Alexander the Great

James Romm examines some intriguing new theories

about a long-standing historical mystery.

Who Killed
Alexander
the Great?
n Babylon on June 11 th, 323 HC, at about

I 5pm, Alexander the Great died aged 32,

having conquered an empire
stretching from modern
.Mbania to ea.stern Pakistan. Ihe
question of what, or who, killed
the Macedonian king has never
been answered successfully.
Today new theories are heating
up one of history's longest-
running cold cases.
Like the death of Stalin, to which
it is sometimes compared, the death
of Alexander poses a mystery that is
perhaps iii.soluble but nonetheless
irresistible. Conspiracy buffs have
been speculating about it since before
the king's body was cold, but recently
there has been an extraordinary one of his lungs pierced by an arrow,
number ot new accusers and new yet soon afterwards he made the most
suspects. Fuel was added to the fire by arduous of his military marches, a 60-
Oliver Stone's Alexander, released in day trek along the barren coast of
2004 with new versions in 2006 and 2008: .southern Iran.
a film that, whatever its artistic flaws, pres- C)nsequently, when the king tell gravely ill
ents a historically informed theory about who and died two years later, the shock felt by his
killed Alexander and why. 50,000-strong army was intense. So was the confusion
Few events have been as unexpected as the death of about who would next lead it, for Alexander had made
Alexander. The king had shown fantastic reserves of no plans for succession and had as yet produced no
strength during his 12-year campaign through Asia, A Babylonian astronomical legitimate heir (though one would be born shortly after
enduring severe hardships and taking on strenuous ciay tabiet recording his death). The sudden demise of such a commanding
combat roles. Some had come to think of him as phenomena observed figure would indeed turn out to be a catastrophic
during 323-322 BC,
divine, an idea fostered, and perhaps entertained, by turning point, the start of a half-century of instability
inciuding the death of
Alexander himself. In 325, fighting almost single- 'theiiing'. and strife known today as the Wars of the Successors.
handed against South Asian warriors, Alexander had Events of such magnitude inevitably prompt a

