Frank L. Holt

Alexander of Macedon is one of the legendary figures of history who continues to fascinate us today. Yet the focus on his military exploits obscures the factors ere arguably even more important to the conquest of his ephemeral empire. The genius of Frank L. Holt's book is that he focus on the incredibly important yet previously unexamined question of how Alexander paid for his fabulously expensive campaigns. By parsing the sources to explain how Alexander financed his conquests, Holt shows how his campaign was defined by financial issues as much as military ones, demonstrating in the process that the true lifeblood of his famous expedition wasn't the blood of his soldiers but the gold of his opponents.… (lisätietoja)

Following the money

Frank Holt says there have been 4000 books published on Alexander The Great in the just the past 65 years, but only a couple of dozen even mention wealth in their titles. So Holt has pulled it all together here in an intriguing summary.

The basic problem young Alexander faced was not much in the treasury and a fierce army that needed to be paid. So it was inevitable he would take them on the road and reward them with the plunder of victory. It was far easier and far more rewarding than anyone expected, so he kept doing it, going as far India.

The book breaks into two parts – revenues and expenditures. On the revenue side there is plunder and extortion. Persia (Iran) was fabulously wealthy and flaunted it. Expensive purple accoutrements and gold and silver everywhere. As Alexander slashed across Asia, unimaginable caravans of booty, estimated as long as 70 miles long themselves, slowly crept back west, at the rate of 13-15 miles a day. Reports of tens of thousands of donkeys and camels weighed down by bullion were common. Caravans involved security and provisions as well, making the process all the more unimaginable. For example, the treasurer required 6000 soliders of his own. The numbers tossed around are stunning, easily in the billions by today’s standards.

On the expenditure side, Alexander treated his men to generous salaries, bonuses, travel and re-up fees, while also letting them plunder for their own benefit. It actually became a burden for everyone, with stories of gold and silver strewn over the paths, abandoned as being too heavy or bulky.

Meanwhile Alexander’s own retinue was a gigantic traveling society of cooks, servants, soldiers, vendors, administrators and an entire vaudeville/circus of entertainers for his evening diversion. All needed payment and feeding. Soldiers ran up debts among themselves, and a traveling casino took in good money. And through it all, profiteers and fraudsters, including the treasurer himself, extorted and embezzled. The leakage itself would have been enough to run society, but as in the places it was taken from, inequality ruled. Perhaps Alexander caused it to be spread a little wider by all his expenses. His personal fortune was an estimated 90,000 Talents, where one Talent was 56 pounds of gold.

On the plus side, some authors claim freeing all that wealth from treasuries and put into circulation benefited millions of people. On the minus side, little or none of the money made life better or more secure. Nasty, brutish and short was the order of the day, and Alexander’s idea of spending money was more and better weapons, more and better soldiers, more and bigger monuments and temples, and of course more plunder to keep the wheels turning. There was always another town and another hoarding awaiting.

David Wineberg… (lisätietoja)

Into the Land of Bones is a short book, about 160 pages, with a polished writing style that is delightful to read. It's primary mission is to reconstruct Alexander the Great's three years of trying to subdue unruly, fractious and tough tribes in the region then known as Bactria, now approximating the borders of Afghanistan. The sequence of events is a bit convoluted (I had trouble following this part when reading Peter Green's Alexander) but Holt pithily brings order to the chaos. Bactria was supposed to be the eastern edge of the Greek empire but instead became a graveyard of bones. Along the way we discover many parallels with future attempts by foreign powers to conquer Afghanistan offering a lesson from history. Frank Holt is an expert on ancient Bacteria, he has written about 5 books, all on this subject. This one is a sort of introduction for the non-specialist not only on Alexander but Bactria studies in general. In later chapters, Holt goes into the archaeological evidence (mostly coins) and the great question of what happened to the Greek kings and people left behind by Alexander. After reading this I am now fascinated by this subject and want to learn more, such as his most recent Lost World of the Golden King: In Search of Ancient Afghanistan (2012).… (lisätietoja)