Tristan Hughes

On other things, I take issue with how Livy's presenting it.

Yeah, Livy's question is...

For my valiant defence of Alexander's commanders, that is something that I can't refute, is that if Alexander the Great dies, these generals will turn on themselves, especially with that open question of who is the next heir after Alexander the Great.

and the bloody violent nature of Macedonian succession full stop.

Remember that famous saying that is later given to Alexander the Great on his deathbed, who do you give it to?

To the strongest.

Now, he didn't say that, but it's added later in hindsight of knowing of all the chaos that will erupt following his death.

One further point I will give to that, which actually strengthens your case, which would have shown the troubles that would have happened if Alexander the Great had died when he was fighting the Romans and how quickly that

army could easily have disintegrated and gone home.

is that we hear in other occasions, and we know actually when Alexander the Great does die, that there are certain people in his empire that see it as the opportunity to revolt and rise up.

And they are not content with being under Macedonian overlordship.

So you will have the issues of these Macedonian generals who I still stick to.

Each and every one of them was probably more experienced and more formidable than the Roman commanders they would have been facing.

But...

they would have been straight away trying to get a piece of the imperial pie and then wanting to prove themselves in battle by defeating issues that they would have had in the new parts of that empire that they were ruling.

And quite frankly, an idea of continuing a fight against a Roman people that are proving pretty obstinate and actually have a surprising amount of troops would have been low on their list of priorities to do something else.

So I do completely agree with what you were saying there.

Shall we move then on to that next part?

Because I think we covered everything from that first section of Livy, have we still now?

The size of the armies and the quality of the troops.