Is this Alexander?

[agesilaos]

It may be moot as to how much xenophon Alexander knew but it is certain that Arrian was most familiar with him, which is why he called his book Anabasis too; since he was consciosly emulating the Athenian not just in style but frequently in topoi this may skew the comparisons somewhat. His main sources were Ptolemy and Aristoboulos but it was to Xenophon that he looked for his literary model.

[amyntoros]

It may be moot as to how much xenophon Alexander knew but it is certain that Arrian was most familiar with him, which is why he called his book Anabasis too; since he was consciosly emulating the Athenian not just in style but frequently in topoi this may skew the comparisons somewhat. His main sources were Ptolemy and Aristoboulos but it was to Xenophon that he looked for his literary model.

You've hit the nail on the head! I've been wondering just how much of the "emulation" was Alexander, and how much came from his biographers. As you said, it's fairly obvious that Arrian took elements of his writing style from Xenophon, but I think there's still a question of whether the Xeniphonic content came from contemporary sources. You can see from the quotes I gave that Plutarch also has elements which are not found in Arrian. So the question remains, would contemporary sources have been likely to "invent" parallels with (both) Cyrus, or was it Alexander himself?

Best regards,