Steele Brand

That's when we had the first embassies that go abroad.

So they know of what's going on.

They have heard of it.

There have been Hellenistic adventurers.

So we've got about half a dozen of these guys.

In Syracuse, you have tyrants that pop up from time to time.

There have been Spartan kings that have intervened.

And when Alexander the Molossian, for example, the King of Epirus, when he goes over to Italy, he gets killed there.

And he famously writes back, it sounds misogynistic today, but he famously writes back and said, Alexander had no idea that he's only been fighting women up to this point in time.

And the point being, these Italian peoples are crazy.

And they're tough.

Now, he's not being fair, because I think you could actually make a pretty good comparison between

the Eastern satraps and the Indus River Valley civilizations.

I think that's the kind of situation Alexander would have found himself in Italy.

In some ways, what we have with the big battles within the

The Persian Empire, Mesopotamia, the Levant, the Fertile Crescent, that's totally different.

That's apples to oranges.

But I think those hither regions that are so mountainous out in the eastern satrapies, that Alexander the Molossian needed to know that Alexander has fought people that tough.

I think we have to agree.

That's how every single Hellenistic adventurer