The Death of Alexander the Great: One of History's Great Unsolved Mysteries | Hacker News Reader

The Death of Alexander the Great: One of History's Great Unsolved Mysteries

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I found [1] "The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern Mind" to be an incredible source of inspiration. Oh, what it must have been like to be privately tutored by Aristotle.

What surprised me the most about the article is the fact that it doesn't mention his best friend and most trusted companion -- Ptolemy. It was Ptolemy that would oversee the founding of the Great city of Alexandria. It was Ptolemy that would rewrite the history of the Pharos (or was it Ptolemy II?) and begin the Ptolemaic dynasty that lasted 275 years. Well done Ptolemy.

By the way, both Ptolemy and Alexander were privately tutored by Aristotle. Well, Alexander definitely was, but maybe Ptolemy was just taught at the school of Aristotle [2]. Either way, they were both incredibly educated, which was my main source of inspiration. How I long for the intellectual mastery that they are said to have achieved so early in life.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/400064.The_Rise_and_Fall...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great#Educatio...

I think the "golden age" of Alexandria occurred during Ptolemy II's reign.

In a campaign at Sangala in Punjab, the Indian attack was so ferocious it completely destroyed the Greek cavalry, forcing Alexander to attack on foot. In the next battle, against the Malavs of Multan, he was felled by an Indian warrior whose arrow pierced the Macedonian’s breastplate and ribs.

Says Military History magazine: “Although there was more fighting, Alexander’s wound put an end to any more personal exploits. Lung tissue never fully recovers, and the thick scarring in its place made every breath cut like a knife.”

It always puzzles me why sudden deaths in antiquity are always thought of as suspicious. During a time with very little medical knowledge, sudden illness followed by death was probably very common.

Just from the short description in the article, something as simple as his appendix bursting would have resulted in similar symptoms. Sudden pain followed by a systemic infection (fever).

At least in Alexander the Great's case he was the epitome of youth, health and virility. Considered an unstoppable force and then he dies quite suddenly. It was odd.

> Wine was a little syrupy and could have a high alcohol content compared with vintages today.

This is tangential but is there any evidence for this claim? It’s my understanding that yeast simply will not grow beyond about 14-15% alcohol, no matter how much sugar you feed them, and this is what puts a cap on the alcohol content of “current vintages”.

I’ve always heard that older wines (and other fermentables) were lower alcohol and that even 14% is only feasible due to modern yeast strains.

I believe part of the problem is that there were many variants that were all translated to the same English word "wine", at least from Biblical history. [0] My understanding was that these could have an equally varying range in alcohol content even though they all received the same translation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_in_the_Bible#Hebrew

But if you can’t ferment past 15% at the absolute most and you cannot distill, then there might have been different alcohol levels in different “wines”, but none would actually be significantly (if at all) stronger than typical modern wines.

According to wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_campaign_of_Alexander_t...

"Alexander's march east put him in confrontation with the Nanda Empire of Magadha and the Gangaridai of Bengal. According to the Greek sources, the Nanda army was supposedly five times larger than the Macedonian army.[5] His army, exhausted, homesick, and anxious by the prospects of having to further face large Indian armies throughout the Indo-Gangetic Plain, mutinied at the Hyphasis (modern Beas River) and refused to march further east. Alexander, after a meeting with his officer, Coenus, and after hearing about the lament of his soldiers,[6] eventually relented,[7] being convinced that it was better to return. This caused Alexander to turn south, advancing through southern Punjab and Sindh, along the way conquering more tribes along the lower Indus River, before finally turning westward.[8]

Alexander died in Babylon on 10 or 11 June 323 BC. In c. 322 BC, one year after Alexander's death, Chandragupta Maurya of Magadha founded the Maurya Empire in India. "

There are large number of other texts/journals that tells his story differently. He was defeated so badly at the entrance of Indian peninsula that he had retreat and finally succumbed to his injuries.

Doubtless yours is a text from the Indian perspective while the parent's narrative is from the Greek/Macedonian/Western perspective. I don't have standing to say which is more or less likely, but both are probably engaged in some amount of motivated reasoning or selective memory (hence the continuing mystery of Alexander's death).

