WI: Alexander the Great decides to conquer Italy instead of India

No, he reports that it is because of the difficulty of the enemies (the Nanda) lying ahead:

"It was reported that the country beyond the river Hyphasis was fertile, and that the men were good agriculturists, and gallant in war; and that they conducted their own political affairs in a regular and constitutional manner. For the multitude was ruled by the aristocracy, who governed in no respect contrary to the rules of moderation. It was also stated that the men of that district possessed a much greater number of elephants than the other Indians, and that those men were of very great stature, and excelled in valour. These reports excited in Alexander an ardent desire to advance farther; but the spirit of the Macedonians now began to flag, when they saw the king raising one labour after another, and incurring one danger after another."

And should be pointed out that Arrian's statement comes after the hard fought battles of Hydaspes against Porus - who in actuality took advantage of Alexander - and against the well-fortified city of Sangala.



Why didn't the Persians do the same thing then in the centuries in which they ruled the same area as Alexander?



Point to me any wound facing the Thracians comparable to the arrow wound he got in the siege of Multan. The only time outside of India where Alexander was in danger of dying was from his head wound in Gaza. And he died not long after he returned from his Indian campaign.
“First, among the Illyrians my head was wounded by a stone and my neck by a cudgel. Then at Granicus my head was cut open by an enemy’s dagger, at Issus my thigh was pierced by the sword. Next, at Gaza my ankle was wounded by an arrow, my shoulder was dislocated, and I whirled heavily round and round. Then at Macaranda the bone of my leg was split open by an arrow. . . . Among the Aspasians my shoulder was wounded by an arrow, and among the Gandridae my leg. Among the Mallians the shaft of an arrow sank deep into my breast and buried its steel; and I was struck in the neck by a cudgel.” in Plutarch. The severity of the wounds Alexander received in personal combat are as likely as anything the result of pure chance; the strength of an enemy state comes primarily from their numbers, but only so many can assail the king at any one time, so you quickly hit a point of diminishing returns in terms of personal danger to the enemy commander. One arrow is very much as good as another.

Regarding the Persians, I'll point out that they must have used their Alexander grade conquerors -mostly Cyrus, who was killed fighting the Massagetae (does that make them stronger than the Indians, who never managed to actually kill Alexander?)- getting to the Aegean, and that even their best troops were probably not quite up to the standards of the Macedonians; Alexander would be young and in his prime if he were to make such an undertaking, with one of the best armies of the ancient world at his back. The Persians were by no means the wimps the outdated historiography likes to paint them as, but the Macedonians were obviously doing something right to beat them in all the major land battles in Asia.

While you can say a conquest of the Nanda is implausible, I think you have to take that with a hefty pinch of salt, considering the sheer, mind boggling implausibility of Alexander even having gotten to India in the first place. Let's face it, he conquered the greatest empire the world had ever seen in about the time it took for him to walk from one end of it to the other. This is a guy to whom our usual bounds of plausibility are more polite suggestions than anything else. Starting fresh from a base in Iran/India, he probably has as good a chance of beating the Nanda in a couple big battles as he did the Persians, with the subject defections following after to further tip the scales in his favor.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
Indeed-Alexander really stretched the idea of what was actually plausible or possible.

The reports of the Nanda were enough to make his men put their feet down and say no more-this was after a decade of endless marching and fighting across thousands of miles.

If Alexander returned 5-15 years. He would come wth a fresh force in the hundreds of thousands-he'd have naval support and big supply train and he'd have tens of thousands of veteran troops as well as many more men trained in the Macedonian style from throughout the empire.

Conquering the Nanda Empire under those conditions I think would be quite possible.
 
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Maoistic

Banned
“First, among the Illyrians my head was wounded by a stone and my neck by a cudgel. Then at Granicus my head was cut open by an enemy’s dagger, at Issus my thigh was pierced by the sword. Next, at Gaza my ankle was wounded by an arrow, my shoulder was dislocated, and I whirled heavily round and round. Then at Macaranda the bone of my leg was split open by an arrow. . . . Among the Aspasians my shoulder was wounded by an arrow, and among the Gandridae my leg. Among the Mallians the shaft of an arrow sank deep into my breast and buried its steel; and I was struck in the neck by a cudgel.” in Plutarch. The severity of the wounds Alexander received in personal combat are as likely as anything the result of pure chance; the strength of an enemy state comes primarily from their numbers, but only so many can assail the king at any one time, so you quickly hit a point of diminishing returns in terms of personal danger to the enemy commander. One arrow is very much as good as another.