30 History/ixiii)' | April 2012 w w w.h istorytoday.com


search for causes. It is disturbing to think that blind
chance - a drink from the wrong stream or a bite from
the wrong mosquito - put the ancient world on a
perilous new course. An explanation that keeps the
change in human hands may in some ways be reas-
suring, even though it involves a darker view of
Alexander's relations with his Companions, the inner
circle of friends and high-ranking officers that
surrounded him in Babylon.
Ancient historians have reached no consensus on
the cause of Alexander's death, though many attribute
it to disease. In 1996 Eugene Borza, a scholar special-
ising in ancient Macedn, took part in a medical
board of inquiry at the University of Maryland, which
reached a diagnosis of typhoid fever; Borza has since
defended that finding in print. Malaria, smallpox and
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Alexander the Great
In his 2004 film Alexander leukaemia have also been proposed, with alcoholism,
Oliver Stone shows infection from the lung wound and grief-Alexander's
Ptolemy and other guests
close friend Hephaestion had died some months
at the drinking party
watching Alexander raise earlier - often seen as complicating factors. But some
his cup. historians are unwilling to identify' a specific illness, or
even to choose between illness or murder: two
Alexander experts who once made this choice (one on
each side) later changed their opinions to undecided.
With historical research at an impasse, Alexander
sleuths are reaching out for new ideas and new
approaches. Armed with reports from toxicologists
and forensic pathologists and delving themselves into
criminal psychology, they are re-opening the
Alexander file as an ongoing murder investigation.
The idea that Alexander was murdered first gained
wider attention in 2004, thanks to the ending of
April 2012 I Historyroday 31
 Alexander the Great
Stone's film. In its epilogue Alexander's senior general
Ptolemy (played by Anthony Hopkins), looking back
over decades at his commander's death, declares: 'The
truth is, we did kill him. By silence, we consented ...
Because we couldn't go on.' Ptolemy then instructs the
alarmed scribe recording his words to destroy what he
has just written and start again. 'You shall write: He
died of disease, and in weakened condition.'
'T~'he idea that Alexander's generals felt pushed too
X far by their master and colluded in his murder in
order to stop him did not arise out of Stone's famously
plot-prone imagination. 1 here is some evidence that
not even Alexander's senior commanders were willing
to follow him anywhere. In India in 325 BC, at the
eastern edge of the Indus river system, Alexander's
army staged a sit-down strike, when ordered to march
eastward towards the Ganges. Even the highest
ranking officers took part in the mutiny. Stone consid-
ered this epi.sode a forerunner of the later murder
conspiracy, since Alexander was again planning vast
new campaigns at the time of his death. 'I can't believe
that these men were going on with Alexander' to
Arabia and Carthage, he said in a 2008 interview at the
University of C^alifornia, Berkeley.
Stone likewise drew on historical research for the
idea that Ptolemy masterminded a cover-up of
Alexander's murder, but the waters he is wading in
here are very murky indeed. The account Ptolemy tells
his scribe to compose at the end of Alexaiukr appar-
ently represents a controversial ancient document
called the Royal Journals. Though now lost it was
summarised (in different versions) by Arrian and
Plutarch, two (reek writers of the Roman Empire,
who endorsed it as the most reliable record of
Alexander's last days. Some scholars, led by the
Australian classicist Brian Bosworth, believe the Royal
Journals were falsified to make Alexander's death
appear natural, just as Stone's film represents (though
in Bosworth's view the culprit was Eumenes,
Alexander's court secretary, rather than Ptolemy).
37 Hist(ir>'7(irfm' | April 2012
A scene from a drinking
party on a Greek vase of
the fourth century BC.
Alexander dead in the spring of 323 BC, for the king
From the Archive
V Alexander the
H7 j[ aGreat: Hunting for
New Past?
Paul Cartledge goes in search
of the elusive personality of
the world's greatest hero.
www.historytoday.com/archive
Others disagree, taking the tournais to be just what
Arrian and Plutarch thought they were, an undoc-
tored, day-by-day eyewitness account.
The debate over the Royal Journals has huge
implications for our understanding of Alexander's
death, because Arrian and Plutarch describe that
event very differently to other ancient sources. Both
authors say that Alexander became feverish after
leaving a drinking party at the home of a friend
named Mdius. His fever grew worse over the course
of 10 or 12 days (the two accounts differ in
chronology), leading finally to a paralytic state in
which the king could neither move nor speak. As his
troops shuffled past his sickbed. Arrian reports,
Alexander could only shift his eyes to say farewell to
each one. Death followed the next day.
But a variety of other accounts paint a very
different picture and it was these that Stone followed
in Alexander. In this alternate version Alexander was
first stricken in the midst of the drinking party rather
than afterward and, more importantly, just as he
drained a huge cup of wine. These accounts say that
Alexander felt a stabbing sensation in the back after
downing the cup and cried aloud. Erom that point on
these sources record a variety of symptoms, including
great pain, convulsions and delirium, but they say little
or nothing about fever, the keynote of the Plutarch
and Arrian accounts.
A stabbing pain following a drink of wine wotdd
clearly suggest poison, which is why Plutarch, in his
biography of Alexander, vehemently denied that it had
occurred. 'Some writers think they have to say such
things, as though composing the tragic finale of a
great drama', he sneered. Apparently the dispute
between those who thought Alexander had died of
disease and those who suspected murder - essentially,
those who did or did not trust the Royal Journals -
was already rife in Plutarch's day. Probably all reports
of Alexander's symptoms were spun one way or the
other and none can be trusted absolutely.
or supporters of the poisoning scenario the central
F question is, of course,'whodunnit?' Stone's film is
remarkably cagey about answering this question. In
the scene that portrays the fatal banquet dark looks are
exchanged among the Companions to show that they
know Alexander's cup contains poison, but no clue is
given as to how it got there. By contrast many Greek
and Roman writers were certain they knew not only
who did it, but how and with what poison. With
remarkable uniformity they pointed their fingers at
Antipater, the senior general whom Alexander had left
in charge of the Macedonian homeland, and at two of
his sons, Cassander and lollas.
Antipater may indeed have had reason to want
had just removed him from his post and summoned
him to Babylon, perhaps with hostile intent. Antipater
stayed put but sent Cassander in his stead. According
to several ancient accounts Antipater sent with his son
a draught of toxic water, collected from the legendary
river Styx (believed to flow above ground in the
northern Ploponnse before plunging down into the
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 Alexander the Great

