Same

>eventually the Persians took only taxes to everyone's acclaim

That's interesting, was it seen as like a surprising innovation, or something people often hoped for but rarely saw happen?

In the movie The Northman, some raiders, after having raided a village and enslaved much of its population, then threw a bunch of people (the rest whom they didn't enslave?) into a house and burned them alive.

I found a thread here in which someone states, with a citation, that this was indeed a practice at that time and place. However, no explanation was offered there as to why they did this?

So that's my question. What would be the reason for killing those people? Why not just leave them behind?