Steele Brand

Camillus is this famous turn of the century commander who helped Rome recover after the sack.

of Rome and was instrumental in the destruction of the city of Veii.

And then after that, so he's played up, okay, you've got your one great commander, Macedon, and here I think you will appropriately critique him.

So after this, he then, he transitions, and it's kind of jarring, he transitions to start mocking Darius.

And how Darius is nothing compared to these Roman commanders.

And then you see what he's doing with that when he shifts to chapter 18.

He says that Alexander, for all his qualities, has basically become Darius.

And he's now indulging in personal vices.

And of course,

the famous personal vice that everyone knows about, the famous incident is when he kills Clytus the Black.

It's like the worst moment, possibly also the death of Philotas and then the just execution of Parmenion because he's the father of Philotas.

So there are these things that happen right about the same time.

And what Livy is saying is, well, that's what we would expect.

That's what an autocrat ruling in the Persian manner is going to do.

He's going to become Persian.

Now, Livy's kind of cheating here because he's already answered his question before we can get to it.

Because Alexander, by becoming like Darius, has become a monarch who is destined to luxury and vice.

And what happens in Babylon, we kind of would expect to happen, right?

So in some ways, he kind of cheats us out of what could have been a really fun question by just zeroing in on Alexander.

But I think he's onto something there if we just look at this from a military perspective, but we'll come back to that.