None of these injuries with the exception of that of the Mallians was considered to be serious by any of the Alexander historians. Again, he didn't almost die against the Thracians, and the only other time he was really seriously wounded was in Gaza by an injury to the head that historian Richard Gabriel speculates could have left severe health and mental issues later on which explains Alexander's fits of rage.

Regarding the Persians, I'll point out that they must have used their Alexander grade conquerors -mostly Cyrus, who was killed fighting the Massagetae (does that make them stronger than the Indians, who never managed to actually kill Alexander?)- getting to the Aegean, and that even their best troops were probably not quite up to the standards of the Macedonians; Alexander would be young and in his prime if he were to make such an undertaking, with one of the best armies of the ancient world at his back. The Persians were by no means the wimps the outdated historiography likes to paint them as, but the Macedonians were obviously doing something right to beat them in all the major land battles in Asia.

Why would you assume that they used their best troops to get to the Aegean instead of India? And you claimed that Alexander could conquer India using Asian soldiers, not Macedonian ones which you said Alexander can just send back. If these troops couldn't push further into India under the Achaemenids, why would they do it under Alexander?



While you can say a conquest of the Nanda is implausible, I think you have to take that with a hefty pinch of salt, considering the sheer, mind boggling implausibility of Alexander even having gotten to India in the first place. Let's face it, he conquered the greatest empire the world had ever seen in about the time it took for him to walk from one end of it to the other. This is a guy to whom our usual bounds of plausibility are more polite suggestions than anything else. Starting fresh from a base in Iran/India, he probably has as good a chance of beating the Nanda in a couple big battles as he did the Persians, with the subject defections following after to further tip the scales in his favor.

Not really. Alexander's feats are impressive but not that "mind boggling" when he invaded Persia by having a unified Greece amidst Persian decay in power. The Nanda, with their large number of well-trained elephants and impenetrable armour (see the account of Arrian regarding Porus' armour which impressed the Greeks), weren't in the same position and the logistics to invade them doesn't help Alexander one bit either. Add to this the fact that India seems to have had the best steel in the world at that time (wootz steel) and Alexander is going to have problems actually contending with more than just small kingdoms - that he had a lot of trouble conquering anyway and which forced him to turn back - in the outskirts of India.
 

Maoistic

Banned
Indeed-Alexander really stretched the idea of what was actually plausible or possible.

The reports of the Nanda were enough to make his men but their feet down and say no more-this was after a decade of endless marching and fighting across thousands of miles.

If Alexander returned 5-15 years. He would come wth a fresh force in the hundreds of thousands-he'd have naval support and big supply train and he'd have tens of thousands of veteran troops as well as many more men trained in the Macedonian style from throughout the empire.

Conquering the Nanda Empire under those conditions I think would be quite possible.
You talk as if the Nanda and Indians in general would be ecstatic without developing.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
You talk as if the Nanda and Indians in general would be ecstatic without developing.
I'm speaking of a hypothetical second Indian campaign within Alexander's lifetime.

Assuming he survives his fever in 323 BC and conquers Arabia and Carthage by I dunno 313 BC and then spends another five years administering his empire and sending his generals to secure peripheral areas-the Adriatic coast, parts of Italy, Carthaginian colonies in Iberia, etc...

308 BC is when he in my scenario returns to India. This is a period of 15 years-not a century or fifty years.

The Nanda and the other Indian states may or may not be prepared for him the second time but 15 years is hardly enough time to develop new technologies and tactics. Alexander wouldn't have developed that much either-at least not technologically speaking.
 
