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"After six months of exhaustive siegecraft, Alexander was able to breach the walls of Tyre and storm the fortress island. 6,000 defenders were killed in the sto

"After six months of exhaustive siegecraft, Alexander was able to breach the walls of Tyre and storm the fortress island. 6,000 defenders were killed in the storm, 2,000 locals were crucified afterwards, and what was left of the population was sold into slavery." Well then.

deleted 5y ago
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bpodgursky 5y ago
It was an effective way to make sure the next city surrendered quickly didn't bog you down with a six month siege.
alexanderthe- 5y ago
This tale of this siege encapsulates the unwavering determination of Alexander to overcome and conquer. Anyone interested should read the accounts in Arrian and Quintus Curtius Rufus' biographies.
- Aidevah 5y ago
  It's particularly striking how much skin in the game generals like Alexander had, fighting on the front lines. From Thucydides and Xenophon gives the impression that the casualties for pitched hoplite battles weren't particularly large as a proportion of the army, but it's surprising how often the general was killed in action. Alexander himself was hit in the head strong enough to be dismounted at Granicus, suffered a projectile would to the shoulder at the siege of Gaza, and nearly lost his life when he was shot in the chest by an arrow at the Mallian stronghold. Of course recounting those wounds and showing off the scars formed a part of his speech when he later tried and failed to persuade his army to advance further.
fennecfoxen 5y ago
Welcome to the ancient world, where such things are common! Turns out the modern one made some sort of progress morally since then.
- blfr 5y ago
  Mao was starving the Chinese into the sixties, sixty years ago. Soviets maintained a massive system of forced labour into the fifties. So whatever moral progress modern world achieved it is pretty recent, and imho remains shaky, based largely on the fact that we're too wealthy thanks to tech to bother with more brutal forms forms of exploitation.
  - lazide 5y ago
    looks at genocides, civil wars, etc. in the Middle East and Africa right now uh, maybe we just disrupted the market for slaves, so it isn’t so profitable it justifies the risk/backlash anymore (for all but a tiny subset anyway)? Which is good. Mass murder still seems to be on the menu though, unfortunately.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - theknocker 5y ago
    >I am a moron
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    That gets it slightly backwards. The decline of slavery has to do with the fact it kind of sucks as an economic system from a productivity and incentive standpoint. (The moral is a no, duh.) And that is before the economic effects of slaves as inferior to even free paupers, and overall efficiency. It literally incentivizes only working hard enough to not be punished and effort and investment of owners is into more slaves instead of improving productivity. Slavery is an economic trap of local maxima to the slaveholder. It is no coincidence that late abolishers are worse off than their neighbors who abolished earlier. Not bothering with slavery is what helped acquire technology to massively beat out the short term. In spite of the emphasis on lower per unit cost slavery also is terrible in an industrial context, especially in a war one. The gulags weren't closed from kindness but because they looked at the infastructure produced and saw how awful it was. Using it for war materiale you may as well not bother with any locks or posted guards and outright invite in any foreign spies and saboteurs you find because you have them all literally incentivized to work just good enough to make it appear initially good to inspection and then fail in practice. In all fairness to slavery it was the alternative to genocide historically. Yes, that previous sentence is horrifying on many levels. Genocide was the prior status quo and fights were over food supplies in the first place meaning displacement to a hostile undesirable wilderness or outright genocide were the common outcome for losers and being taken as a mate was "being lucky". Food was too expensive to keep non-working captives for anything less than a suitably huge ransom. Human sacrifice had a habit of appearing and then falling out of favor once slavery was instituted (seen well in early Chinese tombs). The implications of human tendencies towards rationalization to justify what they want are clear and disturbing.
ren_engineer 5y ago
Alexander wasn't a fan of people who defied him. The Spartans wouldn't join him because they refused if they couldn't lead the army so after a major battle he sent back 300 suits of captured armor as spoils of war to the Parthenon with this inscription: ‘Alexander and the Greeks, except the Lacedaemonians(Spartans), set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia.’ Have to respect a pretty good diss, the 300 suits of armor is an obvious reference to Thermopylae
- ddalex 5y ago
  > Alexander and the Greeks my next band name
deleted 5y ago
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mcguire 5y ago
Wait until you hear about the Assyrians. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0909-53 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0909-... And, well, everyone else. I have a very difficult time taking the number of people kill during or after an assault. Many inscriptions refer to the complete destruction of a city, where the city is back in business apparently untouched a few years later.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Alexander the Great was one of the great, bloody butchers of history. Surpri-ise!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bpodgursky 5y ago

It was an effective way to make sure the next city surrendered quickly didn't bog you down with a six month siege.

alexanderthe- 5y ago

This tale of this siege encapsulates the unwavering determination of Alexander to overcome and conquer. Anyone interested should read the accounts in Arrian and Quintus Curtius Rufus' biographies.

