day he was carried to the palace on the other side of the river, where he slept a little, but his fever did
not lessen. When the chief officers came to his bedside on the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth, he was
speechless.
Because it seemed to the Macedonians that he was dead, they came to the doors of the palace
shouting, and insisted on seeing him. They threatened the Companions until all opposition was broken.
When the doors were thrown open to them, one by one, without military cloaks or armor, the soldiers
slowly filed by Alexander’s couch. On this day, too, the officers Python and Seleucus were sent to the
temple of Serapis to ask whether they should bring Alexander there. The god replied that they should
leave Alexander where he was. Alexander then died on the twenty-eighth of Daisios (June 10),
toward the evening.
Arrian based his account of Alexander’s illness and demise on the Royal Diaries, but provides
some significant additional details. The first is that a few days into his illness Alexander instructed
his officers to prepare to march three days later and told the fleet to set out the day after that. The
invasion of Arabia, in other words, was imminent.
From Arrian we also learn that when the Macedonians came to see Alexander, although the king
could not speak, he raised his head, with difficulty, and signed to them with his eyes. So he was not
completely unconscious at the time.
Finally, Arrian gives a fuller account of the episode of the temple of Serapis: seven of Alexander’s
officers kept an all-night vigil, asking the god whether it would be better for the king to be moved into
the temple and, after prayer, to be healed by the god. An oracle was given by the god that he should
not be brought into the sanctuary, but that it would be better for him to remain where he was. This
oracle the companions announced (and apparently followed). Alexander breathed his last shortly
thereafter. The “better” thing for Alexander (according to the story preserved in Arrian) thus turned
out to be death. After recounting this anecdote, Arrian states that the histories of both Ptolemy and
Aristobulus ended here, but also tells us what other writers claimed were Alexander’s last words.
When Alexander was very near death, his companions asked him to whom he wished to leave his
empire. Alexander replied in Greek, “to kratisto.”
It was left to the living to figure out whether Alexander meant “to the best man,” or “to the strongest
man”: the translation of the prepositional phrase in Greek was ambiguous.
Alexander added that he knew very well that all his leading friends would stage a great contest in
honor of his funeral. Craterus, Perdiccas, and the other great marshals of his empire, in other words,
would fight to succeed Alexander and to rule his empire. Perdiccas then asked when Alexander
wished divine honors to be paid to him. Alexander replied that he wanted them when they were
happy. These were Alexander’s last words. Alexander then died.
Such is the story about the death of Alexander that Plutarch and Arrian relate, and claim they
believe, on the basis of the daily diary of Alexander’s activities during the last few weeks of his life.
Essentially, Alexander died of a fever, to which he succumbed only gradually.
THE STORY OF THE MURDER
But Plutarch and Arrian also report another tradition about Alexander’s death, by which Alexander
was murdered by a group of his officers and former friends. Diodorus and Justin naturally follow the
more sinister story. Given Justin’s overall picture of Alexander, it is hardly surprising that he
believed the murder story: how else could a tyrant like Alexander have died, except by assassination?
Be that as it may, in fact the murder story agrees with the narrative of the Royal Diaries up to a
point. In this version, Alexander went along to the party at Medius’ house. But then, and here is where
the traditions about Alexander’s death differ fundamentally, at Medius’ party Alexander drank much
unmixed wine in commemoration of the death of Herakles. Perhaps inspired by the wine, Alexander is
said to have acted from memory a scene from the Andromeda of Euripides. He then drank to the health
of all twenty guests at the dinner party and received the same number of toasts in return. Finally,
raising a huge beaker of wine, Alexander downed it in a single gulp. Instantly, the king shrieked aloud
as if an arrow had pierced his liver. His friends then took him back to the royal apartments.
Alexander cried out because he had been poisoned. According to this tradition, it was Aristotle
himself who advised Antipater, Alexander’s regent back in Macedon, to arrange the murder, and it
was thanks to Aristotle that the poison itself was obtained. The obvious motive was Alexander’s
destruction of Aristotle’s kinsman Callisthenes, not to mention the rest of Alexander’s tyrannical acts.
Antipater, of course, had been terrified by his order to appear before Alexander.
The poison was water, procured from a cliff near the town of Nonacris in northern Arcadia; it was
so cold and pungent that it could be stored only in the hoof of an ass. Once it had been brought
secretly to Babylon, it was administered to Alexander at Medius’ party by the king’s royal cupbearer,
Iollas, one of Antipater’s sons and Medius’ lover.
Thereafter (according to a pamphlet that eventually found its way into the medieval Alexander
Romance, but was based upon some kind of narrative written within ten years of Alexander’s death)
Alexander returned to his house and asked for a feather to tickle his throat so that he would vomit up
the wine. Iollas smeared a feather with poison and gave it to Alexander. Alexander then endured a
night of agony and the next day sent everyone out, hoping to get some rest.
