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Third and final offer, to no avail…

With Darius’ third and final offer, he offered me so much more land than he had previously offered me that I could smell blood. He granted me all territories west of the Euphrates, thirty thousand talents for his family, the hand of one of his daughters in marriage as well as his son Ochus as permanent hostage.

This final component was not too odd in my era, as my father Philip had been a hostage to Thebes as a teenager.

I presented this offer to my War Council. By now I had conquered so much and benefiting from such momentum that I put all my doubters in their place.

Parmenio declared: “If I were Alexander, I should accept this offer, and make a treaty” to which I replied: “So should I, if I were Parmenio.”

I liked saying things like that, it might have been bold and ballsy, but it got people excited and made them look forward to what I would say next. Hey, if nothing else, it worked…

My army had swollen to forty-seven thousand men, but Darius’ stood at about two hundred thousand men. It was not like we could propel fire at the enemy at the speed of a shooting star; numbers mattered after all.

But in the end, I knew that a lean machine could take on a larger army no matter what the odds if the planning was done properly. I could also smell so much fear that my confidence grew by leaps and bounds.

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