Excerpt from Great Captains, Alexander, Vol. 1 of 2: A History of the Origin and Growth of the Art of War From the Earliest Times to the Battle of Ipsus, B. C. 301, With a Detailed Account of the Campaigns of the Great Macedonian
The basis of this history is the Anabasis of Alexander by Arrian of Nicomedia, who lived in the second century of our era. Arrian was surnamed in Athens the Younger Xenophon, because he occupied the same relation to Epictetus which Xenophon did to Socrates. This historian is by far the most reliable, plain and exact of all those who have told us of the great Macedonian. Arrian, though a Greek, was long in the service of the Roman state, having fallen into the good graces of the Emperor Hadrian, whom he accompanied to Rome, and who later appointed him prefect of Cappadocia. Under Antoninus Pius, Arrian rose to the supreme dignity of consul. He wrote several philosophical and historical treatises, among them an account of his own campaign against the Alani. Arrian was himself a distinguished soldier, and it is this which enables him to make all military situations so clear to us. Of the fifteen works which we know he wrote, the Anabasis is the most valuable.
Arrian had in his hands the histories of Ptolemy, son of Lagus, one of Alexander's most distinguished officers, later king of Egypt, and of Aristobulus, a minor officer of Alexander's. He also used the works of Eratosthenes, Megasthenes, Nearchus, Alexander's famous admiral, Aristus, and Asclepiades, as well as had access to all which had been written before him, a large part of which he rejected in favor of the testimony of those who served under Alexander in person.
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