Robin Lane Fox discusses the matter of India in his book on Alexander, Alexander the Great (1973):


If an Indian imitator could do it, so could his master ten years before: Dhana Nanda's kingdom could have been set against itself and Alexander might yet have walked among Palimbothra's peacocks, improved its fencing and enjoyed the fish-ponds on which the Indian princes had always learnt to sail. But not far from its gates the Ganges spreads into an estuary and glides beneath palm-trees through the banks of the silt-brown fields; it asks to be followed, and Alexander need only have done so for another six hundred miles, until he saw the sea-shore opening before him and would have concluded, wrongly but poignantly, that at last he was near the edge of the worled. The Eastern ocean was three months away, and the soldiers had refused it. The conqueror's dream of the past few years was gone, when he knew that it could have come true.
-- Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great
 
None of these injuries with the exception of that of the Mallians was considered to be serious by any of the Alexander historians. Again, he didn't almost die against the Thracians, and the only other time he was really seriously wounded was in Gaza by an injury to the head that historian Richard Gabriel speculates could have left severe health and mental issues later on which explains Alexander's fits of rage.
You're just being obtuse on this point. Head and neck wounds like Alexander suffered against the Illyrians always have the potential to be fatal; the fact that they weren't in this case comes down to accidents of aim by individual warriors, not the structural strength of the kingdoms they're fighting for. Yes, the Nanda are stronger than the Illyrians, but no, that doesn't make them more likely to kill him in any particular battle.



Why would you assume that they used their best troops to get to the Aegean instead of India? And you claimed that Alexander could conquer India using Asian soldiers, not Macedonian ones which you said Alexander can just send back. If these troops couldn't push further into India under the Achaemenids, why would they do it under Alexander?
I claimed they used their world-conquering kings getting to the Aegean, not soldiers. Commander is usually the most important part of an army after all, and no Great King after Cyrus seemed to quite match his abilities or the sheer scale of his ambitions. Moreover, I was assessing the Successor armies Alexander was training as being of equal or greater strength to his Greek force or the Persian armies of the Achaemenids, as it had a larger number of men fighting in Macedonian fashion than his Greek army, and unlike the earlier Persian campaigns in India, would be led by a king of world-conquering stature.


Not really. Alexander's feats are impressive but not that "mind boggling" when he invaded Persia by having a unified Greece amidst Persian decay in power. The Nanda, with their large number of well-trained elephants and impenetrable armour (see the account of Arrian regarding Porus' armour which impressed the Greeks), weren't in the same position and the logistics to invade them doesn't help Alexander one bit either. Add to this the fact that India seems to have had the best steel in the world at that time (wootz steel) and Alexander is going to have problems actually contending with more than just small kingdoms - that he had a lot of trouble conquering anyway and which forced him to turn back - in the outskirts of India.
It's easy to overstate the weakness of the Persians during Alexander's invasion, considering they repeatedly raised huge armies to meet him on the battlefield. If the Persians had rebellious subject peoples, so did the Macedonians, and the Persians attempted to use this to their advantage, instigating Sparta to revolt, and that was after the general Memnon was already in rebellion in Thrace. Alexander had to crush Thebes and Athens before he could even set out across the Hellespont, so we should be careful about assigning too much structural integrity to Alexander's league just to set up a foil with the Persians. Indeed, I find it difficult to believe Alexander's could have survived the strains that the Persians did; if he had fled at Granicus and seen his army scattered, would he have been able to raise another, and then yet another army to try again? The issue seems extremely doubtful to me.

Alexander returning for a second Indian campaign with a fresher, larger army is going to be a very different beast than his first Indian campaign. You seem to be consistently ignoring that the men who mutinied in India had been fighting for a full decade at that point, and that their reluctance stemmed at least as much from sheer exhaustion from continuous campaigning than logical assessment of the strength of Alexander's empire against that of the Nanda. Moreover, they were dissatisfied with Alexander's adoption of Persian dress and court customs. These problems would no longer apply in a second Indian campaign. Yes, the war elephants are still formidable, but let's not forget all the times they've been a double-edged sword; no weapon is invincible, after all, and Alexander's first encounter with war elephants didn't go nearly as badly as it could have. He would only grow more adept at countering war elephants in the future, so resting all one's hopes on them could very well lead to disappointment.
 
Ok, some corrections so we all understand some terminology- The Persian Empire already ruled parts of India, so to say "Alexander stops with conquering Persia but doesn't invade India" means- he leaves some of the Persian Empire out. He continued to Central Asia and India precisely because he wanted to conquer the entire Persian Empire; and once in India he wanted to conquer MORE of India. Just because we have today a nation-state that uses the name India, doesn't mean that it is the past's India. Pakistan (except Baluchistan) IS PART OF INDIA. Always has been. So, if you want him to go west "instead of India" you need to say WHEN and WHERE he turns west. Because then we leave lots of satrapies in the East with a claim to be the legitimate Persian Empire rulers. 2nd- Chandragupta was the result of Alexander's conquests, it is doubtful if Alexander never entered the present-day Afghanistan or Pakistan that Chandragupta would have been able to rise to conquer India. 3rd- IF Alexander's death was natural causes it was probably from entering India (West Nile, Malaria, typhoid); if he goes West instead he might live (slightly) longer as the Mediterranean has a climate and diseases that would Alexander's immune system would be more familiar with handling than India's.
 