Aidevah 5y ago
It's particularly striking how much skin in the game generals like Alexander had, fighting on the front lines. From Thucydides and Xenophon gives the impression that the casualties for pitched hoplite battles weren't particularly large as a proportion of the army, but it's surprising how often the general was killed in action. Alexander himself was hit in the head strong enough to be dismounted at Granicus, suffered a projectile would to the shoulder at the siege of Gaza, and nearly lost his life when he was shot in the chest by an arrow at the Mallian stronghold. Of course recounting those wounds and showing off the scars formed a part of his speech when he later tried and failed to persuade his army to advance further.

fennecfoxen 5y ago

Welcome to the ancient world, where such things are common! Turns out the modern one made some sort of progress morally since then.

blfr 5y ago
Mao was starving the Chinese into the sixties, sixty years ago. Soviets maintained a massive system of forced labour into the fifties. So whatever moral progress modern world achieved it is pretty recent, and imho remains shaky, based largely on the fact that we're too wealthy thanks to tech to bother with more brutal forms forms of exploitation.
- lazide 5y ago
  looks at genocides, civil wars, etc. in the Middle East and Africa right now uh, maybe we just disrupted the market for slaves, so it isn’t so profitable it justifies the risk/backlash anymore (for all but a tiny subset anyway)? Which is good. Mass murder still seems to be on the menu though, unfortunately.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- theknocker 5y ago
  >I am a moron
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  That gets it slightly backwards. The decline of slavery has to do with the fact it kind of sucks as an economic system from a productivity and incentive standpoint. (The moral is a no, duh.) And that is before the economic effects of slaves as inferior to even free paupers, and overall efficiency. It literally incentivizes only working hard enough to not be punished and effort and investment of owners is into more slaves instead of improving productivity. Slavery is an economic trap of local maxima to the slaveholder. It is no coincidence that late abolishers are worse off than their neighbors who abolished earlier. Not bothering with slavery is what helped acquire technology to massively beat out the short term. In spite of the emphasis on lower per unit cost slavery also is terrible in an industrial context, especially in a war one. The gulags weren't closed from kindness but because they looked at the infastructure produced and saw how awful it was. Using it for war materiale you may as well not bother with any locks or posted guards and outright invite in any foreign spies and saboteurs you find because you have them all literally incentivized to work just good enough to make it appear initially good to inspection and then fail in practice. In all fairness to slavery it was the alternative to genocide historically. Yes, that previous sentence is horrifying on many levels. Genocide was the prior status quo and fights were over food supplies in the first place meaning displacement to a hostile undesirable wilderness or outright genocide were the common outcome for losers and being taken as a mate was "being lucky". Food was too expensive to keep non-working captives for anything less than a suitably huge ransom. Human sacrifice had a habit of appearing and then falling out of favor once slavery was instituted (seen well in early Chinese tombs). The implications of human tendencies towards rationalization to justify what they want are clear and disturbing.

ren_engineer 5y ago

Alexander wasn't a fan of people who defied him. The Spartans wouldn't join him because they refused if they couldn't lead the army so after a major battle he sent back 300 suits of captured armor as spoils of war to the Parthenon with this inscription: ‘Alexander and the Greeks, except the Lacedaemonians(Spartans), set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia.’ Have to respect a pretty good diss, the 300 suits of armor is an obvious reference to Thermopylae

ddalex 5y ago
> Alexander and the Greeks my next band name

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mcguire 5y ago

Wait until you hear about the Assyrians. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0909-53 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1856-0909-... And, well, everyone else. I have a very difficult time taking the number of people kill during or after an assault. Many inscriptions refer to the complete destruction of a city, where the city is back in business apparently untouched a few years later.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

Alexander the Great was one of the great, bloody butchers of history. Surpri-ise!