How Alexander the Great's Soldiers Spent Their Money

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Let's imagine a Macedonian soldier during the time of Alexander the Great. How did this man, whom we'll call Red Cleitus, spend the vast amounts of coin he plundered and earned as he and his comrades fought their way across Asia?

Patrick launched a brand-new history show! It’s called Past Lives, and every episode explores the life of a real person who lived in the past. Subscribe now: https://bit.ly/PWPLA

And don't forget, you can still get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge.

Listen to new episodes 1 week early, to exclusive seasons 1 and 2, and to all episodes ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/tidesofhistory

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Tides of History early and ad-free right now.
0:04.6	Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
0:17.9	Cletus was not a handsome man.
0:20.4	He hadn't been a handsome youth, for that matter. The girls from
0:23.6	the other farms near his in the Macedonian hills had teased him about his red hair and freckles.
0:28.9	The intervening two decades had added some features and subtracted others. He gained a jagged
0:34.2	gouge in his chin, the product of a slingstone hurled from the walls of
0:37.6	tire, and a mild limp from an ankle that snapped crossing a mountain stream in Bactria.
0:42.8	He lost the lower half of his right ear in a nasty little scrap outside Thebes,
0:47.1	left two teeth on the battlefield at Galgamela, and gave up the last joint of his left
0:51.4	finger to frostbite in Thrace. His red hair, well, that
0:54.9	too was leaving it, one strand at a time. It was a face not altogether different from thousands
1:00.5	of others packed into this camp outside Babylon. The king was dead, and Clitos was appropriately sad
1:06.2	about that. He had followed Alexander for 13 glorious years, fought all the hardest men this world had to offer, drank the finest wine, tasted the fruits of victory, and mourned those lost along the way.
1:19.7	Like his mates, Cletus had lamented and wailed.
1:22.7	More importantly, he had poured buckets of wine down his throat to console himself, and now he was out.
1:28.3	The limp wasn't responsible for Cletus's slow, unsteady gait as he looked for the wine cellar.
1:35.3	His last trip down this row of tents and temporary reed huts had been during daylight, not the dying light of evening.
1:41.3	He had also been sober then, which was decidedly not the case now.
1:45.3	A woman peeked out from one of the huts and called out to him. He didn't understand the local
1:49.9	tongue, but her meaning was clear enough. Cletus shook his head and walked on, and the woman
1:54.2	called out to the man behind him, and the one after that. The camp was busy tonight. With the king
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 10 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wondery / Patrick Wyman, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wondery / Patrick Wyman and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.