Do you agree with his conclusion?
No, Livy made some pretty ridiculous claims in those chapters (for example, he suggested that every single one of the Roman generals was equivalent in ability to Alexander, and that Alexander could not recruit Persian troops because they would be too "effeminate") and Livy's central point there boils down mostly to Roman exceptionalism.

If Alexander had survived long enough to invade Italy in the 300s BC, he would have had a relatively high chance of conquering Rome. In that era, Samnites might actually give him a tougher time than the Roman Republic would.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
We don't know how Alexander died-just that he had a fever that left him bedridden and unable to speak for days. Until he gave his last words.

Alexander had plans we he returned to Babylon-integrating the Greeks and Persians, building a massive road, building temples and cities, etc...

He had plans to conquer Carthage and Arabia.

Say he spends the next 15 years after his return to Babylon carrying out these plans-ten years on campaign and five years consolidating his empire.

He then returns to India with a well rested force-made up of his veterans from previous wars, new troops trained in the Macedonian style, cavalry, elephants, skirmishers and other units from throughout his empire.

He probably also has naval support-with his best general's. He'd also likely do some scouting and diplomacy before any second Indian invasion.

So when Alexander returns to India he will be with a far larger army, a more well rested and prepared one, and he won't stop until he has conquered India or large parts of it.

Regarding Italy-he'd probably ally with Rome against the Samnites. And Alexander had faced hill people's before-in Bactria, Mesopotamia and elsewhere. So I don't think the samnites would be that much of an issue for him.
 

Maoistic

Banned
You're just being obtuse on this point. Head and neck wounds like Alexander suffered against the Illyrians always have the potential to be fatal; the fact that they weren't in this case comes down to accidents of aim by individual warriors, not the structural strength of the kingdoms they're fighting for. Yes, the Nanda are stronger than the Illyrians, but no, that doesn't make them more likely to kill him in any particular battle.

Except, again, none of those injuries came even close to the arrow wound that nearly killed him (his soldiers even thought him dead) at the siege of Multan. None of the Alexander historians focus on any of the injuries he got in his initial Illyrian campaign prior to to his invasion of Persia and none report that any of them were as serious as that. So yes, Alexander is far more likely to die in India than he is in any part of Europe.

I claimed they used their world-conquering kings getting to the Aegean, not soldiers. Commander is usually the most important part of an army after all, and no Great King after Cyrus seemed to quite match his abilities or the sheer scale of his ambitions. Moreover, I was assessing the Successor armies Alexander was training as being of equal or greater strength to his Greek force or the Persian armies of the Achaemenids, as it had a larger number of men fighting in Macedonian fashion than his Greek army, and unlike the earlier Persian campaigns in India, would be led by a king of world-conquering stature.

Okay, but that still would mean that the Macedonian-trained Asians using Alexander's tactics and formations are somehow going to suddenly perform better against the strongest power in South Asia at the time than they did against Porus and the smaller kingdoms and satrapies in the outskirts of India, the same kingdoms that had Alexander's army scared to death of going further because of how hardfought the battles with them were and the same that nearly killed Alexander, something no European army he faced ever did. Now, combine that with the massive distances they have to cross and the punishing desert and tropical climate to which his forces aren't costumed to, and they will either mutiny again or get slaughtered by a bigger and more organised army.

It's easy to overstate the weakness of the Persians during Alexander's invasion, considering they repeatedly raised huge armies to meet him on the battlefield. If the Persians had rebellious subject peoples, so did the Macedonians, and the Persians attempted to use this to their advantage, instigating Sparta to revolt, and that was after the general Memnon was already in rebellion in Thrace. Alexander had to crush Thebes and Athens before he could even set out across the Hellespont, so we should be careful about assigning too much structural integrity to Alexander's league just to set up a foil with the Persians. Indeed, I find it difficult to believe Alexander's could have survived the strains that the Persians did; if he had fled at Granicus and seen his army scattered, would he have been able to raise another, and then yet another army to try again? The issue seems extremely doubtful to me.

