HOW DID ALEXANDER THE GREAT DIE?

How Alexander the Great died?

On a cloudy day in May 323 BC, Alexander the Great wearily returned to Babylon after the spectacular conquest of nearly a hundred kingdoms, spread over three known continents. Few days later, on a cloudy afternoon in June 323 BC, Alexander the Great, emperor of the world, died in suspicious circumstances at the prime age of thirty-three years.

On Alexander’s sudden death in Babylon, the Greek army was struck with remorse, and many soldiers wept until nightfall. As the terrible night advanced, the history books tell us, no one lit a lamp in the city so as to weep alone in its darkness.

On the news of Alexander’s death, the Greeks were stirred to rebellion, the Persians shaved their heads in despair, the Egyptians assembled in temples to pray, and the Indians honored a sadhu who subdued Alexander at an altar in Punjab. As the terrible news spread from shore to shore, the Indians observed silent prayers at the altar in Kurukshetra: not to Alexander, but to his opponent Kalanus, the gymnosophist, who had joined Alexander’s camp and acted as an oracle.

Uncertainty and fear soon spread over the continents as people foresaw that disaster would spread to all remote corners of the world. For many, the emperor had been a demigod; for a few others, he was a ruthless tyrant; to the Indians, he was the king of the demons, an Asura Raja. According to the Sanskrit texts, the Puranas, however, nothing ever happens without a cause, and destruction always leads to new creations.

From Babylon, the richest and most ornate city on earth, Alexander wanted to rule the world forever like an immortal being. Alexander was in great entertaining mood and continuously attended night parties; the songs and dances kept the humid and cloudy nights alive, while danger lurked within his palace. As if destiny demanded that Alexander not leave Babylon, tragedy struck four days before he could start his recently conceived Arabian adventure on the newly built ships. Someone wanted to stop him from leaving the capital at Babylon, because if he left, he would not return for a long time.

On 1 June 323 BC, after the feast with Admiral Nearchus, who was to lead the naval conquest of Arabia,  Alexander wanted to leave the late-night drinking party and go to bed. But Medius, a close childhood friend, stopped him on the way to the palace and dragged him away to another party, over the bridge across the Euphrates, to his house. According to the inscriptions found on the clay tablets maintained by the priests of Babylon, it was a cloudy night, starless and gloomy. According to reliable witnesses, twenty special guests were gathered at the dinner table. This was a premeditated arrangement; they patiently waited until the other late-night party across the river was over. Suspicion arises as to why these important officials waited so long as a collective group for Alexander to finish his first banquet. Alexander was certainly unaware of this dinner party, and he was probably drunk when he entered Medius’s home. According to the Alexander Romance, fourteen of the twenty guests at the party were involved in the assassination plot.

Alexander took a long drink from the golden cup and shortly thereafter was writhing in pain. Alexander felt as if he had been pierced in the liver with an arrow. He soon suffered fever and convulsions and had pain all over his body. Following a week of painful struggle and bedridden with fever, Alexander became stiff and speechless and slipped into a coma. He died after ten days, and his doctors could not name the mysterious illness. Some of his men suspected poisoning, but the Greeks had never heard of a poison that could kill so slowly, after ten days of feverish illness.

In ancient times, most ancient historians accused King Antipater of Macedonia and his son Iollas of poisoning. The poisoning theory, however, has often been shunned as Alexander was sick for 10 days with fever after he drank a cup of wine served by his close friends. No known poison could cause fever and delay death for ten days and the Greek world knew of no poison that was so slow. As such, modern speculations and, predictably, the unsettled debates continued over the ages. Arguments between historians, astrologers, mythologists, and microbiologists have raged for many years as to what really killed Alexander.

As for known poisons, arsenic or hemlock, being too quick to kill, was easily ruled out. The common symptoms of food poisoning, like vomiting and diarrhea, were never reported. No such poison could have induced fever for ten days.

