>brutal against non-surrendering nations This is ambiguous about cities or nations that resisted and then surrendered. There seem to be a lot of references to

>brutal against non-surrendering nations This is ambiguous about cities or nations that resisted and then surrendered. There seem to be a lot of references to how surrender was followed by everyone being killed or enslaved. I kind of think that's an area of contrast between their standards and today's. You can point to "civilized" countries destroying whole cities in the 20th century, but doing it after your enemy is defeated is much more frowned on. Also, when you say "beneficial for those who followed him" it elides what it meant when they enslaved the women and children from a conquered population. I don't think they generally allowed individuals to choose whether to be among those massacred or not. And what happened next probably wasn't consistent with modern human rights standards, which again, I think goes back to the original point that started the subthread.