Alexander the Great: Bleeding Asia Dry – Part II
A famous Roman aphorism was used well by Tacitus: “They plunder, they slaughter, and they steal; this they falsely name Empire, and when they create a desert, then they call it peace”. It is a disillusioned speech from a later age which could have been written in hindsight of Alexander’s Macedonian campaign in Asia. At Alexander’s death in 323 BC his bodyguards and leading generals had to pick up the pieces and govern a new regime that had toppled centuries of established Persian rule and a tax collecting system that once had stretched from the borders of India to the Mediterranean.
Alexander’s funeral bier, pulled by 64 mules, on the way from Babylon to Damascus (Public Domain)
