Status Updates From The Rise of the Hellenistic...

Greece was poor and mountainous and even an army of 20,000 had to keep moving if it intended to live off the land. This left local farmers very little to live on after so large an army had passed by, which is another reason why Greece was relatively depopulated by the Roman era.

One reason for the success of the Hellenistic kingdoms—and this book will argue that the Hellenistic kingdoms were massively successful—was that Greek rulers of Egypt, Anatolia, Persia, and points east did not try to change the peoples they ruled.