The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander (Landmark Series)

Rarely do books live up to the hype, but all the accolades you’ve read about this volume are correct. Arrian’s Anabasis Alexandrou rebranded here as “The Campaigns of Alexander” is a joy for the armchair historian. Arrian’s original text is punctuated throughout with:*Margin Notes (as to the timeline)*Footnotes by modern scholars as to the interpretations of Arrian’s turns of phrase (or corrections where Arrian got things wrong -especially needed when sizes of various armies are given. Arrian was prone to exaggerate the numbers)*Pictures. The drawing of the torsion catapult finally allowed me to wrap my head around this extremely important weapon.*Maps! OMG the maps are everywhere throughout the volume and are exceedingly helpful to pinpoint where the action was in the ancient world, and in what countries they would be in today.*Appendixes by modern historians covering a myriad of subjects to include but not limited to: the various campaigns; the composition of Alexander’s army; modern medical guestimates as to the cause of Alexander’s death; Greek notions of world geography; and the finances of Alexander’s Empire.As to Arrian’s narrative itself, even though it would be easy to dismiss a Greek historian living in the Roman Empire in the 2nd Century C.E thinking “Surely more modern takes on Alexander are more accurate”. However, counter intuitively, Arrian had in his lifetime access to first-hand accounts of Alexander’s campaigns that are no longer extant. While he quotes from many of them, the two most important are Ptolemy’s history of Alexander’s Campaigns, and Aristoboulos’s diary. Ptolemy being of course one of Alexander’s generals & successors; and Aristoboulos was an architect/engineer who accompanied Alexander’s army on its grand campaign/rampage across Asia. This gives Arrian's account a "you are there" feel not available anywhere else.Arrian’s writing is remarkably accessible even in this modern age. I’ve read books from the 18th century that are not nearly as easy to follow. While Arrian is an unapologetic admirer of Alexander and therefore glosses over many of his failings (such things as Alexander drinking to excess, pushing his campaign into India for no solid purpose, or the destruction of cities such as Thebes) these topics are more than addressed in the footnotes and appendices.If you want to retrace Alexander’s footsteps from the moment he inherited his crown until his death, THIS book has it all.

Landmark's edition of Arrian's "Anabasis Alexandrou" (The Campaigns of Alexander) is absolutely fantastic. Each time I started to read it, I had a hard time putting it down.That Alexander did so much before turning 33 years old is just not believable. And furthermore, beyond the historical and political importance of Alexander, from a purely literary standpoint, the story of the expedition is always exciting and changing. Although there were many contemporaneous accounts made by people intimately involved with the expedition available to Arrian when he wrote, all these accounts have since disappeared. We are lucky to have Arrian's account.With respect to this particular edition of Arrian's account, the translation was new and extremely easy to read.The footnotes were excellent because they provided a continuous scholarly commentary. How many times do you make the effort to read all the footnotes, just to realize that you could have read the text twice as fast without missing anything important? Not here.This text has been the subject of much scholarly writing, and you get this information in the footnotes. More specifically, the footnotes very frequently bring in Plutarch's Alexander, Diodorus Siculus, and Quintus Curtius. Sometimes these notes provide new, additional information. Sometimes these footnotes provide conflicting information. Other times the notes address current day scholarly debate and research. Either way, you're left with a deeper appreciation of Arrian and the legend of Alexander.As with the other books in the Landmark series, there were frequent maps showing not only where the cities were, but also where they were in relation to other landmarks. Each chapter starts with an overview map of where the expedition went during that chapter in addition to more focused maps sprinkled frequently within each chapter. There are also maps in the beginning and the end of the book of all the locations mentioned, as well as maps of the whole expedition and the whole expedition mapped up against present-day political boarders. There are also pictures of what the geography and locations look like today as well as artifacts from the era.The 25-page intro by Paul Cartledge was good and the 2-6 page essays at the back of the book by various scholars, about 15 of them, were also very interesting, but not essential.But without a doubt, the star of the whole show was the excellent writing and research by Arrian, made accessible and appreciable by the translation and footnotes. Read the second introductory paragraph of Arrian's text and then smile. Arrian was a little full of himself, but he told the truth!My only regret about this edition was that it did not include a monograph by Arrian called the Indika, which described Nearkhos' parallel-to-Alexander's journey from the mouth of the Indus through the Persian Gulf by water. The Landmark edition frequently alludes to the Indika and could easily have included it. I'm not sure a good modern day translation of the Indika in English exists.