Tristan Hughes

You're bringing me out from just being the interviewer in today's episode.

But if we delve into the context straight away, so the story of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC and his reign from 336 to 323 BC.

Let's set the context first of all with what the state of Rome is at that time and then I'll go on with explaining Alexander.

So Steele, first of all, tell us through the Roman Republic in around 323-320 BC, what do we know about the Roman Republic at that time?

Well, I can't do them all.

I must admit, otherwise we'll be here for hours.

But I think I want to kick this off also by saying that, you know, as all of that change is happening for Rome in Italy, Steele, it's not as if the Greeks have no idea about it at all.

I mean, the Greeks have been trading in Italy.

They've got their big cities in the south of Italy, you know, for centuries by this point.

And so you can imagine that stories of this slow rise of this new power in central Italy...

would be filtering back to mainland Greece and city-states and probably even the Macedonian court as well, the royal court.

But it's interesting to also highlight that before I delve into Alexander's story, is that the Greeks would have known of the Romans and what they were doing at this time, even though still in their eye, in their mindset, it is a sideshow compared to the great superpower of the time, which is to their east, which is the Persian Empire.

Yeah, absolutely.

And the Greek views of Romans as barbarians and then Roman views of Greeks and Persians as barbarians.

It's a classic trope you see again and again and again, trying to claim that their civilization is superior and so on, as we'll probably delve into as we get on.

But yes, let's set the scene for Alexander the Great.

So long story short, he comes to the throne in 336.

He dies 323.

So in his 13-year reign,

He conquers the superpower of the time, which is the Achaemenid Persian Empire.