman embassy to, 51–52, 55–57; as unable to empathize, 92–93, 100, 104–105 ambition, 106–107 Antipater, 72, 150n89 Aristobulus: disagreement with Ptolemy, 30–31, 45–46, 133n43; as source for Arrian, 24–26, 35, 41, 48 Aristotle, 27–28, 150n89 Aristus, 56 Arrian: Alexander, interest in, 62–63; Alexander, opinion of, 63, 76, 88–89, 91, 95, 98–100, 101, 110; ambiguity, interest in, 77–78, 80; Latin, knowledge of, 138n14; life of, 2–3, 118–119, 124n10; as member of Roman elite, 86–87, 98; as model historian, 47–

48, 57–58, 112; as model reader, 51– 52; possible bust of, 130n3; realism of, 103–104, 110; research interests of, 129n2; and reuse of material, 117– 118; Roman history, view of, 52–53, 56, 100; self-referential comments by, 26, 31–32, 35, 41–45, 45–57, 116; sources, att itude toward, 30–32, 33– 37, 38–57, 110, 119; truth, interest in, 25, 35–36, 38–45, 129n68; Xenophon, relationship to, 33–34, 35, 38– 41, 130n3. See also Baetica; canon, Arrian’s att itude toward; chronology, Arrian’s distortion of; ethnography; parallelism; variant versions of events Asclepiades, 56 atrocities in war, 67, 76, 103, 104, 147n63 audience: different types contrasted, 16–17, 112; listening, 11; modern, 125n10; reading, 20–24, 47–48, 50, 80, 113; Roman, 59, 97–98, 104. See also readers autopsy, 44, 60, 119. See also eyewitnesses Babylon, 52–53, 55, 70, 72, 86; conquest of 71 Baetica, 120, 124n10

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Bel-Marduk, 71 benefit as motivation. See fear and benefit Bessus, 76, 77, 79, 82, 83 bodies, Roman att itudes toward, 85– 86, 87–88, 96–98, 107–108 Bosworth, A. B., 117, 119–120 Bucephalas, 103–105

exempla, 77–78, 82–83, 85; Persian, 64– 65, 70, 76 expertise, 4, 28 eyewitnesses, 25–26, 27, 31, 36–37, 107. See also autopsy

Calanus, 105–108 Callisthenes, 27–32, 107, 150n89 canon, Arrian’s att itude toward, 17, 37– 45, 113 Cassius Dio, 126n24, 130n5, 150n1 Caucasus, 119 chronology, Arrian’s distortion of, 28, 70, 71–72, 104 Claudius, as author, 23–24 Clitarchus, 52 Coenus, 92–93 Cossaeans, 103 Curtius, 86, 96–99; contrasted with Arrian, 70, 71, 72, 81, 93–94 Cyrus, 70, 74–75, 77, 84, 138n12

Gaugamela, 47, 69–70, 73, 77, 78 geography, 80–82, 120, 152n23; in measuring human achievement, 97, 119; natural boundaries as limits, 58, 98– 100, 140n39

Dandamis, 106–107 Danube River, 2, 48, 49, 54, 55 Darius I, 10, 59, 74, 84; invasion of Scythia by, 48–49, 76–77, 80, 94–99 Darius III: death of, 81, 83; as narrative foil, 69–70, 90–91; as opponent in war, 47, 73, 78, 79 declamation, 9–10, 11–12, 12–15, 21 diarrhea, 59, 76–77, 95–96, 99 dichotomies destabilized, 69, 75, 82 Diodorus Siculus, 67, 70, 71 Diyllus, 17–18 education, 3, 10–12, 113, 126n27 Epictetus, 1, 2, 41–44, 87–88 Eratosthenes, 119 ethnicity, Greek, 11, 15, 65–69, 80 ethnography, 30, 53, 80, 81