When night fell, Alexander, knowing that he was doomed, tried to kill himself by throwing himself
in the Euphrates but was stopped by his wife, Roxane. The next day the Macedonians rioted and
insisted upon seeing Alexander, who was writing out his will. When he had finished that and a letter
to Olympias, Alexander was comforted by a young man named Charmides.
Eventually the air was filled with mist and a great star was seen descending from the sky,
accompanied by an eagle. The statue of Zeus in Babylon trembled. When the star ascended again, still
accompanied by the eagle, and disappeared, Alexander fell into his eternal sleep.
MODERN THEORIES
While the story presented in the Royal Diaries appears convincing because of the details it provides
about Alexander’s activities over the course of the fatal illness, it unfortunately includes one glaring
anachronism that calls into question whether the diaries really were a completely factual account of
Alexander’s death.
Specifically, the healing god Serapis apparently was largely a creation of the reign of Alexander’s
ex-bodyguard and officer Ptolemy I in Egypt after Alexander’s death; therefore there cannot have been
a temple of Serapis in Babylon in 323. Thus, the detail about the vigil in the temple was a later
addition to the story, added by Eumenes and his coauthor Diodotus, to help remove suspicions of foul
play. The point of the anecdote was to show that the healing god had been consulted and his counsel
followed; the men who were sitting in vigil had obeyed the instruction of the god. If Alexander
&nbs
p; subsequently died, it was the better thing, as the god willed it. The men named were blameless.
Indeed, the very careful attention the diaries give to the progress of Alexander’s illness has
suggested to some historians that the real purpose of its publication was to establish that Alexander
had died of a progressive fever—in other words, that he was not murdered. The diaries exculpated
those who took care of him during his illness.
But neither can the poisoning story be accepted simply at face value. Most of the poisons in use in
the eastern Mediterranean during Alexander’s lifetime, such as hemlock, acted quickly, causing
immediate or nearly immediate death. But Alexander did not die right away, as both traditions agree.
The essential feature of the poisoning story, that Alexander was poisoned by a particularly strong
poison, but died over almost a fortnight, is self-contradictory.
A second problem with the poisoning story is that it apparently only appeared publicly five years
after Alexander’s death. Thus, the story of Alexander’s murder by poison emerged exactly in the
context of the vast contest to succeed him that, on his deathbed, he had predicted. Just as those who
were close to Alexander in his last few days in Babylon made sure that the fever story got out to
remove any suspicion of foul play on their part, the story of the poisoning may have been spread by
the surviving members of Alexander’s immediate family (especially Olympias) to tarnish the
reputations of her political rivals after his death: Aristotle, Antipater, Cassander, Iollas, and others.
To fix the blame on someone for murdering Alexander would have been a very effective piece of
political propaganda during the wars that followed Alexander’s death.
Neither source tradition, then, can be credited without reservation. Each story was published and
circulated to achieve a political goal. Knowing they would be suspected, Antipater and his family
perhaps made sure that the story of the fever was publicized as soon as possible. The poisoning story,
on the other hand, was promoted years later to implicate Aristotle, perhaps some of the men who
attended the dinner party of Medius, and the family of Antipater.
What we do know, however, based upon what is common to both traditions, is that whatever
Alexander died of, he did not die right away. Given the supporting facts, that is, that most of the
poisons in Alexander’s world killed people right away and that the story of the poisoning came out
only five years after his death, the fever story, or at least the natural-cause-of-death story, seems more
plausible.
AUTOPSY
Guessing what kind of fever or natural cause led to Alexander’s death also has become something of a
contest among historians.
Some have argued for malaria, given the location of the death scene, around the swamps of
Babylon; malaria remains endemic there. Others have attributed Alexander’s demise to acute alcohol
poisoning, brought on by years of heavy drinking. Alexander and his friends certainly were binge
drinkers, as we have seen, and according to the diaries he often needed to sleep for two days and
nights after a drinking spree. Acute alcohol poisoning, however, does not fit very well with the story
of a lingering illness. If Alexander died of acute alcohol poisoning, he should have succumbed to its
effects almost immediately. But he did not. Dionysos did not kill his rival.
A theory also has been advanced linking Alexander’s death to the chest wound he suffered in India
and to his severe grief after the death of Hephaestion. The proponents of this theory argue that these
twin wounds to Alexander’s chest weakened Alexander’s immune system to such an extent that he
became susceptible to some kind of secondary infection. Alexander, in other words, died of a broken
heart.
It is an attractive idea, but Alexander’s enthusiastic preparations for the invasion of Arabia suggest
that while his heart may have been broken, his mind and spirit were fully intact. Alexander loved
warfare even more than he loved Hephaestion.