Except Alexander initially didn't have nearly as much revolts in his European and Asia Minor territories as the Persians, mainly because his father had already brutally quelled them when he formed the Hellenic League. Meanwhile, the Persian Empire was suffering from revolts in Egypt (heck, he only had to conquer Gaza and didn't even have to fight inside Egypt proper where he was even received as a liberator), Babylon and India, not to mention its very weakened grip over Asia Minor thanks to the prior Greco-Persian wars. Combine that with the logistical nightmare it was for the Persians to quell their revolts in their overextended empire in comparison to Alexander's decently big and with equal population density but more geographically and culturally cohesive Hellenic League, and it's easy to see to why Alexander conquered them, and why Alexander's empire fell and was partitioned almost immediately after his death as he inherited the exact same problems the Persians were facing. It's impressive, yes, but not "mind boggling".


Alexander returning for a second Indian campaign with a fresher, larger army is going to be a very different beast than his first Indian campaign. You seem to be consistently ignoring that the men who mutinied in India had been fighting for a full decade at that point, and that their reluctance stemmed at least as much from sheer exhaustion from continuous campaigning than logical assessment of the strength of Alexander's empire against that of the Nanda. Moreover, they were dissatisfied with Alexander's adoption of Persian dress and court customs. These problems would no longer apply in a second Indian campaign. Yes, the war elephants are still formidable, but let's not forget all the times they've been a double-edged sword; no weapon is invincible, after all, and Alexander's first encounter with war elephants didn't go nearly as badly as it could have. He would only grow more adept at countering war elephants in the future, so resting all one's hopes on them could very well lead to disappointment.


Not really. For starters, he would have to reface an even stronger Porus, who only had nominal submission to Alexander and to whom Alexander ceded a lot of satrapal territory. By the time Alexander returns, he would face the fortified cities and more organised armies of a rebelling Porus who would take advantage of Alexander's absence, while again suffering from the punishing long marches in mountainous regions and desert and tropical climate that was decimating his original troops. His Asian troops may be better costumed to such a region and climate, but the long marches would still be extremely hard for them, having to recapture the same fortified cities they had extrem trouble with and then trying to conquer a Nanda Empire that was even more powerful than that. It's simply not happening.

Say he spends the next 15 years after his return to Babylon carrying out these plans-ten years on campaign and five years consolidating his empire.

He then returns to India with a well rested force-made up of his veterans from previous wars, new troops trained in the Macedonian style, cavalry, elephants, skirmishers and other units from throughout his empire.

He probably also has naval support-with his best general's. He'd also likely do some scouting and diplomacy before any second Indian invasion.

So when Alexander returns to India he will be with a far larger army, a more well rested and prepared one, and he won't stop until he has conquered India or large parts of it.

If he returns in 15 years, he will be facing a rebelling Porus with even more fortified cities than last time or a unified India under the Nanda who would have taken the Greek-fortified cities of Porus's satrapy and thus would have extensively fortified their frontiers against any potential Greek invasion. Combine that with the punishing geography and climate and Alexander's "well-rested" and "prepared" army is getting slaughtered.
 
The easiest way to have Alexander in Italy would probably be for Darius and Bessus not to flee east, and therefore Alexander doesn't pursue and end up in India.

Maybe he tours around his new empire for a bit, ties up some loose ends. OTL the army's victory celebrations sort of had to be delayed until they returned from India to Susa, but if the Persian noble army surrenders or is overtaken on the march before they can flee to Bactria, the festivities could occur immediately. So after a massive party and a truly massive hangover, Alex might decide to leave the east for later and see what's going on back west.
 
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My honest opinion is that if Alexander moves west, Alexander will face opposition from the League of Corinth who would likely have to contribute manpower to subjugate their own kinsmen. Could even result in an earlier Lamian War, only against Alexander instead of Antipater. Athens led the OTL Greek uprising against Macedon; there's also Sparta to contend with who has been forced into the League but not been conquered by Macedon itself. Not to say that Alexander would lose against an Athenian-Spartan alliance, it would make a possible campaign in Italy much harder than what it may look like in theory. Alexander still wins but it's a rather bloody affair and likely makes him look more like the Eastern despot.
 
