Alexander the Great: The Economics of Upheaval – Part I
Alexander the Great has been termed a maverick whose 13-year meteoric reign was an aberration in the history of the age. He was a mythopoeic conqueror who simultaneously lived by the tenets of the strategically sound and the proportionally outrageous; a tribal leader recalling heroic deeds, and a mortal seeking apotheosis through his progression from Macedonian king, to Greek hegemon, pharaoh of Egypt and the Persian king of kings. Was Alexander the Great an empire builder or an empire destroyer?
Detail from the so-called ‘Alexander Sarcophagus’ in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Since antiquity, views have varied wildly by the historians, philosophers and emperors who either vilified or praised Alexander. What no one can deny is the upheaval he caused, both during his reign and in the years after his death, when the dynasties established by his brilliant generals ruled the Graeco-Persian world.
