WI Alexander the Great is killed at the Persian Gate?

[Vinization]

The Battle of the Persian Gate was the Achaemenid Empire's last act of resistance against Alexander the Great. After an ambush that caused heavy casualties among the Macedonians, the Persians held the pass for a month before the invaders found an alternate path through the terrain (the battle was basically a reversed Thermopylae) and killed them all.

What if Alexander was killed in the ambush? My first thought is that his generals would fight among themselves almost immediately, stopping the invasion in its tracks.

What about the Persians? Wikipedia says Darius III was in Media at the time of the battle, trying to raise yet another army after the defeat at Gaugamela, but was forced to flee to the east, where he met his grisly end. Could he consolidate his position with what he had left (everything east of the Zagros, I assume) and create an Achaemenid rump state? Could Ariobarzanes, satrap of Persis and commander of the forces that guarded the Gates, overthrow him?

As a bonus, Persepolis wouldn't be destroyed or at least not to the extent of OTL, which is nice.

 

[Vinization]

Here's a bump with some extra content.

How would the Wars of the Diadochi develop if they start eight years earlier and with Parmenion and his son Philotas still alive? The empire they will fight over is much smaller than OTL, stretching from Greece to Mesopotamia, so could it be possible for one man to get it all? I could see the Achaemenid remnant intervening to prevent that.

The area subjected to Greek colonization will also be greatly diminished (no Greco-Bactrian or Indo-Greek kingdoms, for one), so could the Near East be hellenized more thoroughly? Finally, how would India develop without Alexander's invasion of the Punjab and, decades later, the rise of the Hellenic kingdoms I already mentioned?

 

[Patukov]

So are we assuming that Alexander dying would be enough to shock the Macedonians into stopping their advance long enough for Darius to muster another army and keep them from advancing deeper into Persia?

The status of Persia (rump Achaemenid/broken down/New dynasty) would influence the dynamics of the post Alexander wars, I think

 

[Flavius Iulius Nepos]

Not my area but I’d like to add this: Alexander dying this early would make succession easier, since there is no son of Alexander around to make things more complex. Here there is no doubt that the crown should go to his brother Philip. Whether Philip III actually was unable to rule on his own I’ll leave up to someone more knowledgeable than me on the matter. After him it would be whoever married a sister of Alexander, with Olympias obviously backing her own daughter. Even if the whole thing breaks apart (and that is not a given in my opinion) the Persians have been so thoroughly thrashed that they are not in a position to do anything: for one thing Darius III may consider himself lucky if he somehow manages to survive, for another the Macedonian phalanx has proven itself quite superior to whatever the Persians could throw at them, and the Macedonian army certainly doesn’t lack capable generals who could at the very least retain their recent conquests in the face of an (unlikely) Persian counterattack. Even assuming the Macedonians spend the next 40 years fighting each other.

 

[Vinization]

So are we assuming that Alexander dying would be enough to shock the Macedonians into stopping their advance long enough for Darius to muster another army and keep them from advancing deeper into Persia?

The status of Persia (rump Achaemenid/broken down/New dynasty) would influence the dynamics of the post Alexander wars, I think

I assume they would stop not only due to the shock but also because the generals would turn on each other. Assuming the conquered territories fall under the control of a single king (there are so, so many options to choose here), said king could invade and potentially subjugate the rest of Persia for prestige reasons (avenging Alexander's death, plus military glory is always nice).

Which is why the Achaemenids or whoever controls the lands east of the Zagros would probably do something to stop that unification if they can. I say if because they had reached their nadir at the time and the area could devolve into a bunch of warring satrapies if things got even worse for whatever reason, of which there are many.

 

[Vinization]

Here's an idea:

After around 15-20 years or so of infighting, the *Macedonian Empire is reunited under one of the Diadochi. With the domestic front taken care of, the Macedonians turn their eyes towards Persia once again, which spent those 15-20 years rebuilding itself without facing a huge catastrophe like a prolonged civil war.

Could the Achaemenid remnant defeat the invaders if they adopted a scorched earth strategy? The Iranian Plateau is quite arid, so living off the land would be difficult. Could they strike the Macedonians' supply trains with hit-and-run attacks, or would their cavalry stop them?

 

[Flavius Iulius Nepos]

In this scenario and assuming the new Macedonian king does want to go East (which is a big assumption since I think Alexander was basically the only one who wanted to go further east than Babylon), a scorched earth tactic might work better than a pitched battle. But it does run the risk of leaving key Persian cities (Persepolis) exposed to Macedonian attacks. So, it matters little if the Persians are not defeated in battle, if the Macedonians can leave unmolested with all their booty. On the other hand the further east the powerbase of such a Persian polity is the more effective such a strategy would be (at the cost of forsaking Persia proper however). The Persians would probably survive as an independent "empire", one that however would be only a far cry of its much more powerful predecessor. This or the Persians get their own version of Philip II and prepare for round 2. Not likely but the IV-II centuries BC were literally filled with almost unbelievable stuff.