Thande
Donor
On average no but many individuals did.
For example, Alexander's contemporaries Plato and Socrates lived to 80 and 71 respectively.
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For example, Alexander's contemporaries Plato and Socrates lived to 80 and 71 respectively.
Yes, but were Plato and Sokrates hard drinking generals who went to alien lands? There is a difference here between Greek philosophers and Macedonian generals.
MrP
Banned
Well, Socrates certainly did drink, and while younger was a soldier. He almost got killed. There's a WI based on the philosophical and societal implications of that in some book. *looks around vaguely* Just cooking dinner atm. Check in a mo.
EDIT: It's the very first story in More What If?: Victor Davis Hanson's Socrates dies at Delium, 424 BC.
Aeschylus also lived to a ripe old age - after participating at the Battle of Marathon - only to die in a quite peculiar way.
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Yes, I have that particular book and those are all valid points. Which then leads me to a slight variation of my arugement: but did any of them battle drunkeness, constant warfare and disease to the degree Alexander exposed himself to? It seems Sokrates, Plato, etc did not. Fighting in a battle here and there in the Persian Wars is quite different from a full on ego-filled campaign with only the one idea of going on and that killed Alexander.
MrP
Banned
I'm not comparing the two directly - but I will note that although self-abuse (alcoholism) and high stress lifestyles (constant warfare and military planning) do render one statistically more likely to die young, we don't actually know enough about Alexander to say for sure. Some people positively thrive on battle even to the point of collapse. I'm reading some of Rommel's recollections of WWI atm, and he's forever going on and on at full pelt until mental strain obliges him to go home.
So I do largely agree with you that Alexander's various problems are certainly arguments against him surviving to seventy at the head of a large empire. BUT. I don't think we have sufficient information on the man of OTL to say for certain. So I'm inclined to let it slide for the sake of the TL as a whole.
I'm not comparing the two directly - but I will note that although self-abuse (alcoholism) and high stress lifestyles (constant warfare and military planning) do render one statistically more likely to die young, we don't actually know enough about Alexander to say for sure. Some people positively thrive on battle even to the point of collapse. I'm reading some of Rommel's recollections of WWI atm, and he's forever going on and on at full pelt until mental strain obliges him to go home.
So I do largely agree with you that Alexander's various problems are certainly arguments against him surviving to seventy at the head of a large empire. BUT. I don't think we have sufficient information on the man of OTL to say for certain. So I'm inclined to let it slide for the sake of the TL as a whole.
Unless someone ISOTs him a modern medical doctor, I think he should only live another 10 years, it would make for a more realistic tl, no?
MrP
Banned
I'm not saying that had he survived whatever killed him in OTL he would have lived to seventy.
I'm saying that we would need more precise medical information than we have on him to know for sure that he wouldn't have lived till seventy. There are any number of weird elderly British types who turn up in the newspapers attributing their ninety-eight year and counting lifespans to having drunk half a bottle of whisky and smoked forty cigarettes each day since they were six. Statistically, their cases are pretty improbable, but individuals have this irritating habit of ignoring the mean, median and other statistical averages and popping up all over the place.If we had detailed modern info on Alexander that said he had, for example, a susceptability to coronary heart disease that would have killed him inside ten years of his OTL death anyway, I would be more likely to agree with you. But then again, even today the number of people who go on to outlast expert medical predictions is still astounding! But we don't even have that info on him. So for all intents and purposes he's pretty much a quasi-fictional character. Hell, Thermo could even have Alexander suffer a stroke and undergo a complete personality change. This is ATL, after all.
I'm not saying that had he survived whatever killed him in OTL he would have lived to seventy.
If we had detailed modern info on Alexander that said he had, for example, a susceptability to coronary heart disease that would have killed him inside ten years of his OTL death anyway, I would be more likely to agree with you. But then again, even today the number of people who go on to outlast expert medical predictions is still astounding! But we don't even have that info on him. So for all intents and purposes he's pretty much a quasi-fictional character. Hell, Thermo could even have Alexander suffer a stroke and undergo a complete personality change. This is ATL, after all.
