The Man Who Gave Away Five Hundred Tons of Gold in One Day

Quick. By a show of hands...how many of you would like to have been the beneficiary of such inordinate generosity?

He died when he was thirty two...but he was a great man...a myth and a legend in his own time...and a legend which extends to this very day.

The year is 334 B.C. The Persians had become, once again, a world power. But our man had ambitions which extended beyond the ordinary. He had visions reaching heights most never dreamed of. He would create a world empire, a multi-national state whose very foundation would be based on the tenets of Greek philosophers--like Aristotle for instance--who had been our hero's tutor.

Our lad needed little else but his fantasy of an ideal state of utopia. Listen...the kid was a dreamer. He was rich...but money meant nothing to him. Before he started on his quest...he gave away everything he owned. He would become a general, and in the name of idealism, he would conquer the world in order to gain his end.

Only thing is...there was a kicker. You want to conquer the world...you need an army kiddo. And I don't know if most of you are aware of this, but an army consists of soldiers, and soldiers do not like to go about the task of conquering unless there's a little compensation. We're talkin' money, folks. We're talkin' Bacon, Boodle, Bucks, Jack, Juice, Manna, Mazuma, Nuggets, Pay Dirt, Pieces of Change, Sauce, Shekels, Simoleons, and, for lack of another word, the Almighty Dollar.

Well, our hero, clever dude that he was, managed to gather an army together, and for a few months, kept them together out of shear strength of idealism, and the promise of eventual rewards of enormous war booty. But after a bit his soldiers started grumbling. Hey, promises are one thing, but real gold is something else entirely. Well...it was at this point that the Fates intervened, and in the midst of all the grousing and grouching and muttering, His army met the army of Darius III, and defeated them every which way to Christmas.

Darius, it turned out, had a camp stuffed with gold, and our idealistic lad's army was chomping at the bit at the idea of even more gold around the next victorious corner. Ahhh...as some of you may know...greed lends strength to even the weakest of men...and it wasn't long before our general became ruler of Persia, Asia Minor, Arabia, and Egypt. During all this, he poured gold down his men's greedy gullets.

At one point, our hero married Susa--they didn't know how to spell Susan in those days--he married Susa, who was the daughter of the then Persian king, and declared he would personally pay off all of his soldiers' debts. Not only that, they did not have to reveal the size of their debts to him, thereby avoiding excruciating embarrassment. What our general did was this: He piled up heaps of gold and every soldier in his army, with no further ado, could come and take whatever gold they needed to clear up their debts...no questions asked. It was this little act of altruism that cost our hero five hundred tons of gold in one day.

But he was always the idealist...and though he conquered and gleaned more war booty...with his new found gold he created jobs, and he built roads, and canals, and temples. And he restored destroyed cities. He had in his employ scientists and scholars and historians and philosophers ...who were all willing to think...for a little gold.

Alexander the Great was his name, and he died at thirty-two...and within a few years, his gold lusting soldiers--who had no ideals at all--lost all...and Alex's empire was destroyed.

It's a sad tale I tell, but it's true. And that business of giving away five hundred tons of gold is staggering, but true. If Alexander knew one thing, he knew the power of money, and how to make it work. Three cheers for our general. Hip hip...

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