Alexander quickly gained status as a fierce and admirable leader who inspired loyalty, courage, and devotion by fighting at the front of his ranks. He was the archetypal modern military commander in all facets of his strategic and tactical thought and implementation, in his generalship, and in his ability to relate directly to his troops. He ate with them, he slept with them, he placed a high priority on the treatment of the wounded and their families. Fighting alongside his father, Alexander gained invaluable training, confidence, and momentum. The young prince possessed the appetite, intellect, and ability for war, and his sudden and surprising ascension to the throne of Macedon was close at hand.
Having united Greece under his rule, save a recalcitrant but weak and largely irrelevant Sparta, whom Alexander ridiculed as “mice,” an anxious Philip feared that without a mission his strengthened, but also bored and idle, army would be prone to revolt and instability. He smartly conjured up a common cause for all Greeks to rally behind by dredging up an old archenemy. It was time, he declared, for a united Greece to march on Persia. Philip, however, would not steer the invasion. In 336 BCE, Philip was murdered by one of his personal bodyguards. Legend and lore have swirled the scheme that Alexander and his mother, Olympias, cunningly devised the assassination. While this makes for a more colorful plot, in truth the slaying was most likely the act of a disgruntled lone wolf. Thus, unexpectedly, at twenty years old, Alexander assumed the throne and prepared to carry out his assassinated father’s vision of conquest to unimagined heights.
Without hesitation, Alexander began his conquests in earnest, creating his legend in the process. Like most new leaders, his first move was to eliminate rivals and dissenters. When Thebes rebelled, for example, Alexander destroyed the disloyal city. After securing his domestic rule and his Balkan borders, he revived his father’s collective campaign to strike at Darius III’s Persia. In 334 BCE, Alexander mustered his combined Macedonian and Greek force of no more than 40,000 soldiers, crossed the Hellespont, and marched on Persia.
Outnumbered three-to-one, Alexander’s force defeated the armies of Persian emperor Darius III at Granicus and Issus. After pausing briefly with a nasty bout of malaria, Alexander quickly conquered what is modern-day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine. He was anointed a god by the Egyptians, who viewed him as their liberator from Persian rule. Alexander then drove his forces into the Persian heartland. Although outnumbered as usual, he decisively defeated Darius in 331 BCE at Gaugamela, gaining control of the majority of the Persian Empire.
With little motivation to continue fighting, the Persian army rebelled against Darius, who was assassinated shortly after his defeat at Gaugamela. During his conquests, Alexander emulated his hero Cyrus the Great’s promotion of cultural, technological, and religious reciprocation and exchange, and like Cyrus, he nurtured the arts, engineering, and scientific intrigue, and eventually shared his idol’s “Great” epithet. Like Cyrus, Alexander did not subject his conquered lands to authoritarian rule. He retained local administrative systems and culture, constructed infrastructure and twenty-four cities (including Alexandria, Kandahar, Herat, and Iskenderun), gifted lands, and had his own military and political leadership marry into local populations. Alexander wed the daughter of the vanquished Darius.
It had been only three years since Alexander left Macedonia, and his battle record was a perfect 11-0. He proceeded east into previously unknown territory, including Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and through the Khyber Pass of the hostile Hindu Kush mountains into Pakistan and India. By this time, his forces had been fighting continuously without defeat (17-0) for eight years. And yet he remained restless. Stirred and swayed by his maniacal ego, Alexander was hell-bent on chasing and conquering “the ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea.”
Alexander’s drive to Asia began in the spring of 326 BCE with a seventy-day march through monsoon rains along the Indus River system. His tired and ailing army secured the Punjab in May after defeating King Porus and his Paurava troops and war elephants at the Battle of Hydaspes. After mourning the natural death of his old friend and faithful warhorse, Bucephalus (in whose honor he named a city in Pakistan), Alexander halted his forces along the Beas River. Soon after, his most reliable and trusted general, Coenus, reported that the soldiers “longed to see their parents, their wives and children, their homeland,” and refused to advance any farther. On the banks of the Beas River, Alexander’s India campaign ground to a halt, marking the eastern extent of his conquests and empire.