One has to realize that historical recordings have rarely, if ever, been impartial. If you have two opposing accounts, the truth, with some probability, is somewhere in between. We will never know for sure though.

Could you provide a link to some of these sources? I've never seen the story portrayed that way. Even if we assume that all Greek sources are biased surely at least one of them would mention Alexander having been injured in combat in India, but none do.

https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2013/05/27/marshal_zhukov_on_alex...

Only tangentially related, but I find that there is a massive under-appreciation of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom[1] which was left in the wake of Alexander's eastern conquest. Some of the artifacts[2] that they managed to produce in the 2nd century BC in what is now Afghanistan is truly remarkable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Bactrian_Kingdom

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Monnaie_de_Bactriane,_Euc...

Alexander's biggest achievement was to go down in history as a man who brought the light of civilisation to the barbarians in the lands he conquered. He was the original enlightened conqueror.

We remember him today as a great hero partly for his amazing prowess in battle [1] but mostly because he spent time cultivating his own image. He was clearly interested in posterity, and he didn't want to be remembered as just another guy who killed people and took their stuff. He surrounded himself with men of letters and knowledge and of course he had his personal hiostorians, a habit that I'm guessing he helped establish among the world's kings and warlords.

Anyway, all that he did, worked- and he's remembered not as a butcher who drowned entire provinces in their blood, but as a liberator from the blunt tyranny of the barbaric Persian dynasty, as a son of Ammon who saved Egypt and gave the ancient kingdom new life, as the man who cut the Gordian knot with his brains as much as with his sword. Many since have conquered, but noone else brought so much war in his wake and gained such praise for the act -not until Napoleon.

He was mental [2] but he was a smart guy.

_____________

[1] Seriously, Iron Man had nothing on this guy who led from the front and routinely charged ahead of his army scaling enemy walls and having to be rescued when he found himself in the thick of it with just his bodyguard to protect him.

[2] Killed the man who saved his life in battle in a fit of drunken rage during a party.

For at least the last 40 years no serious historical text or scholar treats Alexander just as a great man.

If anything modern historians dramatically index towards “narcissistic butcher”.

I suppose it’s impressive that the Roman reverence for the guy still plays but lots and lots of people view him as a brutal tyrannical conquerer and always have.

How much of that is due to a critical evaluation of his behavior and how much is due to the "modern" tendency toward foul hatred of anyone who accomplishes anything?

When I read Arrian, I remember thinking that if I was one of Alexander's generals I probably would have killed him. After 10 years of war you might want to kick back and enjoy being an Emperor. But apparently all Alexander thought about was what to conquer next.

what it must be like to be in the c-suite at facebook.

And kept them SO FAR away from their families with no apparent intention of ever returning. I wonder if some of his generals were able to get 'leave' and go back to Macedonia, though I imagine the trip back must have been quite hazardous as Hellenization was just getting started.

Also he apparently forced a lot of his officers to marry Persians in an effort to join the two cultures. I think that caused a lot of hard feelings.

Arrian mentions that veterans were regularly allowed to return home to Macedonia, presumably for good. But no mention of the generals being allowed to leave. His generals were arguably the main beneficiaries of his death. Eg Ptolemy founded an Egyptian dynasty that lasted until the Romans; Cleopatra was his descendant.

This eventually became a common pattern in the early Roman empire, when the military would effectively help select the leader who would best line their pockets and eventually dispose of him when it was time to cash in again.

with the end that actual defense/fighting was ultimately outsourced to foederati who naturally disposed of the last emperor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foederati#5th_century

"By the 5th century, lacking the wealth needed to pay and train a professional army, Western Roman military strength was almost entirely reliant on foederati units. [...] and the foederati would deliver the fatal blow to the dying nominal Western Roman Empire in 476, when their commander Odoacer deposed the usurper Western Emperor, Romulus Augustulus"

Might I recommend Peter Green's biography of Alexander the Great. Green's Alexander to Actium also covers the "funeral games" that Alexander predicted his generals would hold, and goes on to cover the Hellenistic age in some detail.

Thank you, I will consider adding it to my queue.

