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Arrian

Arrian

c. 86 CE–c. 160 CE · Nicomedia

Arrian of Nicomedia (c. 86 - c. 160 CE) was a Greek historian, philosopher, and Roman official from Bithynia in Asia Minor. He is best known for the "Anabasis of Alexander," a careful and widely respected history of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, based on early eyewitness sources. A devoted student of the Stoic teacher Epictetus, he also recorded his master's teachings in the "Discourses" and the popular handbook known as the "Enchiridion."

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NicomediaBithynia

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About Nicomedia

Nicomedia, modern İzmit in Kocaeli Province, northwestern Turkey, was refounded by King Nicomedes I of Bithynia in 264 BCE on the site of the older Greek colony of Astacus, and became the metropolis of Roman Bithynia. The historian Arrian, author of the Anabasis of Alexander, was a native. In 286 Diocletian made it his eastern capital; the Christian writer Lactantius taught rhetoric there at the emperor's request, and the persecution of Christians began there in 303 with the destruction of a church. Constantine died at a villa near the city in 337, and a great earthquake struck it in 358.

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The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Arrian’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(7)