pothos.org

That's a good article, I thought.

Thank you for posting.

That's actually quite a good article. Excellent to see the space accorded to Pierre Briant, "the last Achaimenid satrap - of the Sorbonne" as Ed Anson once quipped. Briant is quite correct that one should have a basic understanding of the Achaimenid Empire to appreciate Alexander: he did not conquer and fashion empire out of whole cloth; it was already there and had been so for over two centuries.

I did have to chuckle at this, though: "While he was hated by many Athenians, who believed in democracy not monarchies or empires..." One wonders why Athens spent the better part of six decades leading up to Chaironeia scheming to reestablish the former empire it never believed in.