I will just jump in here, to point out that we are all perfectly aware that modern writers have vastly different ideas about Alexander: from Tarn's heroisation to Worthington's "Devil incarnate" interpretation. All modern historians write with their own bias, and use the source material at their disposal to form and support their arguments, which cannot help but be influenced by the zetigeist of their own time - hence Tarn in the 1930s, and why the revisionists are so strong in the 1990s and the early 21st century.Efstathios wrote: Arrian wasnt in Alexander's royal court but lived in the 1st century a.d. Some people seem to forget that. He didnt have a reason to make propaganda, at least as far as i know. And he didnt have only Callisthenes as a source, who surely he knew that he could have been guided by Alexander as to what he wrote about some things.
Ancient historians were no different; and as you quite rightly said, as Arrian was writing 350-350 years after Alexander, he was indeed a historian. An ancient historian had the same points of view and interpretations as any modern historian, using the source material at hand to form and support their arguments. So I have to agree with Paralus - even if Arrian didn't realise he was doing it, he could not help but write to his own agenda.
The only thing that I would add, however, is that I do think "propaganda" is too strong a word; or, rather, that our interpretation of propaganda, since the days of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, makes it rather too strong and 'planned' a word to use.
That's what makes history so interesting!
ATB