The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander

This is a nit-picky review, since I don't write to review the book's contents, which are equal to the other Landmark volumes and of great value. I only write to lament the declining quality of the book itself compared to previous hardcover versions of Landmark volumes (Thucydides and Herodotus--I haven't seen the Xenophon yet). This book is a hard-paper (not cloth), perfect bound (not stitched) book. The Thucydides and Herodotus volumes were true "hardback"--stitched binding with cloth boards. It's a pity that publishers can apparently get away with putting great books in inferior packages these days and still charge the same amount. As one who cares about the physical quality of a book as well as its contents, it was a disappointment.

Earlier this year, I discovered the Landmark Xenephon's Hellenika in a closing Borders. Up until that point, I had gotten through most of my thirties without reading anything on Antiquity save a few books on cities necessary for some professional work. Since Hellenika, however, I've reread Thucydides, watched HBO's Rome, read all the surviving plays of Aeschylus, have started going through Shakespeare's Roman plays, have cluttered my wish list with books on Greece and Rome -- in short this translation series has reawakened my old fascination with Antiquity. I was then pretty excited to read the Landmark Arrian.

My reaction to it is similar to my reaction to the other two Landmarks I've read: they're really good at making the texts come alive but also have a few annoying quirks. With most books, appendices, long explanatory footnotes and the like lead readers to groan silently: you have to read all this @#$! just to understand the text. Ugh. In the Landmark books, all extended clarifying material instead has you feeling like a twelve-year old reading a Dungeons and Dragons guide to monsters or magical items or weapons and going, "Wow, this world is so complicated. Coooool. . ."

The Landmark Arrian has that same feeling and as a bonus feature, a number of the maps now show elevation, which is an argument for doing a second edition of the earlier Landmark books. And the new editor has more traditional explanatory footnotes, which I personally like. Unfortunately, these more extensive footnotes are intermixed with a kind of repetitive footnote found in the earlier Landmarks: the first time a specialized term is used in a chapter, there's a footnote defining it, often word for word the footnote in a previous chapter. So the first time the phrase `the Companions' is used in each chapter, for instance, it gets a footnote, and if you start to read it because you anticipated more information, you feel like a sucker. (I'd be okay with this for the two maybe three chapters.)

Furthermore, this translation isn't as map-happy as the others. With the Landmark Thucydides, it was clear that the editor intended on teaching you ancient Mediterranean geography if he had to beat it into you. There were (often redundant but now famously useful) maps literally every couple of turns of the page. This Arrian edition is more like a traditional translation with important material only being shown on a map at once. I had to keep a finger on the maps at the beginning of the chapters. Eventually I got tired of consulting them so my geographic sense of what was happening started to be more like reading any other translation rather than like reading the Landmark Thucydides and Xenephon. The battle maps, however, are a significant improvement over those two books.

Arrian's text focuses so heavily on the military angle it feels almost like an action-adventure book compared to the others. But there's really nothing heroic about what's being described. Yes, Alexander is probably one of the two or three most successful military leaders in human history and was personally quite courageous. But let's face it: he was basically the European Genghis Khan. The text suffers from it: especially from the defeat of Darius until the seventh and final book, when Alexander has turned back from Indian and goes to Babylon, the story is a blur of massacres and increasingly summary executions. The seventh book, which focuses on preparations for a new campaign, on Alexander's efforts to fuse Macedonian and Persian cultures and on his death, is quite fascinating, so the book ends on a high note. The earlier chapters do make you wish, however, for an appendix that tried to tally the human cost of his campaigns, which ultimately seemed senseless even to his own soldiers.

Another appendix that would have been nice: the notes seem to imply that at one point during the Middle Ages there might have been only one copy of Arrian left. That raises all sorts of interesting questions: how many people read this in Antiquity? How many copies existed? How did they survive? Do copies disagree with each other? Is he read more now than, say, two hundred years ago?

Another thing that would be nice would be a sense of when to read which appendices. The opening material doesn't really cover Greek politics between Hellenika and the opening of Arrian. That material is buried in an appendix. Some appendices make sense to read at the beginning, like on Greek notions of world geography, while others should be read later, like the one on the controversies surrounding Alexander's actions in Persepolis. It would be nice to have a page recommending the optimal time to read them.

None of these problems will dissuade me from getting the next book in the series, which I understand will be Polybius, but I do think that this series is more of a work in progress than the enthusiasm of the other reviews might suggest. (By the way, it's worth Googling `Robert Strossler', who created what started off as an essentially renegade translation series. His story is not what you might expect.)

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.

I love all of the books the Landmark Series has published. However, I find reading the translated texts to be difficult. The pages are cluttered with information that I find very distracting. The maps and footnotes are too interesting to ignore. This is great for a deep reading of the text but not for a casual read. For those looking for a casual read, I would recommend the Penguin Classic edition.

What makes the Landmark series book so great are not necessarily the translations but all the other elements that surround it. The Introduction and the Appendices are absolutely fascinating. The erudition of these scholars is impressive. If this were not enough, the maps are also beautiful. They set a standard for what maps should be in an historical work. For those of us who love the Classics, we owe Robert Strassler a debt of gratitude.

One of the series of extraordinary publication products - of course Arrian is vital for study of Alexander - but none previously published had such editorial material - maps, chronology, appendicies on specifics - analysis of sources - cross referencing - a must addition to the volumes on Thuycidies and Herodotus and now we await a new book on Caesar - this and the others are works of scholarship and love of history

The first Landmark edition I bought was Xenophon's Hellenika. I was so impressed that I bought the Herodotus, Thucydides and now the Arrian. I would not recommend buying these editions in paperback. Definitely buy the hardcover even if they are more expensive. If you want to study Alexander the Great, this Landmark edition is the place to start. The bibliography at the end lists books for further reading. JFC Fuller's Generalship of Alexander the Great is listed and I would recommend it since General Fuller was also a soldier and brings a soldier's perspective.

An important and informative classic done the right way, i.e., a highly readable translation with numerous maps, illustrations and hundreds of edifying annotations. I'm waiting for Xenophon's Anabasis to come out in this format. And Caesar's War Commentaries. And... You get the idea.

An important and informative classic done the right way, i.e., a highly readable translation with numerous maps, illustrations and hundreds of edifying annotations. I'm waiting for Xenophon's Anabasis to come out in this format. And Caesar's War Commentaries. And... You get the idea.

The readability, academic rigor, illustrations and workmanship on these books is truly impeccable. The entire landmark series should be considered as a primary reference for any classical history library. This volume is no exception.

Like all landmark Editions the Maps and Notes make the text a joy to read.
No additional source material is needed. Exiting to read the real sours material almost as Arrian wrote it. Only the transcription stands between you and the author.