WI: Alexander Lives To Be 60

m2thet5678

Banned
I bet we get this a lot, but just for fun...

In this timeline Alexander doesn't wreck his liver (that much) with alcohol abuse, and he is a bit luckier with his genetics, living to a ripe old age.

I know what Toynbee would say: that he would become a benevolent constitutional monarch that ruled lands stretching from Italy to China.

But the accounts I've read (in the book What If) describe an Alexander that would have engaged in endless cycles of ravaging lands to fund further expeditions to...ravage more lands. He wouldn't have been that concerned with administrative issues, only with militarism.

Where would he have reached? Arabia? South India? Would he have changed his goals and decided to work on preserving his empire rather than humiliating rivals?

According to Wikipedia, Alexander had plans for an invasion of Arabia before he died. It's safe to say that he would have gone by sea and conquered the coastal tribes rather than march across the desert and risk further rebellion by his troops. So that's what he does, an expedition that is concluded 4 years later in 319 BC.

I assume that next, Alexander would focus on training more Hellenized Persians in the way of the phalanx, which he had been doing OTL. So he does, and gets bored and takes them to India, conquering the Nanda Empire (precursor to the Mauryans). At this point he learns that the wisdom that he had taken for granted (India was basically the end of the world) was a lie, and that China and Malaysia existed, though they were too far for him to bother with.

So that's the empire he ends up with at the time of his death in 296 BC. Arabia and India, and it's far more unified than what he had in OTL since he gives up the mad dreams of conquest eventually. He has also trained a successor, his son Alexander IV (assassinated in OTL), for control of the Empire.

Will Alex IV become merely a puppet of Seleucus, Antigonus the One-Eyed, Kassander, and Ptolemy?
 
My knowledge of the era isn't extensive but I feel that even if he had lived longer, Alexander's Empire is still going to die with him. The reasons being that from what I've gathered, he was more a military commander and he would not take the long term logistical and organizational measures needed to keep his empire together possibly during or after his death. Plus somehow I feel that his son would be unable to live up to the same force of personality and drive that Alexander possessed and would be unable to control his generals.
 
Ah...another Alex thread...did people never get bored when talking about the so-called Alexander the Great...? :D
But, well...yeah, many sources said that his next target was Arabia, but I doubt he would be able to conquer the entire India...
I remember reading something that said that after Arabia, Alex's next destinations are Italy and North Africa (by using the pretext for 'protecting' the Greeks at Sicily and Magna Graecia, of course)...
About Alex's son...why he would becoming puppet of his own generals in the first place...? He would had been taught by his father about how to run an empire...
 
Had he lived longer, he would have consolidate the empire and probably conquer southern Italy and Carthage and her colonies. He also, as mentioned before, had an eye on Arabia. His empire would have been much more consolidated, however I have no idea how long it could keep being unified without Alexander's presence.
 
My knowledge of the era isn't extensive but I feel that even if he had lived longer, Alexander's Empire is still going to die with him. The reasons being that from what I've gathered, he was more a military commander and he would not take the long term logistical and organizational measures needed to keep his empire together possibly during or after his death. Plus somehow I feel that his son would be unable to live up to the same force of personality and drive that Alexander possessed and would be unable to control his generals.

Yeah. Keeping control of an empire that massive with the technology of the day? Pretty difficult. If Persia revolts, how long will it take for the Emperor in Greece to hear about it, round up a force to put down the revolt, and complete the necessary journey and campaigning? If he expands his empire further, that'll complicate things even more. All it takes is one weak ruler, and the whole thing falls apart.
 
By tradition, Macedonian succession seems to be a bloody, chaotic affair. Add that to Alexander's lack of concern for medium-term stability and we could see an even larger-scale Diadochi, though perhaps shorter in duration.


How many children does he have, and by how many different women? Has he named the oldest to be successor, or used another method to pick?
 

m2thet5678

Banned
OTL he only had Alexander IV as his kid by Roxana, but the kid was only born after his death. Barsine gave him no kids (though Roxana murdered her OTL).

Maybe he would have continued taking wives and fathering kids, though I doubt he would have made any his heir besides Alex IV.

So basically the consensus I'm getting is that the OTL state of affairs reasserts itself: Alex's Empire splits into the Diadochi States, and Rome beats them up and conquers their lands as in OTL. But if Alex went west after Arabia rather than back East again to India, it might be different.
 
By tradition, Macedonian succession seems to be a bloody, chaotic affair. Add that to Alexander's lack of concern for medium-term stability and we could see an even larger-scale Diadochi, though perhaps shorter in duration.


How many children does he have, and by how many different women? Has he named the oldest to be successor, or used another method to pick?


Tradition has it that he named no successor, just leaving his throne "to the most worthy". Of course, he could barely speak by then, and his hearers were not exactly disinterested parties. We'll never know what he really said.

He had at least two wives at the time of his death, and by some reports three. Roxana was one, and the other a daughter of the late King Darius. The third (if indeed he married her) was a daughter of Dariu's predecessor Artaxerxes.

The first two were both pregnant at the time of his death. Roxana lost no time in poisoning her rival before the latter got the news. Soon after, she gave birth to a son, Alexander IV, who lived to about 13 before they were both murdered by one of the Diadochi, Cassander.

From what I can gather, Roxana sounds like a classic case of the man marrying his mother. She and Queen Olympias would have understood each other perfectly.
 
Tradition has it that he named no successor, just leaving his throne "to the most worthy". Of course, he could barely speak by then, and his hearers were not exactly disinterested parties. We'll never know what he really said.

The story I recall is that according to the generals present, on his deathbed Alexander was asked who he wanted his empire to go to, and he replied HOTI TO KRATISTOS (to the best/strongest), which the generals present interpreted to mean that they should fight it out.

However, Craterus, who was arguably Alexander's chief lieutenant, was away on a mission at the time (as was typical, he seems to have been the only senior general that Alexander trusted to carry out sensitive yet critical tasks that required independent action) and it's quite possible that Alexander actually said HOTI TO KRATEROS (to Craterus) with the other generals deliberately "mishearing".
 
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