Alexander the Great Accidentally Caused History's First Hyperinflation

Subscribe! Summary: He was 25, broke, and about to become the richest man on Earth — and it nearly wrecked the ancient economy. When Alexander the Great tore through the Persian Empire, he didn't just win battles — he cracked open treasuries that had sat untouched for 200 years, loaded the contents onto 10,000 mules and 5,000 camels, and dumped centuries of hoarded gold and silver straight into the Greek economy. Wheat prices in Athens tripled. Soldiers got a raise nobody budgeted for. And somewhere in the middle of it all, a woman named Thaïs burned down the most important building in the Persian Empire — allegedly just for fun. This is the story of how the most famous conqueror in history accidentally triggered the world's first documented case of conquest-driven inflation, and then, almost by accident, invented one of the first truly global currencies to clean up his own mess.