While this event is often sensationalized as a “mutiny,” no such rebellion occurred. When Alexander was approached by Coenus, who relayed the message that the troops wished to return west, it does not appear that Alexander protested with any great zeal. The alleged mutiny, or more accurately the customary and typical airing of grievances by soldiers up the chain of command, was only one of many composite factors forcing Alexander’s hand. His troops were simply exhausted, his supply lines overstretched, and his victories progressively harder to attain. His army was increasingly reliant on foreign conscripts and mercenaries rather than on Macedonians and Greeks. His next targets were the powerful Nanda and Gangaridai kingdoms; victory was not a foregone conclusion. The Nanda force that first awaited Alexander’s 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalrymen was composed of 280,000 combined infantry and cavalry, 8,000 chariots, and 6,000 war elephants (which scared the Greek horses). And this was also not the only enemy standing in his way.
Along the Indus River Valley, Alexander’s force came face-to-face with deadly mosquitoes and their “diseases . . . accompanied by fever” identified two centuries earlier by Indian physician Sushruta. Having traversed and camped among swamps and rivers during the rainy season of spring and into the mosquito season of summer, his troops were riddled and reduced by malaria. References to corrupt climate and enervating illnesses (along with venomous snakes) litter the historical record of Alexander’s India campaign. The Greek historian Arrian, for instance, tells us that “the Greeks and the Macedonian forces have lost part of their number in battle; others have been invalided with wounds and have been left behind in different parts of Asia; but most have died of sickness, and of all that host few survive, and even they no longer enjoy bodily strength.” Alexander’s once pulsating army was now a walking skeleton of its former self. “The general health of the army had deteriorated,” acknowledges Frank L. Holt in his study Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan, “and maladies of one sort or another carried off many victims.” Shortly after the about-face of Alexander’s army, for example, Coenus died of what commentators posit to be malaria or, possibly, typhoid. Given the sapped and sickly state of his men, their low morale and wish to retreat west, and facing an intimidating and daunting enemy, among other military complexities and impediments, his India campaign was aborted. Not even Alexander the Great could circumvent these coalescing challenges.
Another theory suggests that egotistical Alexander engineered the entire event to avoid personal humiliation and to preserve his honor and perfect 20-0 battle record. Grasping the tactical and strategic situation and realizing he was holding an unwinnable hand, Alexander had absolutely no intention of pushing an attack deeper into India. Resolved to protect his reputation and legendary prowess, he planted rumors, intentionally made the proposed campaign unpalatable to his men, and stage-managed the entire “mutiny” to place blame for the retreat squarely on their insubordinate shoulders. Either way, the result was the same. Alexander knew that any further advance, given the circumstances, was unsustainable. The wishes of his troops to return home were only a small component of a much larger inauspicious and unflattering strategic situation.
As it turned out, soon after Alexander reversed his course, the Maurya Empire was established, uniting the Indian subcontinent and creating the largest empire in Indian history. This kingdom paved the way for a modern, unified Indian state, and nurtured the dissemination of Buddhism
. In hindsight, given Alexander’s untenable position, the abandonment of his India campaign proved to be a sensibly cautious decision.
Although Alexander turned his army toward Macedon, he was by no means satisfied with his exploits, nor was he ready to burn out or fade away. Upon his return to Persia, for example, after learning that ceremonial guards had desecrated the tomb of his hero, Cyrus the Great, he summarily had them executed. Continuing west toward Babylon, he gave orders to prepare for an invasion of Arabia and North Africa, with his eye trained on the western Mediterranean. Europe via the Rock of Gibraltar and Spain would have been in his sights. The history-altering possibilities here are boundless. Secondary reconnaissance missions were tasked to the shores of the Caspian and Black Seas to lay the foundation for the eventual rekindling of his Asian push. He was preparing marching orders for simultaneous operations into uncharted, nameless regions of the unknown world. Alexander, however, would never reach “the ends of the world,” at least not in this lifetime tour.