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I remember reading a novel with this premise years ago, but for the life of me, I can't remember the title. I dimly remember that it ended up with the Roman Republic becoming partners of some sort with the Macedonians.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
I don't think Athens or the other Greek city states would revolt if Alexander lives.

They were pretty reluctant to do so until it was confirmed that he was dead.

If he is alive and heading west none of the Greek city states would dare defy him.
 

Toraach

Banned
Why would you assume that they used their best troops to get to the Aegean instead of India? And you claimed that Alexander could conquer India using Asian soldiers, not Macedonian ones which you said Alexander can just send back. If these troops couldn't push further into India under the Achaemenids, why would they do it under Alexander?





Not really. Alexander's feats are impressive but not that "mind boggling" when he invaded Persia by having a unified Greece amidst Persian decay in power. The Nanda, with their large number of well-trained elephants and impenetrable armour (see the account of Arrian regarding Porus' armour which impressed the Greeks), weren't in the same position and the logistics to invade them doesn't help Alexander one bit either. Add to this the fact that India seems to have had the best steel in the world at that time (wootz steel) and Alexander is going to have problems actually contending with more than just small kingdoms - that he had a lot of trouble conquering anyway and which forced him to turn back - in the outskirts of India.
There were not persian deccay in power. The Empire was able to fielded huge armies, just like it had been under Xerxes. There weren't any rebelions in provinces against persian rule except Egypt, but this country was an exception. Just Alexander had the best army in the world and he himself was a genius. His conquests are just one of ASB moments in history, in any timeline something like his achievements would be regarded as poorly written ASB, yet it happened in the OTL.

Regarding wonderful, super wootz steel. On the strategic level it is unimportant. An expensive and fancy toy for armors of rich and powerful, yet as anyother armor it is conquerable, even full plate in the late midle ages was destroyable. So any wootz steel armor worn by three or four indian leaders was also. Also you understimate those "outskirts of India". Punjab and the Indus Valley of that era was one of the most important and richest parts of India, not that diffrent from the Ganges Plain. The Nandas were formidable oponnent, but so were Persians.

Why would you assume that they used their best troops to get to the Aegean instead of India? And you claimed that Alexander could conquer India using Asian soldiers, not Macedonian ones which you said Alexander can just send back. If these troops couldn't push further into India under the Achaemenids, why would they do it under Alexander?
Because we have descriptions of the persian invasions of Hellas. The final one was a great feat lead by the Great King himself, with tens of thousands of soldiers from all the Empire, with hundreds of ships, yet it failed spectaculary on the shores of the Salamis. Maybe we don't know a lot about the Persian Empire, but we have some knowledge of their conquests and about later empire, and we don't have any proof about aby big and serious attempt of conqueing India, except some "outskirts" in modern Afganistan.

Also I don't understand why you are so sure that Poros would have rebelled against Alexander. He didn't seam a typy who bite a hand which feed him... Especially after 15 years of dealing with him and his empire, when he would certainly realized how big and powerful Alexander's empire is.

For Chandragupta and his power, yes he certainly was a capable and smart guy, but it isn't like that he could have just won with Alexander. Why? Becaue we know that he waged the war against Seleukos Nikator, and the result of that war. They made an agreament, Seleukos didn't got any territories previously held by Alexander's satraps, but he wasn't beaten, yet got elephants and free return to the West. It doesn't look like a total victory. And Seleukos at that time was just one of diadochi, not the strongest one.
 

ar-pharazon

Banned
Alexander was an extraordinary man. There have been very few people like him in all of history.

I fully believe that he could conquer India, he could conquer Carthage, Italy, and Arabia.

I think if he truly wished he could March to China and conquer that as well.

It's hard to downplay the man's incredible achievements-imagine if he lived another 70 years. He would have forged an empire that would have stretched from the Atlantic coast to maybe the Pacific Ocean-if not the pacific most certainly the Indian Ocean.

The man was truly extraordinary.
 
It's hard to downplay the man's incredible achievements-imagine if he lived another 70 years. He would have forged an empire that would have stretched from the Atlantic coast to maybe the Pacific Ocean-if not the pacific most certainly the Indian Ocean.

"Finally, I have conquered all! Everyone else is either under me, or paying tribute! I AM THE KING OF THE WORLD!! And now... now I'm kind of bored..."

"My Lord! We have received news of a new landmass to our West! There are great cities with great stone ziggurats, like those of the Fertile Crescent!"

"READY. MY. SHIP."
 
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