Search Results for: alexander

Wild guess on the tally of people enslaved by Alexander the Great

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Statue of Alexander the Great at Thessaloniki, Greece. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Statue of Alexander the Great at Thessaloniki, Greece. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

One more followup on the human devastation caused by Alexander the Great.

There are a lot of posts on my blog discussing Professor Frank Holt’s delightful book, The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World.

In Appendix 2, the professor tallies the reported plunder, tribute, and other resources seized by Alexander the Great. Quantifying the destruction is not possible because the ancient literature often does not quantify amounts, only that slaves, or plunder, or cattle, or tapestries, or something else was seized.

The professor does quantify the reported information in an algebraic format. I’ve previously mentioned:

Total proceeds from the wars is then estimated in a formula expressed as 81.67( X) +311,761.

The author guesses the grand total for his years of campaigning at something between 300,000 and 400,000 talents. With the fixed portion of the second estimate at 311k, I think the total would be well over 300k.

Those amounts are in talents, with each talent being a massive amount of wealth. For an order of magnitude, consider that my guess is an ancient Athenian talent would be expressed something somewhere in the range of around $28M today.

I just went through the Appendix looking at the tally of slaves taken.

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Wild guess on the tally of people enslaved by Alexander the Great Read More »

Total cost of Alexander’s rampage

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Tetradrachm from era of Alexander the Great. Image courtesy Adobe Stock.
Tetradrachm from era of Alexander the Great. Image courtesy Adobe Stock.

This will be my final post on the finances of Alexander the Great.

Professor Frank Holt’s book The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World explains the ancient record does not give us enough details to estimate the total expenses paid by Alexander as he rampaged around the world.

The total expenses based on identifiable items in historical narratives is aggregated by the professor in a formula as:

  • 189( X) + 69,176 talents

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Total cost of Alexander’s rampage Read More »

A few stray tidbits on the cost of Alexander’s military

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Ancient Greek coins. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Ancient Greek coins. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Professor Frank Holt’s book The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World explains there is little in the historical record on the cost or size of Alexander’s military. Here are a few tidbits which are visible.

Navy

Alexander learned to appreciate the value of a Navy. One data point is that in 334 BC he had 200 ships operating in the Aegean sea. No quantification mentioned of naval forces elsewhere at that or any other time.

Army

Figuring out how much Alexander spent to field his military forces is a game of stringing together many wild guesses. The author accumulated his own long string of guesses and assumptions for small units. He also quotes several other studies.

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A few stray tidbits on the cost of Alexander’s military Read More »

Some tidbits on the spending side of Alexander the Great’s reign

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Ancient Greek coin. Alexander the Great and Apollo with the chariot of the sun. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.
Ancient Greek coin. Alexander the Great and Apollo with the chariot of the sun. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

I have been discussing Professor Frank Holt’s book The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World . You can find other posts on the ancient finances tag.

The second half of the book explores Alexander’s spending. There is even less historical information available on his spending than on his looting.

One part caught my eye.

Alexander built about 13 major cities according to the educated guess in the book. That doesn’t include dozens of small villages or all the sundry fortifications.

One of these cities, Ai Khanoum, had three miles of wall, which is guessed to have taken 3,000 workers six months to build.

How much would that construction cost? I will make a wild guess.  …

Some tidbits on the spending side of Alexander the Great’s reignRead More »

Some tidbits on the spending side of Alexander the Great’s reign Read More »

Guess on the value of all loot taken by Alexander the Great

1 Comment / Economics, Other stuff, Pondering /
Tetradrachm from Alexander the Great. Image courtesy Adobe Stock.
Tetradrachm from Alexander the Great. Image courtesy Adobe Stock.