A plant extract such as belladonna or aconite, both easily available naturally, cause severe vomiting, and symptoms of hellebore was very well known in those days. Hellebore not only induces vomiting but also invariably causes severe diarrhea. Another suggestion is the plant-based poison strychnine, used in rat poison. No such plants that grew around Babylon, Europe, or the Indus Valley were known to act as a slow poison.

The symptoms reported also could not confirm whether he died of an infectious disease or from an old chest injury incurred while in India. Some made allegations of acute alcoholism. However, most ancient historians suspected death by treacherous poisoning.

Intermittent fever, convulsions, stiff neck, and depression were some of the strange symptoms reported in eyewitness accounts. In modern times, scholarly debate has concentrated on the possibility of some sort of tropical illness. Typhoid was first suspected, soon followed by malaria, Nile virus, bird flu, pneumonia, and other contagious diseases. All these illnesses are apparently highly infectious and thus would have spread to others also in the army camp. The doctors in Alexander’s camp would have identified these primitive illnesses, which had predictable symptoms. Yet, no one else in the camp had died with similar symptoms. Some have argued that he was an alcoholic and had taken too much of wine on the day of death, though the symptoms differed considerably from those of an alcoholic. Being an active warrior and an invincible warrior king, who was planning a new expedition to Arabia within the week, he is not likely to have died at the age of thirty-three from alcoholism. It seems highly unlikely that Alexander died of an illness or by any known poison available in Greece or Persia.

Rumors of poisoning could be heard almost everywhere, though no one could confirm this or name the slow toxin that killed Alexander. Ancient historian, Justinus, wrote what the ancient people thought of Alexander’s death: “His friends reported that the cause of his disease was excess in drinking, but in reality, it was a conspiracy, the infamy of which the power of his successors threw into the shade.” Plutarch, another Greek historian, supports this notion: “He was fond of wine, but not to the extent of drunkenness.”

Ancient historians, Plutarch and Diodorus assert that most writers did not dare to mention the plot until 297 BC, after the death of the main suspect, King Cassander, the son of King Antipater of Macedonia. Some alleged that Cassander had brought an exceedingly powerful poison, “a poison so virulent that it destroyed metal, and had to be transported in a mule’s hoof.” Such a virulent poison has never been found to exist in Europe. This theory was soon abandoned, since such a violent poison could not have taken ten days to kill its victim. Such an acidic poison would have immediately caused a deep hole in Alexander’s stomach. One of Alexander’s generals, Onesecritus, also spoke openly of poisoning. Yet, no one in history has named the ‘slow’ poison, and no one knows of anything that would have taken so long to kill its victim.

However, it has been discovered for the first time that the Arthashastra of Chanakya, a Sanskrit text well known for its military strategies, names a ‘slow’ poison that was used in the time of Alexander the Great. It would take nearly ten days to kill the victim. The translation of its Sanskrit name, Kalakuta, meant it was the “destroyer of time”, and it was one of those exotic things named in the Sanskrit Puranas that could take nearly ten days to kill a victim. The Arthashastra unequivocally provides the secrets of the silent war the Indians waged against Alexander. Alexander’s military strategy worked wonders in Europe and Persia but failed terribly in India, where the Indians had adopted the new military approach, which they called the Chanakya tantra, Chanakya’s strategy, in which secret means are used with deadly effectiveness to achieve one’s objectives.

Finally, the easiest way to find the motive for the crime is to find the beneficiaries who really gained from the assassination of the king. Who could have profited from the death of the deity of the battlegrounds? After his sudden death, Alexander’s global empire was divided among his generals. The Indian Puranas tell us, however, that it was not the Greek generals who benefited the most from the death of Alexander. It was an Indian king, a stranger by the Greek name Sandrakuptos, or Chandragupta, who usurped an Indian throne and became a King soon after the death of Alexander the Great.

Refer The Murder of Alexander the Great: Book 2—The Secret War.

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