Tristan Hughes

There's a move altogether in that a lot of the people he executes are Asians and they're local people that he's kept in power.

So as well as some of the Greeks and others who've gone off the rails, as far as he's concerned, there's an emphasis more, you get more Greeks and particularly Macedonians appointed subsequently.

And then you get this big ceremony where he marries off

particularly prominent Macedonians, but also some others more generally, to aristocratic Persian and Asian women.

Now, this used to be, you know, you've got the old stuff from Tal and people like that.

This was all to do with this idea of brotherhood of mankind.

You would bring the different races together and all mingle together.

The significant thing is that you don't marry any Persian men to a Macedonian wife.

It's all one-sided.

It is purely Alexander's officers get...

pretty and wealthy, well-connected local women as their wives.

So it might be a sense of, well, I'd like you all to settle in Asia and think of these as your main estates.

Significantly, all but one, the exception being Seleucus, will, as soon as Alexander's dead, they get rid of these wives, divorce them or just dispose of them.

So it doesn't prove to be happy family.

So he's unusual in that he keeps her.

But it's a grand gesture, but it's again, it's this whole, who are we now, that raises questions, raises difficulties.

Nobody quite knows what's going on.

And it builds towards, you're marrying some of your soldiers to Persians, and then you present this, the youngsters, some of them orphans, some of the mothers that you've raised, that are Persians, and you've raised and educated and trained as Macedonians and trained as a new phalanx.

And you present them to your old veterans who are really fed up by this time as your replacements.

And unsurprisingly, it doesn't go down terribly well.