Proliferation, recruitment, socio-cultural engineering and hostage-taking? To ensure some good behaviour from the fathers of these beloved sons from those "dangerous territories"? Were the Greek soldiers partly serving as hostages from that other potentially rebellious territory?Phoebus wrote:I don't know that Alexander's recruiting efforts can be considered proliferation... Judging from what Arrian left us with, Alexander "recruited" from the most dangerous territories, turning the next generation ("youths just growing into manhood") of potential rebels into his own soldiers. Some rather fine socio-cultural re-engineering, if you ask me. This is only conjecture on my part, but I think this project would have worked out better in the long run than nationally-distinct units working parallel to, or beneath, Greek-speaking ones.
Either way, once Alexander had bled Macedonian manpower to the degree he did, he had no option but to find conscripts in other places. It doesn't seem that he had any plans to stop initiating wars. Spear fodder is essential for such endeavors.