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Arrian Quotes

Arrian of Nicomedia was a Greek historian, public servant, military commander and philosopher of the Roman period.The Anabasis of Alexander by Arrian is considered the best source on the campaigns of Alexander the Great. However, more recently, even though modern scholars have generally preferred Arrian to other extant primary sources, this attitude towards Arrian is beginning to change in the light of studies into Arrian's method. Wikipedia  

✵ 89 AC – 175
Arrian photo

Works

Indica
Arrian
Arrian: 6 quotes0 likes

Famous Arrian Quotes

“No Indian ever went outside his own country on a warlike expedition, so righteous were they.”

Arrian Anabasis Alexandri

Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, Book VII : Indica, as translated by Edgar Iliff Robson (1929), p. 18

“Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury; … [and] I have been appointed leader of the Greeks …”

Arrian

Anabasis Alexandri II, 14, 4.

“This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helots for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave.”

Arrian Anabasis Alexandri

Arrian, Anabasis Alexandri, Book VII : Indica, as translated by Edgar Iliff Robson (1929), p. 335

“He also buried the Persian commanders and the Greek mercenaries who were killed fighting on the side of the enemy. But as many of them as he took prisoners he bound in fetters and sent them away to Macedonia to till the soil, because, though they were Greeks, they were fighting against Greece on behalf of the foreigners in opposition to the decrees which the Greeks had made in their federal council. To Athens also he sent 300 suits of Persian armour to be hung up in the Acropolis as a votive offering to Athena, and ordered this inscription to be fixed over them, "Alexander, son of Philip, and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians, present this offering from the spoils taken from the foreigners inhabiting Asia”

Arrian

Anabasis Alexandri I, 16, 7.

“Arrian mentions with admiration that every Indian is free. With them, as with the Lacedemonians, he says, no native can be a slave; but unlike the Lacedemonians, they keep no other people in servitude.”

Arrian book Indica

The History of India, by Mountstuart Elphinstone (Indica, ch. X and Ephinstone's India p. 239).

“Alexander sacrificed to the gods to whom it was his custom to sacrifice, and gave a public banquet, seated all the Persians, and then any persons from the other peoples who took precedence for rank or any other high quality, and he himself and those around him drank from the same bowl and poured the same libations, with the Greek soothsayers and Magi initiating the ceremony. Alexander prayed for various blessings and especially that the Macedonians and Persians should enjoy harmony as partners in government. The story prevails that those who shared the banquet were nine thousand and that they all poured the same libation and gave the one victory cry as they did.”

Arrian Anabasis Alexandri

Anabasis Alexandri, 7.2.6-9

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