A recent study was published suggesting he died of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an auto-immune disease, which would have paralyzed him and would have explained his inability to move or speak. Interestingly, his body did not begin decomposing until 6 days after his death.

https://ancienthistorybulletin.org/downloads/katherine-hall-...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190122115006.h...

Even though the post is just a book advertisement, the topic of trying to unravel ancient mysteries is an interesting one. If one got serious about investigating the cause of Alexander's death or some other seemingly cold case like this, how would they go about doing it given all the forensic instruments that we have today - perhaps even including the techniques of big data analysis and machine learning (not sure about the 'big data' part).

>how would they go about doing it given all the forensic instruments that we have today

It can't be done. For it to even be conceivable a decently preserved corpse would be necessary, and even then we would have no surefire way to confirm that it is him. If miraculously we managed those feats, many causes of death would still be hard to prove.

Our best hope would be finding some copy of a currently lost text that provides more details, and even then it would be hard to tell what is true and what was propaganda from the Wars of tge Diadochi.

For anyone interested in some historical fiction about Alexander the Great’s conquests is absolutely recommend The Virtues Of War by Steven Pressfield.

Pressfields books are some f my favorite: as historically accurate as possible with a great story to keep you engaged. Gates of Fire, by him, would be another recommended period piece.

Amazing that Greece and India were essentially neighbors for some 250 years. The indo-Greek king Menander became Buddhist before it was adopted by Ashoka.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menander_I

I heard they found the remains of his chariot on a small island on the pacific...

lol

Since his body didn't decompose for a week, maybe that's because he faked his death? Dun dun dunnnn!

And, where is his tomb?

Recent efforts to find the tomb: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/2019/02/lost-tomb...

I'm going to posit that 92% of what we think we know about Alexander the Great is wrong, not just his death.

Based on what, though? There are historical figures whose lives are greatly documented and cross documented by others from disparate places.

We know a great deal about Socrates, Plato and Aristotle this way, why not Alexander?

Because of the lack of contemporary sources. We know a lot about Plato and Aristotle because their writings are preserved. For Socrates we have several independent contemporary accounts.

This is just not the case for Alexander. The sources we have are hundreds of years removed. Presumably they are are based on now-lost contemporary accounts, but who knows how much is embellishments.

It seems a little irrelevant as to how he died exactly IMO. We already know there were people who wanted to kill him. What I'm more curious about is why Oliver Stone thought that an overly effeminate Alexander was the best depiction of him.

Different cultures throughout time saw what being a "man" and what being a "woman" differently that 2019 America.

He wasn't actually that way though. They mistook notions of brotherly love which are not homosexual to something homosexual. There are no ancient sources that even allude to that. Just modern scholars projecting their own fantasies as usual.

Or simply that maybe there wasn't such a big distinction between being very close to a same-sex friend without any sexual relationship and being close and experimenting/enjoying each other bodies whenever people partied/had some good time. That is, if people back then didn't really see anything wrong with beautiful/healthy (same sex or not) friends enjoying what their bodies had to offer then the strong distinction that we draw today between those 2 cases was much more blurry back then and not something to be talking about much.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary or are you just saying that it's equally possible either was happening?

Even if there's strong support to say Alexander never pursued any homosexual relationships there's such a thing as artistic license and historically based movies are riddled with inaccuracies for whatever reason, and that's perfectly fine, they aren't advertising themselves as documentaries.

>Do you have any evidence to the contrary or are you just saying that it's equally possible either was happening?

Are you really asking for evidence which contradicts a hypothetical that you have no evidence to support?

I'm asking for evidence either way. Is there a reason to believe one side needs more evidence than the other?

The ancient Greeks and Romans to a lesser extent institutionalized what would probably be called pedophilia\statutory rape\exploitation today. Pop historians ignore the usual age/power dynamics and use the fact that they were homosexual relationships to argue for a mythical golden age where people supposedly had the exact same gender politics as 21st century San Fransicians before those rotten Christians came around and spoiled everything, then they accuse the earlier generation of historians that ignored this area of revisionism.

> There are no ancient sources that even allude to that.

Yes there is, but you have to understand the cultural context to understand the allusions, e.g the references to Achilles and Patrocles.

> He wasn't actually that way though.

So what do you base that assertion on?

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