ALEXANDER'S LAST CAROUSE

Alexander's death as much immortalised him as proved his mortality. For years after his death, scholars, doctors, historians, novelists and archaeologists have tried to trace back from the scant and often unreliable evidence what killed one of the most powerful and enigmatic men ever to walk the earth. This essay explores the political and social agendas of two accounts of his death: the Liber de Morte, and the University of Maryland's diagnosis.

Ancient History Bulletin, Vol 19.3-4, pp.155-175 , 2003

History of Toxicology and Environmental Health, chapter 7, 2014

After his spectacular conquests from Persia to India in 334!24 BC, Alexander the Great died of mysterious causes after a heavy drinking party in Babylon (Iraq) in 323 BC, just before his 33rd birthday. Alexander’s untimely death aroused suspicions of poisoning among his closest companions; conspirators were accused of killing him with a mysterious toxin collected from the River Styx in southern Greece. Ancient historians were divided about the cause of death; some favored a plot while others believed in natural causes. Modern histor- ians and toxicologists are also divided on whether Alexander died of disease or poison. Modern attempts to retrodiagnose Alexander’s fatal illness, by analyzing the detailed symptoms the king reportedly suffered in the 2 weeks before death, have resulted in many theories. Proposed natural causes include alcohol poisoning, malaria, typhoid fever, septi- cemia, and accidental physician error; deliberate murder theories focus on aconite, arsenic, fermented hellebore, and strychnine.

A meditation on the death of Alexander the Great at Babylon, 323 BCE. Written for a collection of essays in which historians were asked to describe a moment in history that they wished they could have witnessed.

Classica et Mediaevalia, 2022

Why was an unknown man insisting he was Alexander the Great received with distinct deference by Roman officials and Bacchic celebration by hundreds of attendants around A.D. 221? Examining Dio Cassius's presentation in light of contemporary beliefs, one finds that the enthusiastic reception most probably was due to the conviction that Alexander had actually returned physically immortal and deified, either resurrected or never having died at all. The respectful awe of the officials was also most likely caused by either this belief or by their holding that this was the dead and disembodied hērōs of the famed conqueror.

Proceedings of the Disease and the Ancient World Symposium (Publication abandoned by Oxbow 2023), 2017

Presented at the Disease & the Ancient World Symposium held in Templeton College, University of Oxford and scheduled for the Proceedings to be published by Oxbow (see attached notice) but now abandoned. The untimely death of Alexander in Babylon in June 323BC may have altered the history of the world more profoundly than any other intervention of disease in the fate of mankind. Alexander had been poised to effectuate the conquests of Arabia, North Africa and Western Europe with a fleet of a thousand galleys and a vast battle-hardened army. It is most unlikely that anything else could have stopped him. Consequently, the exact cause of his demise has been a source of intense and enduring speculation ever since that fateful day. Ancient medicine lacked the skills to make a certain diagnosis and the corpse has been lost since the end of the 4th century AD, frustrating modern science of the opportunity for autopsy. Only words from witnesses remain and even those have been reworked and re-edited through the hands of multiple intervening transcribers. What we have left can be made to fit a range of diseases, syndromes and agencies. Scholars have usually felt free to regard these theories as a herd from which one is free to select whichever beast takes one's fancy. However, the objective of this paper is to show that the statistics of mortality provide a scientific basis for discriminating clearly between the various candidates and that one particular solution to the mystery is thereby rendered far more probable than any rival.

Athens Journal of History, 2019

The dearth of accurately datable documents from the time (323–c. 275 BCE) of Alexander the Great’s Successors (also known as the Diadochi or Diadochoi) has contributed to uncertainty regarding the dating of key events from this time. In attempting to explain these inconsistencies, recent scholarship has focused on various different chronologies, some of which are described as “high” and “low.” It would seem that particular importance would be assigned to the date of the end of the reign of Alexander IV, Alexander the Great’s lone legitimate heir. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the possible date of this very important transition that marked the end of the Macedonian Argead Dynasty. The current article attempts a thorough investigation of this event by examining remaining historical accounts and surviving contemporary government documents along with epigraphical evidence and archaeological discoveries. This information is then utilized in an attempt to arrive at a more precise date for the end of Alexander IV’s reign and the end of the satrapies ruling in his name

Academia Letters, 2021

From antiquity until today, scores of historians, admirers, archaeologists, authors and philosophers have written about Alexander's death, and each and everyone has developed his own theory and his own point of view. Alexander's death most certainly was first recorded in his Royal Diaries, but we may seriously doubt the accounts that reached us. Are the records truly reflecting what was initially written down, or has the original report been manipulated to suit the king's courtiers and successors? We have a very detailed, day-by-day account of Alexander's occupation and health condition during the last days of his life. This is rather strange because it sounds more like a justification than an actual report of events. Alexander's life has been in the balance before, but not many details were reported or have survived. The first time the troops feared for the king's life was at Tarsus after he plunged into the cold waters of the Cydnus River. We have no day-today account of Alexander's health condition, although it must have been quite critical nonetheless as he had to halt his campaign for several weeks. Another life-threatening experience occurred during his attack on the Malian town in India, where Alexander was hit by a poisoned arrow while scaling the city wall. The soldiers had been slow to follow their king, exposing him to the full force of the enemy's attack. Alexander had to be carried away, and for three days and nights, he hovered between life and death. He eventually showed himself to his troops at the cost of enormous and superhuman efforts and even hoisted his battered body on his horse to prove to them that he was still alive. No day-today account of his eating and drinking pattern has been recorded. All we know is that he floated down the Indus in full view of his men. He needed much rest to help the healing process as the march to the mouth of the Indus went on as planned.

The Syriac Alexander Romance (ar) is the most distinguished part of the Syriac and indeed of all eastern literary tradition of Alexander the Great. A notable peculiarity of ar is that a very high number of its versions were produced in late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the early modern age in Europe, Asia and Africa, usually not as proper translations but rather as variant versions transformed to fit cultural needs and traditions of the target reader, with Pfister registering some two hundred of them.1 The ancient and early medieval versions of ar, especially Greek ones (α, β, γ, *δ), are usually called recensions and I will be using this name here. It is generally acknowledged that all surviving eastern versions of ar, attested as far as Mongolia2 and Malaysia,3 are ultimately derived from its Syriac variant. The Arabic derivatives are perhaps the best researched part of the eastern tradition of ar thanks largely, but not exclusively, to the seminal book of Doufikar-Aerts who has also been conducting a study of the Alexander cycle in Asia and Africa.4 The Syriac ar is but a part of the rich Syriac tradition on Alexander the Great, whose other members are traditionally called: Verse history attributed to

'Aristobulus of Cassandreia: An Engineer at the Court of Alexander the Great', in E. Myrdal (ed.), South Asian Archaeology and Art 2014 Papers Presented at the Twenty-Second International Conference of the European Association for South Asian Archaeology and Art, New Delhi, pp. 99-114, 2020