Arriānus
Flavius. A Greek author, who wrote chiefly on
philosophy and history. He was born at Nicomedia in Bithynia, towards the end of the first
century A.D., and was a pupil of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus. He lived under the emperors
Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, enjoying a high reputation for culture and
ability, which procured him the citizenship of Rome and Athens, and high offices of state,
such as the governorship of Cappadocia under Hadrian, A.D. 136, and the consulship under
Antoninus. His last years were spent in his native town, where he filled the office of priest
to Demeter, and died at an advanced age. From the likeness of his character to that of the
famous Athenian, he was nicknamed “Xenophon Junior.” Of his
philosophical works we have still the first half (four books) of the
Discourses of
Epictetus, a leading authority for the tenets of that philosopher and the Stoical
ethics; and the handbook called the
Encheiridion of Epictetus, a short manual
of morality, which on account of its pithy and practical precepts became a great favourite
with Pagans and Christians, had a commentary written on it by Simplicius in the sixth century,
and after the revival of learning was long used as a school-book. Of his numerous historical
writings we possess the chief one, the
Anabasis of Alexander, in seven books.
This is a complete history of that conqueror from his accession to his death, drawn from the
best sources, especially Ptolemy and Aristobulus, and modelled on Xenophon, of whom we are
reminded by the very title and the number of books, though it has none of Xenophon's charm. It
is the best work on Alexander that has survived from antiquity. To this we should add the
Indica, a short work on India, written in the Ionic dialect, and especially
valuable for its abstract of Nearchus's report of his voyage from the mouth of the Indus to
the Persian Gulf; also the description of another coasting voyage, the
Periplus Ponti
Euxini, and a trifling treatise on hunting, the
Cynegeticus. A work on
tactics wrongly ascribed to him is probably from the hand of Aelian the Tactician. Of his
other histories—e. g. of the successors of Alexander, of Trajan's battles with the
Parthians, of his own native country till its absorption into the Empire, and the campaign
against the Alani during his command in Cappadocia—we have only abstracts or
fragments. The best edition of the
Anabasis is that of Krüger
(1848). There is an English translation by Chinnock
(1893).