My discussion continues of how much wealth Alexander the Great looted while on his rampage around the world. These calculations are based on two books I’ve really enjoyed:

Loot from Persia

Prof Holt provides a couple of ancient estimates of the total haul in Persia. Here is a recap:

  • ?? Babylon
  • 50k talents – Susa
  • 120k – Persepolis
  • 6k – Pasargadae
  • 26k – Ecbatana

That gives a point estimate of 202k talents. Back out some poetic license exaggeration and add an amount at Babylon about equal to Susa (author’s estimate) gives me an estimate of about 225k talents, give or take. That is only the precious metals without art, statuary, spices, clothes, pottery, or gold inlaid stuff.

In addition, Darius fled with maybe 8,000 talents, Alexander paid bonuses of around 12,000 talents to his soldiers, with another 2,000 talents to Thessalain soldiers. There was enough stray coins found a century later to mint 4,000 talents of coins. That is around another 26,000 talents or so of additional bullion. Add in the unquantifiable amount soldiers looted and all the non-bullion treasures means there was an incalculable amount of wealth looted from the Persian empire.

I’ll work with 202K point estimate, plus 50K from Babylon, less 25K for poetic license, plus 26K sundry disposition. That gets to a point estimate of 253K, with my very wild guess of a margin of error of minus 50K to plus 100K.  Let’s work with a 250,000 Talent estimate. That means I’ll roughly estimate Alexander looted 250,000 talents of silver-equivalent from Persia.

Total haul during Alexander’s extended raid around the world

The total haul from looting is estimated by the Prof. Holt as 69( X) + 216,820 talents, where X is an unknown amount from one raid or battle. The total is unknown and unknowable.

Shortly after that estimate the author adds in tribute from conquered areas that were not looted in return for payments and loyalty.

Total proceeds from the wars is then estimated in a formula expressed as 81.67( X) +311,761.

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Guess on the value of all loot taken by Alexander the Great Read More »

Alexander the Great’s biggest hauls when looting cities

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Drawing of Persian daric gold coin. Alexander would have looted tons of these. Image courtesy of Adobe stock.
Drawing of Persian daric gold coin. Alexander would have looted tons of these (literally tons). Image courtesy of Adobe stock.

After developing a few points of reference for comparing ancient finances to now, I can get back to pondering the value of loot Alexander the Great stole while on his military rampage, I mean campaign.

Following estimates of how much loot Alexander the Great hauled away is from Professor Frank Holt’s book The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World which I previously mentioned. (Can you tell I enjoyed his book?)

I will revise my previous calculation of Alexander’s haul from Susa and then develop a point estimate for the value of proceeds from his biggest sacking.

Approximate value of the haul from looting Susa, the capital of Persia

The loot from Susa is described by Prof. Holt, and converted to a current value, as follows:

  • 40,000 Talents of uncoined bullion, or raw silver
  • 10,000 Talents of gold coins, which I will assume is expressed as the equivalent in silver
  • 50,000 Talents – haul at Susa, estimated by Prof. Holt
  • 400 years wages per talent, for a skilled laborer, adjusted for Great Enrichment at a factor of 40; could be as high as 80 or even 100
  • 20,000,000 years wages
  • 200,000 centuries of wages for an average worker
  • $70,000 – average annual compensation package for a skilled construction worker today, calculated here
  • $1,400,000,000,000 – really rough approximation of current wages today for skilled construction workers which would be vaguely comparable to loot hauled off from Susa
  • $1.4 trillion – point estimate

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Alexander the Great’s biggest hauls when looting cities Read More »

Alexander’s haul from looting Susa, the capital of Persia. Revised estimate of value of one Athenian Talent

Leave a Comment / Economics, Pondering /
Greek silver tetradrachm from Alexander the Great showing Hercules wearing lion skin at obverse and Zeus at reverse, dated 323-315 BC. Image courtesy Adobe Stock.
Greek silver tetradrachm from Alexander the Great’s timeframe, showing Hercules wearing lion skin at obverse and Zeus at reverse, dated 323-315 BC.  A tetradrachm is equal to four drachma. Image courtesy Adobe Stock.

