Were Philip II and Alexander the Great billionaires?

Scustin Bieburr

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It's a meaningless figure. They had more funds than they could spend which would be the equivalent of a modern billionaire. If you have a billion dollars, that's effectively unlimited money to a regular person.

You'll run out of ideas for what to spend that money on before you run out of funds.
 

Sukairain

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No, the treasury of Macedon was a slender one, and Philip squandered it all on professionalising the army and creating the system of Macedonian hegemony in Greece, which was no cheap thing to do. The sheer amount of bribes he'd have had to pay out to his Greek faction leaders in the cities, as well as the cost of upkeeping the Macedonian troops who occupied the more troublesome cities in order to impose the hegemony, and the fact that the Common Peace, as it was called, did not include a provision for the remittance of tribute to Macedon, meant that financially speaking it was a bit of a dud investment on Philip's part. He'd have been better off conquering them and ruling them openly as a tyrant, instead of trying to pretend and hide his intentions with the fiction of the Common Peace. The Greeks weren't wearing it anyway, so you may as well have brutalised them. At least you wouldn't lose so much money that way

But he didn't. And the result was that Philip was heavily indebted at the time of his assassination, and Alexander inherited the debt. It's what made the early campaign in Europe and in Asia so precarious - he had to win, he had to plunder a few cities and he had to capture some slaves which he could put on the market. He desperately needed cash to pay off his debts. Losing wasn't an option.

This is why Memnon of Rhodes' Fabian strategy for the war was a good one. If the satraps had listened to him and scorched the earth, there would have been no money for Alexander to find even if he took Lydia and Caria and Mysia. And if he had no money, his creditors would ruin him, the army would disintegrate if they weren't getting paid, and the Persians could have stepped in to crush a crippled Alexander. They would have been welcomed with open arms in Greece too, as the liberators of the Greeks from the tyrant Alexander
 

YaThreadFloppedB!

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No, wars cost money… even back then. and though he was a charismatic leader, Alex couldn’t simply talk his troops into fighting guerilla warfare in the freezing Afghan mountains against the barbarian tribes.

Fortunately for Alexander he didn’t hoard his wealth, rewarded his troops handsomely and suffered beside them thru every hardship.
 

Dave24

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not the same

president.joe can't come to your crib shoot you in the face on live broadcast & make the whole nation back it

ha


*

ok, I get what you are saying. But if he was a dictator/king/president for life would Joe Biden be able to have the power to decide if we lived or died like Alexander the Great could?
 

010101

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ok, I get what you are saying. But if he was a dictator/king/president for life would Joe Biden be able to have the power to decide if we lived or died like Alexander the Great could?
those types of leaders only exist religious/spiritual figures now*
 

CopiousX

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I don't think ancient heads of state like Caesar or Alex count as billionaires in the modern sense, certainly no more than xi jing ping or Kim jong un or Vladimir Putin count as billionaires. They were overseers of state assets.



People will hate on me, but for that same reason, Mansa musa wouldn't really count either. That's effectively the wealth of the nation, not the individual leader.


Don't get me wrong. There certainly were wealthy folks in the ancient world. The ancient world had it's fair share of shipping magnates, owners of mining operations, commercial slave traders, and private owners of vast real estate. These guys would be their billionaires. Not the king of the nation.
 

Sukairain

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I don't think ancient heads of state like Caesar or Alex count as billionaires in the modern sense, certainly no more than xi jing ping or Kim jong un or Vladimir Putin count as billionaires. They were overseers of state assets.



People will hate on me, but for that same reason, Mansa musa wouldn't really count either. That's effectively the wealth of the nation, not the individual leader.


Don't get me wrong. There certainly were wealthy folks in the ancient world. The ancient world had it's fair share of shipping magnates, owners of mining operations, commercial slave traders, and private owners of vast real estate. These guys would be their billionaires. Not the king of the nation.

In the case of Macedon, the main sources of wealth were gold mines and timber. They had some excellent timber. But the forests and the mines were nationalised, the king owned them and the profit from their exploitation went straight to the treasury. It made them plenty of money, but as I said Philip had to spend all of it, and then borrow a vast sum, in order to accomplish his ambitions.

It's why I think Macedon never became a great power. Their reign on the top was short like leprechauns. It was basically only so long as Philip and Alexander were around. Fundamentally Macedon did not have enough manpower or enough local sources of wealth to become a dominant force for a long period of time. After they died, the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean shifted decisively to where it had always belonged, east to Asia and south to Egypt. Except it was Macedonian successor dynasties in charge, and not the Persians as it used to be.

The Antigonid successor dynasty which ended up taking control of Macedon had a couple of talented rulers and they were able to build Macedon up into being a strong power in the region, but pretty much always outmatched by the Seleucids of Asia and the Ptolemies of Egypt. There just wasn't enough soldiers or money within Macedon and Greece to compete with the resources the Ptolemies and the Seleucids could produce from their lands
 

Spiritual Stratocaster

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No, wars cost money… even back then. and though he was a charismatic leader, Alex couldn’t simply talk his troops into fighting guerilla warfare in the freezing Afghan mountains against the barbarian tribes.

Fortunately for Alexander he didn’t hoard his wealth, rewarded his troops handsomely and suffered beside them thru every hardship.
Those Indians had his troops shook I read when they pulled up.with Elephants..

Then add in Indians look like some demonic motherfukkers anyway..add in the jungles and weather of that region. His troops were ready to fall back home.

Then Alexander was doing shyt like making his men bow to the ground before him like he was divine and his troops were :childplease:
 
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