fear and benefit, 26, 31, 52, 55, 107 friendship, 93–94, 146n50

Hadrian, 2, 100, 115, 116 Hegesias of Lampsacus, 22 Hephaestion, 101–103, 108 Herodian, 20–22, 125n4 Herodotus: on bravery, 88; Greeks and non-Greeks, views of, 80; as model for Arrian, 48–50, 80, 82, 83; as model for Curtius, 97; and narrative strategies used by Arrian, 58– 60, 70–75, 76–78, 98–100, 136n75; as performer, 16–20; as source, 9–10, 50, 59–60, 76, 80 historians: as authors, 3–4, 8–9, 12–22, 112; as performers, 22–24 history: importance of, in Imperial intellectual culture, 3, 7, 9–11, 33–34, 50, 62–63, 113, 125n4; oratory, relationship to, 8–9, 12–22, 112, 124n17 Homer, 35, 102–103 Hyphasis Revolt, 92–93 identity. See ethnicity, Greek illness. See sickness India in Greek thought, 105–108 Indus River, 48–50, 59–60, 134n52 Issus, 70 James, LeBron, 126n33 Josephus, 13–15

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kingship, 62–64, 69–75. See also monarchy Latin, Arrian’s knowledge of, 138n14 Lucian, 19–20, 150n1 Lysippus, 119 Macedonia, place of, in Greek world, 64, 65–69 Mallians, 46–47, 90–91 march narratives, 78–79, 81–82, 109 Megasthenes, 107 Memnon, 144n28 monarchy, 56–57, 84, 89, 100, 113. See also kingship narrative patterning. See parallelism Nearchus, 90 Nile River, 59–60, 81 nomads, 73–74, 104. See also Scythians Nysa, 83–84 Obama, Barack, 14 Olympias, 27–28, 29 Pages’ Conspiracy, 28–30 parallelism, 53–57, 75, 76, 78 Parmenion, 73, 74–75, 93–94 performance, 3, 7–8, 9–22; of virtue 97–98 Persepolis, 51, 74, 76, 81–82 Persia: in Greek thought, 68, 69–75, 75–76, 82; reality of, 74 Philip of Acarnania, 93–94 Philo, 22–23 philosophers, 105–108 Philostratus, 10, 14 Photius, 113, 116–117, 119 physiognomy, 98 Plutarch, 149n88, 125n4; and Arrian, contrast between, 25, 67, 86, 93–94, 95, 148n79; Arrian’s knowledge of, 51; as reader of Herodotus, 17–19; as reader of Thucydides, 37–38

Polemo, 9–10 Polybius, 132n20 Porus, 83, 89–91, 103 pothos (πόθος), 107 Ptolemy: disagreement with Aristobulus, 30–31, 45–46, 133n43; as historical actor, 47, 86, 129n68, 149n86; as source for Arrian, 24–26, 35, 41–42, 45–46, 48, 73 Quintillian, 13 readers, 4, 21–22, 57–58; implied, 50–51, 59, 75, 100, 105. See also audience retribution narrative, 30, 81–82. See also war of retribution ring composition, 81 Rock of Aornus, 83 Royal Journals, 108–110, 148n79 Scythians, 39, 58–59, 74, 76–77, 80, 94–100 Second Sophistic, 1, 2, 5, 11–12. See also history: importance of, in Imperial intellectual culture self-control, 105–108. See also bodies: Roman att itudes toward sickness, 31, 92, 93–94. See also diarrhea Sogdian Rock, 83 sophists, 3, 7–8, 9, 11–15, 17–20, 112; as historians, 128n52. See also declamation source criticism, 2, 4–5 Spitamenes, 82–83 sports, place of, in contemporary American culture, 14–15 Stoicism, 87–88, 94, 146n50 Suetonius, 23–24 suicide, 106 Susa, 70, 72, 75, 78 Syme, Ronald, 146n45 Tacitus, 12–13, 125n4, 146n45 Thaïs, 51

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Thebes, 66–69 Thucydides: as model for Arrian, 43– 44, 47, 50, 68; as model for historians in general, 15–20; as source, 31, 37–38 topoi, 12, 47, 90, 96 Trajan, 62, 100, 117, 118 tyrannicides, 13, 30, 72

war of retribution, 58, 69–70, 72, 75–76, 78, 80, 91 women in Alexander’s court, 73 wounds, 88–89 Xenophon, 9, 33–34, 39–41, 42–43 Xerxes, 48–50, 58, 64–65, 68–69, 71– 72, 73–74

Uxians, 72–74, 104 variant versions of events, 50–52, 103, 109, 135n62

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