underworld). The water had to be transported in a Greek imagination, the mythic resonance of the
hollowed-out mule's hoof, for it was said to eat right Styx, a river thought able to stupefy even the gods,
through any other substance but horn. In Babylon, made it an ideal weapon for Antipater and his sons
ran the story, Cassander pas.sed this mule's hoof to his to use. 'Such a sacred drug would lend an aura of
brother Iollas - conveniently enough, Alexander's divinity to Alexander', Mayor said recently. 'An ordi-
wine-pourer-who then slipped the toxin into the nary, common drug would not do. Only a very rare,
king's drink. potent and legendary substance would be appro-
The basic elements of this story are the same in priate for Alexander.'
every ancient retelling, but details vary. Some versions
mention the philosopher Aristotle as a co-conspirator; t remains to be .seen whether such glosses on the
he was a known friend of Antipater and probably
estranged by that time from his former student
I legend of Antipater's conspiracy can help crack
the mystery. But it is clear that the Mayor-Hayes
Alexander, who had sanctioned the death of his rela- approach, matching toxins available to the ancient
tive C^allisthenes. Others make Mdius, the host of the world with Alexander's reported symptoms, ha.s
final, fatal dinner party and allegedly Iollas' male lover, become an increasingly popular route into that
a participant in the plot. One very early version, mystery. Three other investigators have pursued it in
published in an anonymous Greek pamphlet, now recent years, combining it with three new
known as The Last Days and Testament ofAlexander, hypotheses about who might have adniini.stercd the
made Iollas doubly guilty; when the first draught of toxin; Ptolemy, one of Alexander's leading generals,
poison failed to kill Alexander, Iollas administered a committed the murder with arsenic; Rhoxane, the
second, soaking in Styx water the feather he used to king's wife, did it with strychnine; Alexander's
help the king vomit. physicians did it, hut hy accident, with powdered
Until recently historians dismissed the story of the hellehore root.
Styx water-poisoning as a fiction, possibly a political The last of these theories emerged from the
smear designed to harm Antipater and Cassander. Oliver Stone beiieves
unlikely collaboration of the New Zealand toxicologist
Rhoxane (seen here in a still
Both were contestants for power in the era after from his film) innocent of Leo Schep and the Scotland Yard detective lohn
Alexander's death and had many enemies, especially killing Alexander but guilty Cirieve. These two men were brought together in a
Olympias, Alexander's vengeful mother (who, of murdering Hephaestion 2009 television documentary, Alexander the (rent's
perhaps to help foster the idea of Antipater's family's out of jealousy.
Mysterious Death. Schep had b\' that time arrived at
guilt, eventually had Iollas' grave dug up and his
ashes scattered to the wind). Even the idea that
ordinary Greek river water could have toxic proper-
ties seemed absurd. In 1913 the distinguished
classicist J.G. Erazer declared that the waters the
Greeks identified as the Styx, today called Blackwater
or Mavroneri, contained no toxins and there the
matter rested for almost a century.
But, in a presentation at a conference in Barcelona
in 2010, the historian Adrienne Mayor and the toxicol-
ogist Antoinette Hayes proposed that the limestone
around Mavroneri could easily have nurtured a lethal
bacterium called calicheamicin. Chemical tests are
being planned to determine whether such bacteria are
still present today (though they may have disappeared
over the centuries). Mayor and Hayes argue that
'calicheamicin could cause illness and death like that
described for Alexander' - including his high fever,
usually seen as proof of a natural death.
The research of Mayor and Hayes might suggest
that Alexander was murdered, though the authors
themselves stop short ofthat claim. They are more
interested in explaining the legend than the death
itself Their thesis that the Styx really was strongly
toxic would account for why Antipater and his sons
were the ancient world's prime suspects; Cassander's
journey from Europe to Babylon just a few weeks
before the onset of Alexander's symptoms provided an
obvious conduit by which Styx water could have
arrived at the king's banquet table, ((.assander later
helped confirm the ancient world's suspicions about
him by usurping the throne of Macedonia and
executing Alexander's mother, wife and son.)
The authors are also interested in how, in the

