system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
By what standard are they great though? Great as in they achieved a lot? Because then Hitler would have been great (for a short while). I don’t know much about Alexander the Great’s time period but his crowning achievement was conquering the Persian empire and having the biggest empire the world had ever seen. I don’t think that his empire brought about any general well being. It collapsed almost immediately and the Persian state was very well functioning and people were living well under Persian rule. The Hellenistic period as far as I know was just Greek rulers living it up with the wealth from the chunks of territory they gained. Who gained other than Greek soldiers and generals who pillaged the shit out of the conquered lands?

I know less about Caesar, but he basically committed genocide against the Gauls, set off a long period of bloody civil war, and screwed over Roman “democracy.” I do admire that he gave a ton of wealth to the common people, but it was purely to gain political power and only applied to Roman citizens who were a minority in the empire.
gpt
&gt;It collapsed almost immediately and the Persian state was very well functioning and people were living well under Persian rule.

It collapsed, sure, but then settled into 3/4 successor states that went on to last centuries. Ptolemaic egypt, seleucid persia, antigonid macedonia all turned into stable and successful nations. Even Greco-bactria went on in some capacity.