Arrian - Arrian's Life

Arrian's Life

Arrian was born of Greek ethnicity in the coastal town of Nicomedia (present-day Izmit), the capital of the Roman province of Bithynia, in what is now north-western Turkey, about 70 km from Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul). He studied philosophy in Nicopolis in Epirus, under the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and wrote two books about the philosopher's teachings. At the same time he entered the Imperial service, and served as a junior adviser on the consilium of Gaius Avidius Nigrinus, governor of Achaea and a close friend of the future Emperor Hadrian, around 111-114. Very little is known about his subsequent career - though it is probable that he served in Gaul and on the Danube frontier, and possible that he was in Baetica and Parthia - until he held the office of Consul in 129 or 130. In 131 he was appointed governor of the Black Sea province of Cappadocia and commander of the Roman legions on the frontier with Armenia. It was unusual at this time for a Greek to hold such high military command.

In 135, Cappadocia was threatened by an Alan invasion. Arrian later wrote a military treatise called Ektaxis kata Alanōn, which detailed the battle against the Alans, and the Technē Taktikē in which he described how he would organise the legions and auxiliary troops at his disposal, among which legions XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris. He deployed the legionaries in depth supported by javelin throwers, archers, and horse archers in the rear ranks to defeat the assault of the Alan cavalry using these combined arms tactics. However, Arrian's work may have been entirely hypothetical, because there is no historical record of a battle between Romans and Alans that year. During this period Arrian wrote several works on military tactics, including Ektaxis kata Alanōn. He also wrote a short account of a tour of inspection of the Black Sea coast in the traditional 'periplus' form (in Greek) addressed to the Emperor Hadrian, the Periplus Ponti Euxini or "Circumnavigation of the Black Sea".

Arrian left Cappadocia shortly before the death of his patron Hadrian, in 138, and there is no evidence for any further public appointments until 145/6 when he was elected Archon at Athens, once the city's leading political post but by this time an honorary one. It was here that he devoted himself to history, writing his most important work, the Anabasis Alexandri or "The Campaigns of Alexander". He also wrote the Indica, an account of the voyage by Alexander's fleet from India to the Persian Gulf under Nearchus. He also wrote a political history of the Greek world after Alexander, most of which is lost. It is not known when Arrian died.