Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. The edition also includes maps, a list for further reading and a detailed index.įor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. Hamilton’s introduction, which discusses Arrian’s life and times, his synthesis of other classical sources and the composition of Alexander’s army. While Alexander emerges from this record as an unparalleled and charismatic leader, Arrian succeeds brilliantly in creating an objective and fully rounded portrait of a man of boundless ambition, who was exposed to the temptations of power and worshipped as a god in his own lifetime.Īubrey de Sélincourt’s vivid translation is accompanied by J. He tells of Alexander’s violent suppression of the Theban rebellion, his total defeat of Persia, and his campaigns through Egypt, India and Babylon – establishing new cities and destroying others in his path. Arrian’s own experience as a military commander gave him unique insights into the life of the world’s greatest conqueror. After his passing, nothing would ever again be the same.‘His passion was for glory only, and in that he was insatiable’Īlthough written over four hundred years after Alexander’s death, Arrian’s Campaigns of Alexander is the most reliable account of the man and his achievements we have.

From his first encounter with the Persians at the Battle of the Granicus to his last battle on the banks of the Indus River, thrill to the extraordinary exploits of Alexander the Great as he turns the ancient world upside down. Alexander's aims have always been a topic of intense debate and this history will tell you what this brilliant tactician was trying to accomplish and why. He was able to judge the motives of many of the detractors of Alexander and to set the record straight in many instances. Writing 450 years after Alexander's death, Arrian had the advantage of hindsight and the unique ability to sift through important historical material which is now lost. Of all the chroniclers of Alexander, and there have been many famous ones, including Plutarch and Ptolemy, none have given us a clearer and truer account than the one by Arrian. Ionia, the Hellespont, both Phrygias, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Lydia, Caria, Lycia, Pamphylia, Phoenicia, and Egypt the Greek part of Libya is now yours, together with much of Arabia, lowland Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylon, and Susia Persia and Media with all the territories either formerly controlled by them or not are in your hands you have made yourselves masters of the lands beyond the.

His deeds read like the stuff of legends. There have been many attempts in the 2,300 years since Alexander's death to tell the epic story of this enigmatic soldier. This is the incredible story of the world's greatest conqueror, a man who single handedly changed the course of history.and who was worshipped as a god.

The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian