During his school days, he showed “unusual talent as a poet.”[3] Due to political unrest, Archias, while yet a mere youth, left Antioch and travelled around the major cities of Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, in each of which his fame grew.
[5] In 93 BC, he visited Sicily, Magna Graecia, with his patron, on which occasion he received the citizenship of Lucanian Heraclea, one of the federate towns and, indirectly, by the provisions of the Lex Plautia Papiria, that of Rome.
[4] In 62 BC, he was accused by a certain Grattius, an agent of Lucullus' political enemies,[4] of having assumed the citizenship illegally, but Cicero successfully defended him in his speech Pro Archia.
"[8] Further Cicero strongly argued that creators of literature had almost universally been held in high esteem.
[9] That speech, which furnishes nearly all the information concerning Archias, states that he had celebrated the deeds of Gaius Marius and Lucullus in the Cimbrian and Mithridatic Wars and that he was engaged upon a poem of which the events of Cicero's consulship formed the subject.