The sight of these mutilated Greeks was well calculated to excite not merely sympathy for them, but rage against the Persians, in the bosoms of all spectators. Alexander seized this opportunity, as well for satiating the anger and cupidity of his soldiers, as for manifesting himself in his self-assumed character of avenger of Greece against the Persians, to punish the wrongs done by Xerxes a century and a half before. He was now amidst the native tribes and seats of the Persians, the descendants of those rude warriors who, under the first Cyrus, had overspread Western Asia from the Indus to the Ægean. In this their home the Persian kings had accumulated their national edifices, their regal sepulchres, the inscriptions commemorative of their religious or legendary sentiment, with many trophies and acquisitions arising out of their conquests. For the purposes of the Great King’s empire, Babylon, or Susa, or Ekbatana, were more central and convenient residences; but Persepolis was still regarded as the heart of Persian nationality. It was the chief magazine, though not the only one, of those annual accumulations from the imperial revenue, which each king successively increased, and which none seems to have ever diminished. Moreover, the Persian grandees and officers, who held the lucrative satrapies and posts of the empire, were continually sending wealth home to Persis, for themselves or their relatives. We may therefore reasonably believe what we find asserted, that Persepolis possessed at this time more wealth, public and private, than any place within the range of Grecian or Macedonian knowledge.[419] [419] Diodor. xvii. 70. πλουσιωτάτης οὔσης τῶν ὑπὸ τὸν ἥλιον, etc. Curtius, v. 6, 2, 3.