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Join Wunderry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. The old Macedonian was drunk. He'd lost count of the number of pictures of wine that had passed down his gullet,

wine that was now in danger of returning in the opposite direction if he tried anything too demanding.

Many others were worse off than him though.

Scores of soldiers were passed out in the taverns and drinking houses of Babylon.

Some the old Macedonian was sure would never wake up,

either from the quantity they'd consumed or by coming across more trouble than they could handle in that state.

War could be found in the brothel, spending some of the gold and silver they had earned over more than a decade of war in the east.

Prize of mourning occasionally rang out across the city,

Wales and lamentations,

sometimes a marching song, all of them in honor of their king.

Alexander was gone, and the world would change.

Macedonians were often drunk of course.

The old soldier drank whenever he could.

The finest wine from the vineyards of Magna Graecia, thick and cloudy Egyptian beer, even the fermented mares milk the Scythians consumed.

He would drink anything Dionysus put in his path.

It dulled the pain of the many wounds he'd taken over his three decades of

service to King Philip and his son. A Persian javelin tore into his leg on the

plain of Galgumella. One man from Thebes had knocked him unconscious with a thrown roof tile during the destruction of that city.

Before that there had been Thracians, Illyians, and Pyonians.

The most recent had been a poisoned arrow in India that had nearly killed him.

Not all of his wounds were physical.

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