What if Alexander attacked Italy.

[jhn_rot]

What if Alexander overcame his illness, gatherd Indians, Greeks, Macedonians, and Persians and then attacked the Roman Republic. Would Rome stop squabling with the Italic tribes and the Gauls +Carthage and the Greek colonies to the south an united in one large army to defend Italy against alexander.

 

[Keenir]

What if Alexander overcame his illness, gatherd Indians, Greeks, Macedonians, and Persians and then attacked the Roman Republic. Would Rome stop squabling with the Italic tribes and the Gauls +Carthage and the Greek colonies to the south an united in one large army to defend Italy against alexander.

Rome & Carthage, vs. Alexander's war-weary soldiers? (they were about to revolt when he partied&died in OTL, rather than go into the deserts of Arabia)

my money is on Rome and Carthage. (and the Scythians and Afghan&Bactrian tribes mopping up the eastern reaches of whatever's left of Alexander's realm)

 

[IndigoYeti]

Rome & Carthage, vs. Alexander's war-weary soldiers? (they were about to revolt when he partied&died in OTL, rather than go into the deserts of Arabia))

Well, what if he just decides to go west and invade Italy instead of invading Persia? Pretty unlikely though, as his big dream was to invade Persia.

 

[Cockroach]

What if Alexander overcame his illness, gatherd Indians, Greeks, Macedonians, and Persians and then attacked the Roman Republic. Would Rome stop squabling with the Italic tribes and the Gauls +Carthage and the Greek colonies to the south an united in one large army to defend Italy against alexander.

In open battle on flat terrain the chances are that the Macedonain Pike Phalanx and cavalry would crush the "proto-legions".
However Italy is far from only flat terrain. In these more difficult areas the Roman/Latin and/or Eutruscan&Samnite forces could probably pull off a victory.
But is one victory enought to decide the war?

Edit to add:
Also it is best remembered that while Rome was "on the way up" it was still far from the only significant state in Italy. The Eutruscans and Samnites still had a while to go until they were eclipsed... then of cause the Hellenic cities of southern Italy are also an issue...
I would reccomend Bluestraggler's Rome vs Macedon TL as a decent study of this scenario

 

[Dan Carlin]

Well, Alexander's relative (Alexander of Epirus) WAS fighting the Romans and made the comment (according to Plutarch, I believe) that while Alexander was fighting women in the East, HE (Alexander of Epirus) was fighting Men in the West. (and lost, by the way...).

For what it's worth, Pyrrhus, using an Alexandrian-style army (with MUCH less cavalry, in numbers and quality and fewer troops overall than Alex was employing in the East) a generation after Alex the Great did pretty well against Romans who were probably better than they had been a generation before. And, yes, the Samnites were quite a thorn in the side of the Romans in Alex's time and would have probably supported him as they did Pyrrhus later (they were defeating the Romans all by themselves in this era at battles like the Caudine Forks...)

I think the REAL difference would have been tactical leadership and command. Roman commanders during that era were mediocre and their scouting was abysmal. Obviously, Alexander was great in both regards. Also, the Romans were not professionals at this point, and the Macedonians were long-serving veterans.
I do not think it would be a huge contest.

 

[Tyr]

Alexander going west scenarios generally make little sense.
His going east was just the climax of the great big Persian-Greek war.
For him to go east would be like Britain deciding to attack Argentina instead of Germany in 1944.
You'd need to change quite a lot first to get this.

 

[bluestraggler]

The analysis by Livy is the ancestor of all alternate histories (although he is not exactly unbiased):
9.17: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbi...deng/parsed&tag=public&part=138&division=div2
9.18: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbi...deng/parsed&tag=public&part=139&division=div2
9.19: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbi...deng/parsed&tag=public&part=140&division=div2

 

[Trotsky]

Alexander originally embarked on his venture to the east as part of the League of Corinth's (of which he was head, as his father Philip II was before him) campaign of revenge against Persia. The further east he went, the more his megalomania took over, and he turned the campaign into a war of world conquest.

Had he lived and went on to make future conquests, he would have used a new army, made up of Asians trained in Hellenistic warfare, and Greek-Macedonians that wanted to stay on the adventure. I could see him landing in Italy and crushing the Romans in a stand-up fight.

 

[Dan Carlin]

Guys,

As Bluestraggler points out, the idea of Alexander going West after a rest and refit (after India) comes to us from the ancient sources. It wasn't just Livy.

The question has fascinated people since the man died. It is not far fetched at all.

In fact, once of the more hard pressed adversaries of the Romans on the Italian mainland were the Greek coastal colonies (Tarentum, for example). They often plead for help from their cousins in Greece, Epirus and Macedonia.

There's your Casus belli right there. Heck, it was good enough for Pyrrhus...


I doubt Alexander could have resisted the temptation...and I doubt Rome would have given him a humble submission...which he would have demanded. Sounds more like an inevitable collision-course rather than far fetched.

 

[Mike Stearns]

I doubt Alexander could have resisted the temptation...and I doubt Rome would have given him a humble submission...which he would have demanded. Sounds more like an inevitable collision-course rather than far fetched.

He didn't resist the temptation. Plans were found in his personal papers after he died to attack both the Carthaginians and the Romans. And no Rome would not have gone down with out a fight. The thing that you have to keep in mind with Romans is that they could lose entire armies and still field full strength legions the following spring.

 

[bluestraggler]

As is obvious from my own ALT, I’m convinced that (1) a war between Roma and Macedonia was inevitable, and (2) in the long run Rome would have prevailed.
There is a mystique attached to Megas Alexandros that makes him appear invincible. He was certainly one of the few commanders in history who never lost an engagement - although there was more than one "near run thing" in his career. He was probably enough of a megalomaniac to believe he could go on winning forever.
A campaign in Italy would have been completely different from anything he had encountered in the east. More importantly, he would have been up against an enemy that was uniquely tenacious and uncompromising. Pyrrhus was a brilliant tactician but he never understood why the Romans refused to negotiate in the "civilized" manner. Their reply to his embassies was always the same: "First leave Italy."
Short of capturing Rome and razing it to the ground, Alexander would have found himself in a situation not unlike that which caught Hannibal 100 years later.
I think the key element would have been the Latin allies. In 218, they were firmly attached to Rome and had no interest in exchanging a Roman mistress for a Carthaginian master. A century earlier, when Alexander was on the rampage, they were still restless and less than a generation past their big revolt. Also, the Macedonians would have seemed less alien than the Carthaginians.