Yes it is AH/ATL, but IMHO I can't see Alexander living much longer than another 10-15 years based off the lifestyle he lived in the time he lived. As you said, personal medical histories can be wildly different than the norm.
It is also nessacary to seperate Life expectance at birth from Life expectance at older ages.
IIRC the Average life expectance of a Thirty Year old Man has only risen about 5 years in the last 200 years, From~ 68 to ~73 and most of that in the last fifty.
As such it is likely that this idea,- that if you live to be 30, You can expect to finish out your three score and ten-, is valid for the last couple thousand years.**
**Or at least for the Upper class, the Human Animals in the Fields, may have a Different take
IIRC the Average life expectance of a Thirty Year old Man has only risen about 5 years in the last 200 years, From~ 68 to ~73 and most of that in the last fifty.
As such it is likely that this idea,- that if you live to be 30, You can expect to finish out your three score and ten-, is valid for the last couple thousand years.**
**Or at least for the Upper class, the Human Animals in the Fields, may have a Different take
Most people back in the 4th Century BCE didn't live past 40, outside of the people that Thande and MrP have mentioned. The reason we can live so long these days is because of the advances in sanitation, medicines and so forth that are no longer within the reach of just the upper classes. Alexander himself is a special case, we know his lifestyle in the 300s wasn't sanitary, his lifestyle choices unpleasant and his wounds deadly.
To address the age issue:
Alexander was incredibly, almost inhumanly, lucky. Way I see it there is no reason for that luck not to continue. And besides, I may not have him live to 70. I may only keep him alive into his late 50s/early 60s.
@Constantinople
Expect it! I personally can't wait for the linguistic ramifications of this particular TL...
Alexander was incredibly, almost inhumanly, lucky. Way I see it there is no reason for that luck not to continue. And besides, I may not have him live to 70. I may only keep him alive into his late 50s/early 60s.
@Constantinople
Expect it! I personally can't wait for the linguistic ramifications of this particular TL...
Oh dear, I can see it now...
Greco-Tibetan Madagascar? Ainu Australia?! Vietnamese-speaking Falklands!?!
Then why not try... Thermo's next timeline!
The last two would actually be pretty easy.
Not in the same timeline, though.
Well, let's see... with a major Greek presence in Yemen, they could go on to Madagascar... as to bring the Tibetans in there... hm, well, they could remain an Empire and manage to conquer areas past the Himalayas, and then with a coastline somewhere form some colonies in Madagascar... And the Ainu Australia could tie into that Ainu Japan thread... and Vietnamese-speaking Falklands from a Vietnamese colonization of South America?
But I'm going off topic... when will we see some of this TL?
But I'm going off topic... when will we see some of this TL?
I was thinking Japan and China become colonial powers before Europe. Japan transports its troublesome Ainu population to penal colonies in Australia. Meanwhile, China is able to hold on to Vietnam. They're treated harshly and begin migrating to the Patagonian colony, mainly the Falklands.
If you want him to live longer, here are the Saunders Three Easy Steps for a longer lasting Alexander:
1. Stop the massive Macedonian drinking
2. Stop taking grevious wounds on the battlefield
3. Stop before the diseases riddle your amry
3 1/2: Make sure no one can poision you after you fail the first three steps
Well, all pretty easy. Alexander is one of those types who was susceptible to having "religous experiences". Suppose he has a "religous experience" that basically tells him that his constant drinking and battlefield presence is irresponsible as the son of Zeus or Amun or whatever.
@Thande
Gah! Now you've done it!
BTW, when will you start your debut timeline you PM'd me about?@Imajin
Expect it to begin.... Mmmmaybe in September. At this point it's just the casual brainstorm, and I've begun writing out the first few years. But if not in September expect it in October.
In the meantime, I will constantly return to this thread for fresh ideas and ask for reader opinion.