9 Greek History in a Roman Context: Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a contextual reading of Arrian's work on Alexander, in order to discuss if or how it reflects a literary response to Roman power and institutions in the first half of second century CE. It explores the position of the Greek historian by looking not only at the four passages where he explicitly mentions Rome and the Romans in the Anabasis of Alexander . The chapter also analyzes two other episodes in the work that might be interpreted as implicit commentaries on the Roman Empire of Arrian's own time. The episodes touch on the relations between the ruler and intellectuals, and the passages may reflect a Greek literary response to Roman imperial power. Arrian is a complex and remarkable figure who has rightly been described as a man divided between two cultures or 'deux mondes' as Vidal-Naquet first formulated it. Keywords: Anabasis of Alexander ; Arrian's work; Greek historian; Roman Empire; Roman imperial power