OUP (2016) h/b 295pp £19.99 (ISBN 9780199950966)
‘The amount of wealth that he plundered was unimaginable’ declares Diodorus of Sicily when Alexander destroyed the city of Thebes. This book is an attempt to quantify the unimaginable in seven chapters, and four appendices containing lists of Alexander’s reported assets and debits and the current locations of what remains of his unimaginable wealth.
Attempts to be precise about how rich Alexander became, as H. admits at the outset, are doomed to failure because of the incompleteness of extant written evidence, the probable textual corruption of many formulaic or rounded numbers, and the moral agenda of the relevant ancient sources, who were more interested in battles than in budgets. H. therefore adopts the policy of employing educated guesses based on common sense, along with rare opportunities of checking data by comparative textual analysis or against archaeological discoveries. By these means, he convincingly shows Plutarch’s claim that Alexander was left virtually bankrupt on the death of his father, Philip, to be a likely exaggeration of temporary cash-flow difficulties.
The detailed itemisation of Alexander’s sources of income, largely stemming from his relentlessly successful campaigns, produces a truly shocking impression of waste, greed and utter chaos, which acts as a salutary antidote to the enthusiasm of ancient writers for the glamour of imperial conquest. By interpreting ‘wealth’ not just as metal coinage, but also as other portable property such as slaves, horses, cattle, cloth and crops, H. presents an apocalyptic vision of the plundering of Thebes, of Persian camps and baggage trains, of Persepolis and of the distant realms of India. The booty amassed by Alexander’s troops eventually becomes so impossible to carry on the march that it even necessitates periodic sprees of burning or discarding to motivate them to further conquest. Alexander’s overriding preoccupation with fighting wars in remote countries and consequent indifference to economic policy, at least until the final months of his life, is clearly emphasised by his habitual continuation of existing local tax administration systems and the astounding corruption of his treasuries, exemplified by glaring acts of embezzlement repeatedly perpetrated by his childhood friend, Harpalus.
On the debit side of Alexander’s bank balance, H. does not omit his outgoings in generous gifts and benefactions, on diplomatic gestures for propaganda purposes, as offerings to gods or for the support of his huge entourage of camp followers, as well as his expenditures on the founding of cities, funding of ships and weapons of war, and even the irregular payments made to the soldiers in his armies.
A vivid picture emerges from this book of Alexander as ‘a fighter, not a financier … a skilled manager of generals, but a hapless general manager’ (p. 156). It is written in a robustly readable style and, with its scholarly notes and detailed bibliography, aimed at professional ancient historians, as well as being accessible to undergraduates and the interested general reader, since Greek quotations are strictly confined to the notes.
Claire Gruzelier