www.historytoday.com April 2012 1 IlisturyVixiny 33

Alexander the Great
Alexander confronts
Cassander in Stone's film.
Many ancient sources tell
of Antipater sending his
son to Babylon with toxic
water from the river Styx.
Alexander, left, shown with
one of his generals,
Krateros, hunting a lion.
Macedonian mosaic,
fourth century BC, from a
house in Pella, capital of
the ancient kingdom of
Macedonia and now in
Greece.
History'/ii/yl April 2012
the conclusion that powdered white hellebore, used
medicinally by the ancient Greeks but lethal in large
doses, could best account for Alexander's recorded
symptoms. Grieve then made the guess that the helle-
bore was not delivered by an assassin, as Schep had
supposed, but by Alexander's doctors, who acciden-
tally overdosed their patient while trying to cure him.
Grieve's ingenious speculation is only that, but has
already won the endorsement of at least one
Alexander specialist, the British classicist Richard
Stoneman. 'Hellebore, despite its dangers, was the
favourite prescription of many ancient doctors
because of its violent purgative effects', Stoneman
notes. 'But it was easy to get the dose wrong, and
Alexander's doctors might have had access to an unfa-
miliar strain of the drug in Babylon - or even misread
the Babylonian label.'
But the toxicology on which Schep and Grieve rely
is evidently not an exact science, especially when prac-
ticed at a distance of 2,300 years. The author (raham
Phillips submitted the same record of Alexander's
symptoms as Schep's to the Los Angeles County
Regional Poison Center but obtained a very different
answer. In his 2004 book Alexander the Great: Murder
in liabylon Phillips maintains that only strychnine
could have produced a death like .Alexander's.
Following a twisting, at times tortuous, trail of
logic Phillips tries to identify Alexander's murderer by
finding out who had access to strychnine. The
poisonous plant is rare along Alexander's route of
march and could be harvested only in high elevation
regions of the subcontinent (modern Pakistan). Not
all of Alexander's retinue followed him into such
areas, allowing Phillips to eliminate potential
suspects. He concludes that only one person who
might have had a motive to kill Alexander also had
the means: Rhoxane, the first of the king's three
wives. She had become enraged at Alexander, Phillips
assumes, by his two subsequent marriages to Persian
princesses and killed him. This view of Rhoxane as a
latter-day Medea revives one popularised in the 17th-
century English tragedy by Nataniel Lee, The Rival
Queens, but is not supported by evidence. (Oliver
Stone, too, portrays Rhoxane as a murderously
jealous woman, though he makes her guilty of the
death of Hephaestion - in his view, Alexander's male
lover - rather than Alexander himself. )
Arsenic gets the spotlight in a 2004 book. The Death
of Alexander the Great by Paul Doherty, novelist and
amateur historian. Doherty lays particular stress on a
macabre piece of evidence mentioned by Plutarch and
the Roman writer Quintus tAirtius: Alexander's body
did not decay even after lying exposed to the summer
heat of Babylon for a week or more. Doherty cites toxi-
cology studies of the 19th century to show that arsenic
poisoning can lead to mummification. However the
jury seems to be out on this point and, for obvious
reasons, opportunities for field tests are few.
If Alexander's body really did resist decomposition
- and some experts consider the story a fiction - then
numerous explanations have to be considered. Those
who believe Alexander drank himself to death have
claimed that his corpse was more or less pickled in
alcohol. Strychnine, hellebore and the calicheamicin
bacteria have all been given preservative properties by
their various adherents. Defenders of the disease
scenario give an entirely different and more disturbing
reason for the non-decay phenomenon: Alexander, in
their view, only appeared to die on lune 11th; he
actuallv entered a deep coma. I le ma\' still h>i\ e been
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barely alive when enibalmers arrived many days later
to disembowel him.
Doherty's book uses some intriguing guesswork
to arrive at Ptolemy as its lead suspect. Ptolemy got
the best post-Alexander assignment of any of the
leading generals, a posting in wealthy Egypt. He
eventually e.stablished an independent kingdom
there that endured for centuries, until finally lost by
his descendant Cleopatra in 30 BC. Doherty argues
backward from Ptolemy's later success, reasoning
that he who gained the most from Alexander's death
had the greatest incentive to bring it about. It is the
same thinking that Oliver Stone used when he made
Ptolemy a principal member of the murder plot
depicted in Alexander. As the director said in the
Berkeley interview: 'I go back to [the film] JFK: Cui
bonol Who benefits?'
t is startling to think that Ptolemy or Rhoxane, two
I people normally regarded as dependent on and
devoted to Alexander, may have wanted him dead, but
those possibilities cannot be ruled out. Neither can
Stone's h^fpothesis that the entire general staff
colluded in Alexander's murder, at least by not inter-
vening to prevent it ('By silence we consented').
Indeed lohn Atkinson, a South African classicist, has
put forward a scenario very much like that of Stone's
film in a 2009 journal article entitled 'Alexander's Last
Days: Malaria and Mind Games?' (co-authored with
two medical specialists, Elsie and Etienne Truter).
Like Stone, Atkinson portrays an Alexander who in