In the spring of 323 BCE, Alexander halted in Babylon to plan these next campaigns, and to receive delegates from the Libyans and Carthaginians. While he had been seriously wounded no fewer than eight times, had recently lost his best friend (and possibly his lover), Hephaestion, most likely to malaria or perhaps typhoid, and was drinking heavily as usual, he was not a broken man. After he crossed the Tigris River, Chaldean locals warned Alexander of a premonition they had received from their god Baal. The prophecy, they explained, foretold that his current approach to the city from the east would be escorted by death. They suggested that he enter through the Royal Gate on the opposite western wall. Alexander heeded their omen and changed course. Approaching the perimeter of the city center, Alexander and his entourage zigzagged through a labyrinth of crawling marshes and concentric canals abuzz with swarms of stirred-up mosquitoes.
Alexander’s initial days in Babylon were spent shaping his military campaigns, hosting feasts, fraternizing with dignitaries, conducting spiritual rituals, and, of course, binge drinking. Abnormal fatigue, however, was quickly followed by a crippling, but intermittent, fever. The sequence of Alexander’s ailment was well documented by his inner circle and is logged in the “Royal Diaries” or “Royal Journal.” The records are consistently clear that from the first symptoms to his death, Alexander’s illness lasted twelve days. The recorded time frame, from Alexander’s swampy miasmic Babylonian entry, through his symptoms and fever cycle, to his death all point to falciparum malaria. The larger-than-life Alexander the Great died on June 11, 323 BCE, at the age of thirty-two, his life cut short by an inconspicuous, tiny mosquito.
Had this malarious mosquito not sucked the life out of Alexander, all indications point toward an advance into the Far East, truly uniting the east and west for the first time. Had this occurred, it would have upended the course of history and humankind to the point where modern society would literally be unrecognizable. The unprecedented exchange of ideas, knowledge, disease, and technology, including gunpowder, is too much to fathom. As it was, the world would have to wait another 1,500 years for this to happen. During the thirteenth century, this unification would be solidified by European traders like Marco Polo trudging east, and the Mongol hordes under Genghis Khan sweeping west. Included in this multifarious cross-cultural exchange was the Black Death. But what if Alexander had . . . He didn’t. The mosquito helped rob him of this opportunity and glory.
Numerous other causes of death have been proposed throughout the ages, but lack credibility and backing. While the assassination plot is irresistible for conspiracy theorists, it does not hold sway. There is simply no reliable documented evidence or scientific credibility to back the claim. This alluring murder mystery appears to have entered the corridors of the gossip circle roughly five years after his death. The conspiracy was enriched and perfected by rumors that the assassination was carried out by none other than his old master and tutor, Aristotle himself, or one of Alexander’s jilted wives or lovers. Yet Alexander, who had become increasingly paranoid and unpredictable, never mentioned any fears of an assassination intrigue.* Other theories ranging from acute alcohol poisoning, liver disease caused by Alexander’s alcoholism, to a lengthy list of natural causes, including leukemia, typhoid, and even an altogether strange diagnosis of West Nile (which became a distinct viral species only roughly 1,300 years after his death) have all largely been disqualified as candidates. While an autopsy of Alexander’s remains would definitively mark malaria as the cause of death, as is commonly agreed upon, this is not possible. One of the greatest men in human history is absent without leave.
En route to Macedonia, Alexander’s body was diverted to Egypt and interred at Memphis. In the late fourth century BCE, his remains were exhumed and relocated to a mausoleum in Alexandria, the city bearing his name. Roman generals Pompey and Julius Caesar both visited his tomb to pay homage. Cleopatra robbed gold and jewels from the tomb to finance her war against Octavian (Augustus Caesar), who visited Alexander’s grave upon his triumphant entrance into Alexandria in 30 BCE after defeating the star-crossed lovers Cleopatra and Mark Antony. In the mid-first century, the sadistic and tyrannical Roman emperor Caligula allegedly poached Alexander’s breastplate for his own.
By the fourth century, Alexander’s resting place simply vanishes from the historical record, perpetuating myth to which the vainglorious Alexander would certainly have no objection. Over 150 large-scale archeological excavations have been launched in search of his remains. Alexander is one of those rare historical figures that still resonate in an age of cell phones, virtual reality, genetic engineering, and nuclear weapons, and has captured the imagination, intrigue, adoration, and respect of admirers across time.