Update:  I have revised my calculations here. Adjusted the value of an Athenian talent from 10 years salary today up to 400 years salary due to the dramatic improvement in our wealth and standard of living in the last 200 years (the Great Betterment). Also adjusted from estimated average wage in the U.S. of $20 an hour to average wage for skilled construction worker of $70,000 per year. That takes the rough valuation from $20 billion to $1,400 billion, or $1.4 trillion. That actually seems to make sense in a very rough way.

Continuing my discussion of a few tidbits of financial information from Alexander the Great’s military campaigns.

When Alexander approached Susa, the capital of Persia, news of his non-stop victories preceded him. Previous cities he captured surrendered before he arrived. That typically spared most citizens their lives and prevented the torching of the city.

Thus, Susa was handed to him without a fuss, except for a huge amount that Darius III carted off well in advance of Alexander’s arrival.

The author looks at the various reports of how much loot was acquired. Integrating the report that is likely to be most reliable with the other reports results in an estimate Alexander capturing a haul of 40,000 talents of uncoined bullion and about 10,000 talents of gold coin. The gold is roughly valued by expressing the amount what it would be in silver value.

Apparently the Persians didn’t cast most of their precious metals into coins, instead preferring to mint what they needed as they needed it.

Revised value of a talent

Multiple changes have shifted the relative value of gold and silver in relation to each other and in relation to their purchasing power. Instead of converting a talent of silver into ounces and converting that to current dollars at current exchange rates, I’ll start looking at piles of money in terms of average days wages.

Warning: I plan to update my valuation of a Talent based on the radical improvement in living standards that has developed since the Industrial Revolution.

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Alexander’s haul from looting Susa, the capital of Persia. Revised estimate of value of one Athenian Talent Read More »

Ancient finances, Alexander the Great chapter

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Image: Flickr by Carole Raddato
Image: Flickr by Carole Raddato

Image: Flickr by Carole Raddato

The Wall Street Journal has a delightful review by James Romm:  Conqueror and Squanderer. The review is of The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World by Frank Holt.

I have a growing interest in ancient finances. Try thinking about how to run a large operation, such as an empire or an army on campaign when there is no banking system and no means of storing wealth other than controlling territory or possessing gold or silver. There is no way to gain any sort of liquidity. Your ability to buy something is limited to the gold in your hand.

How you pay your army today here in the field or buy supplies for 20,000 troops when your wealth is in the form of tons of gold which is a two-month march behind you?

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Ancient finances, Alexander the Great chapter Read More »

Announcing “Ancient Finances”, my newest blog

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Silver Roman denarius. Photo courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Ancient Finances will explore finances and money during the Viking age and Roman Empire. Lots of posts on other blogs addressing those topics have been cross-posted to the new blog. This includes lots of discussion of the loot Alexander the Great lifted during his rampaging world tour.

I’ve been having loads of fun reading about the Viking age and am intrigued by finances and money during the Roman Empire.

Why a new blog?

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Announcing “Ancient Finances”, my newest blogRead More »

Announcing “Ancient Finances”, my newest blog Read More »

Some background on brutality of ancient wars before diving into Viking history – part 2

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Illustration of a very well armed Viking. One had to be well off to afford a sword and rather rich to have a helmet and mail to protect the neck. Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

I’m going to take a look at finances of the Viking era.

Before doing so, I’d like to provide some context of the horrid barbarity of warfare in ancient times.

Previous post mentions the slaughter during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

Next I’ll describe the gathering of slaves by Alexander the Great accompanying his path of destruction across the ancient world. Today we would call that human trafficking.

People taken away into slavery by Alexander the Great

I previously made some guesses how many slaves were taken by Alexander the Great. See my post on 2/2/17: Wild guess on the tally of people enslaved by Alexander the Great.

Professor Frank Holt did a lot of research on the plunder taken by Alexander: The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World.

In Appendix 2, the professor tallied the known and unknown references to plunder and slaves.

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Some background on brutality of ancient wars before diving into Viking history – part 2 Read More »