his final months was feared and mistrusted by his
closest associates. 'The officers were dealing with a
man who had become paranoid and cheap', he and his
co-authors write. 'Men who valued their own lives
would have no wish to be led by one who might again
risk his own life and put his men into unnecessary
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Alexander the Great
' This late fourth-century BC
marbie reiief known as the
Aiexander Sarcophagus
shows a battle between the
Greeks and Persians.
Hephaestion is thought to
be the rider on the right.
mortal danger.' In Atkinson's view the campaigns
Alexander had in mind in lune 323 BC - including
conquest of Arabia, Carthage and the entire Mediter-
ranean coast - were a bridge too far for Alexander's
officers. Having turned him back from the East by
mutiny, he argues, these men now felt only death
could stop him from taking on the West.
Even while regarding Alexander as a pariah to his
own people, Atkinson rejects the idea that he was
poi.soned, seemingly on the grounds of his .symptoms.
His verdict is something closer to euthanasia: after the
king became ill his inner circle pushed him toward
death using the 'mind games' of the article's title. 'The
officers in Alexander's court had the opportunity to
work on his mind and undermine his will to sur\ ive',
Atkinson writes. 'Maybe he reached the point of
believing that the only heroic thing left for him to do
was to die.'
And so the debate goes on with new paths leading
to darker mysteries and raising increasingly difficult
questions. Ironically the net result of recent theorising
has been to create greater uncertainty than ever, even
to break down the longstanding dichotomy between
illness and poison scenarios. Mayor and Hayes raise
the possibility that Alexander died of an illness but
was nonetheless murdered; lohn Grieve suspects he
was poisoned, but by accident. Atkinson makes the
case that Alexander's death was neither entirely crim-
inal nor entirely natural, but something in between.
If the embalmed body of Alexander is ever found -
and some researchers continue to hunt for it - we may
finally learn what caused his death, but the mummy
disappeared from view in the third or fourth century
AD (it had been displayed before that in a sumptuous
monument at Alexandria). Meanwhile investigators
will continue to pore over the records left behind by
Plutarch, Arrian, Diodorus, Justin and Quintus
April 2012 I I lislory/iii/ov 35
Alexander the Great
Curtius. Unfortunately the pool of textual data is large
enough to allow multiple ways of connecting the dots.
With physical remains lacking and written testi-
mony ambiguous the burden of proof in the
Alexander case falls heavily on circumstantial evidence
and much of this presents a grave challenge to all
conspiracy theories. Opponents of such theories have
long noted that Alexander himself, during the 10 or 12
days he slid towards death, never gave any sign that he
suspected poison, though he had become quick to
sniff out and punish traitors in his final years. He
would never have gone willingly to his death (as Oliver
Stone's film appears to imply), nor would his enemies
have allowed him to linger so long if they had in fact
acted against him. A slow decline would allow him to
order their executions. To assert that Alexander was
poisoned one would have to admit that the job was
badly bungled.
The same point could be made about what
followed Alexander's death. The chaos and collapse in
the succeeding decades looks nothing like the result of
a planned assassination. If the goal ofthe generals was
to 'go home and spend their dough', as Oliver Stone
asserted in his Berkeley interview, they tailed miser-
ably. None ever returned to Macedonia and only
Ptolemy succeeded in gaining any measure of peace or
security. Many ofthe others continued fighting and
killing each other. Given how central Alexander was to
the stability of their world, they had no reason in June
323 BC to expect otherwise.
| /\pril 2012
The tomb from Sidon c. 330 BC
now in the Archaeological
Museum, Istanbul, with the
relief known as the
Alexander Sarcophagus.
The king's actual tomb has
never been found.
Any plan to poison Alexander would have been
fraught with perils, especially for Macedonian
warriors who had no experience with toxins.
Conspiracy theories have to assume that Alexander's
generals hated their commander enough to risk every-
thing. It is easier to see them in the way the sources
portray them; as a dedicated cadre of elite officers
reliant for their fortunes on the survival and success of
their king. Thus it is easier, in the end, to believe that
Alexander died of disease, despite ingenious and
determined recent eftbrts to prove otherwise.
James Romm is James H. Ottaway Jr Professor of Classics at Bard
College in Annandale, New York and the author of Ghost on the
Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the War for Crown
ondEmp/re (Knopf, 2011).
Further Reading
Graham Phillips, Alexander the Great: Murder in Babylon
(Virgin Books, 2004).
Paul Doherty, The Death of Alexander the Great: What - or
Who - Really Killed the Young Conqueror of the Known World?
(Carroll and Graf, 2004).
John Atkinson, ElsieTruter, EtienneTruter,'Alexander's
Last Days: Malaria and Mind Games?', in Acta Classica,
January 2009.
James Romm (ed), The Landmark Arrian: The Campaigns
of Alexander (Pantheon, 2010).
Robin Lane Fox, Alexander the Great (Penguin, 2006).
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