Chapter Six - Burning the Palace

CHAPTER SIX

Burning the Palace

SOME MEN BURN out.
Some men fade.
Alexander?
He lit the ancient world on fire, literally.

After Gaugamela, the Persian Empire didn’t just fall, it knelt.

City after city opened its gates. Babylon surrendered without a fight. Susa handed over its treasury. By 330 BCE, the road to Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of Persia, lay wide open.

It was the crown jewel.
The symbolic heart.
Columns that scraped the heavens.
Walls covered in golden lions, lotus flowers, and history itself.

Alexander rode in like a god returning home.

But here’s the twist:
He didn’t keep it.
He burned it.

No, really.
He set the palace of Persepolis on fire.

Why?

Historians still argue.

Theory one: Revenge.
The Persians once torched Athens during the Greco-Persian Wars. This was payback. Eye for an eye, flame for a flame.

Theory two: Drunken chaos.
Alexander threw a massive victory party. Booze flowed like rivers. Music, dancing, concubines, generals, philosophers, the whole circus. At some point, someone (possibly a courtesan named Thais) said:

“Wouldn’t it be poetic if we torched this place like they did ours?”

And Alexander, in full god-mode and six cups of wine deep, said:

“Yeah bro. That’s art.”
And grabbed a torch.

The fire started small. Symbolic.
But Persepolis was built of cedar and dry dreams.
It went up fast.

By morning, half the palace was gone.
By evening, the symbol of Persia was ash in the wind.

And here’s the most chilling part:
Alexander regretted it.

He sobered up. He walked the ruins. He realized he hadn’t just destroyed a city, he’d erased an era.

Because that’s what happens when you conquer too fast:
You start to wonder what you’re even conquering for.

But Alexander couldn’t stop.

He wouldn’t stop.