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Ethnic Cleansing?

I encouraged mass weddings between Greeks and Persians in order to reconcile the two people. To this day, some unfortunately view this as an antiquated form of ethnic cleansing.

Roughly ten thousand soldiers married local women. I hear this is frowned upon in your era. It is a shame because it represents a great way to spread a culture’s seeds onto another.

Empowerment: good. Enslavement: bad

Repeatedly, I would ignore Aristotle’s advice of enslaving non-Greeks believing that treating locals with respect would encourage them to view me as a liberator and ultimately support me.

This was done not solely for altruistic purposes, but also to spare me an insurgency. Bear in mind that despite my superior military firepower, I was outnumbered. The long-term success of my war machine was contingent on winning over the locals, and not as Aristotle would have it, enslave them.

Avoid Mutiny

But like anything else, some of my Macedonian brethren who fought alongside me began to feel that I was becoming too pomp for my own good.

Nonsense! Truth of the matter was that many of my ascetic characteristics were being replaced by traits demonstrated by former Persian rulers, traits that some of my comrades found embarrassing and in contrast to our initial goals.

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