The Anabasis of Alexander

Arrian set out to write the fullest and most reliable account of Alexander the Great’s campaigns, and for centuries readers have turned to him first. Composed in the second century AD, this seven-book history follows Alexander from his accession in 336 BC through the conquest of the Persian Empire to his death at Babylon in 323 BC. Arrian leaned on eyewitness sources now lost, chiefly the memoirs of Ptolemy and Aristobulus, and weighed their claims with a soldier’s practical judgment. Battles, sieges, marches, and mutinies are all here, along with a measured portrait of the king himself, brilliant and driven and increasingly beyond restraint. It remains the essential ancient source on the campaigns. Free to read in PDF and EPUB.