According to legend, when asked who should inherit his empire, with his dying words Alexander muttered “the strongest” or “the best man.” In reality, the mosquito ensured that his vast empire and accomplishments died with him. Immediately, an orgy of infighting among his generals quickly destroyed any semblance of cohesion or imperial governance. Alexander’s direct bloodline was also exterminated. His mother, Olympias, his wife, Roxana, and his heir, Alexander IV, were all hunted down and murdered. Eventually, his empire was divided into three main but weak and competing territories. Two were summarily fragmented into minor impotent and forgettable enclaves. Egypt, however, endured as a Macedonian dynasty until 31 BCE, when Mark Antony and Cleopatra were decisively defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium.*
While the territorial gains of Alexander were quickly erased by infighting and the absence of centralized authority, the enlightening legacy of his Hellenistic empire endures to this day. Following his death, Greek sociocultural influence peaked across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia. Exploding from the heart of his former empire, Greek literature, architecture, science, mathematics, philosophy, and military strategy and design were disseminated across a wider berth and flourished in an age of academic prosperity and progress. Great libraries were constructed across the Arab world and scholars pondered the principles and ideas of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, Herodotus, and shelves of books from other Greek writers of the golden age.
When Europe languished in 400 years of a cultural and intellectual abyss during the Dark Ages, academia flourished across the newly christened Muslim expanse. During the cross-cultural exchange of the Crusades, Islamic academics extended Europe a scholarly ladder to climb out of the caverns of ignorance, by reintroducing Greek and Roman literature and culture, as well as their own refinements and academic advancements flowering from the illuminating Muslim Renaissance.
After the mosquito dispatched Alexander, however, the ensuing fragmentation and collapse of his empire left the Mediterranean world in a power vacuum. This void would be filled by the ascendance of a backwater city located on a mosquito-plagued peninsula 650 miles west of Athens. After layovers in Persia and Greece, the mantle of power and the epicenter of Wes
tern civilization continued its westward progression, eventually landing in Rome. “The fate of Rome was played out by emperors and barbarians, senators and generals, soldiers and slaves,” emphasizes Kyle Harper in his acclaimed 2017 work, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire. “But it was equally decided by bacteria and viruses. . . . The fate of Rome might serve to remind us that nature is cunning and capricious.” After the mosquito reinforced the Greeks during the Persian onslaughts; helped shatter the belligerent city-states of Greece during the Peloponnesian War, emboldening the rise of Macedon; nibbled away at Alexander’s once unassailable army and proved him to be a mortal man after all, she pointed her proboscis west. She unleashed her unquenchable thirst on Rome, cultivating both the creation and the destruction of the mighty Roman Empire.
Roman supremacy was not a foregone conclusion. The Romans eked out a surprising but unconvincing and pyrrhic victory against the Carthaginians during the First Punic War. At the outbreak of the Second Punic War, however, the underdog and uninspiring Romans were pitted against an unnerving and seemingly invincible adversary commanded by a general who rivaled the genius of Alexander—the resourceful and brilliant Carthaginian warrior whose name still conjures fear—Hannibal Barca.
CHAPTER 4
Mosquito Legions: The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Like Xerxes and Alexander before him, Hannibal inherited war from his father. The twenty-nine-year-old son of the vanquished Carthaginian leader Hamilcar Barca was determined to avenge his father’s defeat at the hands of the Romans during the First Punic War and unburden himself of the humiliation of surrender that he had personally witnessed as a boy. Hannibal’s meticulously planned route to infiltrate Rome, calculated to bypass robust Roman and allied garrisons and to negate Roman naval supremacy, would steer him straight through the most hostile terrain in the Mediterranean world and provoke the Second Punic War. The outcome of the Punic Wars, raging intermittently from 264 to 146 BCE, would pilot the course of history for the next 700 years. Hannibal and his Carthaginian parade of 60,000 troops, 12,000 horses, and 37 war elephants would navigate the precipices and passes of the Alps and penetrate the heart of Rome.
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