Scholars as well as enthusiastic amateurs have made great efforts to prove their cases by citing the
details found in the sources about the trajectory of Alexander’s illness and arguing from parallel
cases. Recently, West Nile virus has been proposed as the cause of Alexander’s death because one
source tells us that when Alexander stood before the gates of Babylon ravens fell dead at his feet.
Ravens, however, like human beings, can die from many kinds of diseases. Undoubtedly, the game of
identifying what killed Alexander, Alexander’s continuing funeral games, will go on as long as the
fascination with Alexander persists.
Short of finding Alexander’s remains, however, and conducting comprehensive forensic tests, there
is simply no way of settling the question definitively. We are unlikely to have the opportunity: after
Alexander’s death, his body was taken to Egypt (first to Memphis, later to Alexandria), where it was
embalmed and then placed in a mausoleum called the Sema, which has disappeared without a trace.
In the last century there were no fewer than 150 archaeological excavations launched in search of
Alexander’s final resting place; and since the early nineteenth century there have been seven highly
publicized “discoveries” of his tomb: all have turned out to be fraudulent. Alexander has taken the
secret of what killed him to his lost grave.
CHAPTER 30
Alexander: Mass Murderer or Messiah?
STALIN, HITLER, CORTÈS?
Alexander the Great should be subject to the same exacting scrutiny that historians have brought to
bear upon figures such as Stalin, Hitler, and Cortés. The comparisons that have been made implicitly
or explicitly between those notorious figures and Alexander are interesting, but fundamentally
misleading.
Alexander was not a precursor of Stalin or Hitler. There was no “reign of terror” after Alexander
returned from India comparable to what Stalin carried out in the Soviet Union. Rather, incompetent
governors were replaced by Alexander because they had performed poorly. Those accused of
maladministration or insurrection were tried according to customary Macedonian procedures, and if
found guilty were executed with the full cooperation of the Macedonian army. Nor did Alexander
ever consign tens of millions of his own countrymen to a Macedonian gulag, analogous to Stalin’s
forced labor camps.
As leader of the pan-Hellenic campaign to punish the Persians for their alleged crimes and
sacrilege, Alexander bears responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Greeks,
Macedonians, Persians, Bactrians, Indians, and others. The campaign in India, in particular, was
waged with great brutality. Alexander personally killed many men in combat, and he murdered
Cleitus, one of his best officers, in a drunken rage, although that murder was not premeditated.
Alexander also was responsible for the assassination of Parmenio, though there were mitigating
circumstances. After the execution of Philotas for treason it was impossible for Alexander to leave
Parmenio alone in Ecbatana. Nor were Parmenio’s hands completely clean. If tables had been turned,
Parmenio would have sent one of Alexander’s friends to assassinate him. Macedonian politics were a
blood sport.
Alexander and
the Macedonians did massacre and enslave Greek and Asian civilians on several
occasions, usually after the victims had been accused of betraying the Greek cause or committing
some crime. Often the “crimes” were linked to religious sacrilege in the past. Such justifications are
not very appealing or convincing to modern readers. But unlike Genghis Khan or his generals, to cite
one example, Alexander never made it a policy to wipe out the civilian populations of the cities or
territories he conquered, as the Mongols did in the case of Nishapur (and other cities), where they
killed every sentient being, including all the dogs and cats. Nor did Alexander make huge piles of his
victims’ skulls, as Tamerlane did.
For more than a decade Alexander fought in the front ranks of the Macedonian army. He personally
charged at least three times into the serried ranks of some of the best cavalrymen on earth. At the
battle of the Granicus River he was specifically targeted by some of the very best cavalrymen in the
Persian army—and survived. At Issos he led the cavalry charge into the stream that separated the
Macedonians from the Persians. He was the first to scale the Rock of Aornos and he was the first man
up the ladder in the final assault on the stronghold of the Mallians. Alexander was not a
hypochondriac like Hitler, obsessed with his own mortality.
It is no surprise that he was wounded in battle eight times; rather, it is miraculous that he survived.
Of course, Alexander fought surrounded by a personal bodyguard of seven or eight of the bravest and
most competent soldiers in the world. Yet once the clash of weapons began, Alexander did his own
fighting. Perhaps no one has ever fought better.
Alexander never contemplated any “Final Solution” with respect to any ethnic group he
encountered. The object of Alexander’s campaigns was not to gather defenseless civilians into
concentration camps and then to starve, torture, or gas them to death. Alexander never attempted or
committed genocide against any of his enemies, whether soldiers or civilians. Nor was Alexander an
ethnic fundamentalist, let alone an ethnic cleanser. Rather, Alexander incorporated his former
enemies into his high command and into his army.
Alexander Page 34
