If Alexander never turned back

[Visiar]

Alexander is often considered the greatest military genius in history. However with the mutiny of his army, he was forced to return home. What if he never stopped and just kept going? To the Pacific coast?, Rome conquered?, would he eventually be defeated?

[Marcus Scaurus]

To Mars?

Alexander certainly planned to conquer Italy after his return to Babylon. Considering the vast resources of his empire and his military genius, he might very well have succeeded. But then he would suffer even more from imperial overstretch, as he already did in 'real' history. Most likely, he would get killed in some skirmish (a la Julian), and his empire would still crumble. Italy would've been far more hellenized, however, which could've given a boost to culture and literature.

[Lysimachus]

Alexander is often considered the greatest military genius in history. However with the mutiny of his army, he was forced to return home. What if he never stopped and just kept going? To the Pacific coast?, Rome conquered?, would he eventually be defeated?

With the increasing tension in his empire, it would have simply fallen apart and his reputation as a great, undefeated conqueror would have been shattered. We sometimes think that it was his death that caused the collapse of what he had created but regardless of whether he lived longer or not it would have fell apart anyway. Once the Diadochi states had formed they all faced off against one eachother but Seleucus I was the one who came closest to bringing the empire back together.

"Seleucus now held the whole of Alexander's conquests excepting Egypt and moved to take possession of Macedonia and Thrace. He intended to leave Asia to Antiochus and content himself for the remainder of his days with the Macedonian kingdom in its old limits."

After his death, none of the states ever came close to what he had achieved. Even though his achievement was great i'm inclined to believe that even if he hadn't been assassinated that even his empire would have fell apart within his lifetime.

[hellheaven1987]

Alexander: Forward!!! Fear not!!!

(Alexander died in India because Malaria)

It would be fun to see anyway, but who knows?? If his death was a bit late his Empire might be much more different - a more mature heir to success his empire. The end result might be similar as what Achaemenid Empire ended up (Cyrus the Great was dead on battlefield - killed by a barbarian queen, lol).

[ShADoW]

What if Alexander expanded west after the fall of Persia, would there ever have been a Roman Empire?

[Visiar]

What if Alexander expanded west after the fall of Persia, would there ever have been a Roman Empire?

He might have conquered Rome. Rome's infantry matched Alexander's, but Alexander had better cavalry.

[ShADoW]

He might have conquered Rome. Rome's infantry matched Alexander's, but Alexander had better cavalry.

Ye but after the fall of the Greek Empire would the Romans have rose?

[hellheaven1987]

Ye but after the fall of the Greek Empire would the Romans have rose?

If Roman did not become Greek first.

[Visiar]

Ye but after the fall of the Greek Empire would the Romans have rose?

It depends on how far Alexander expanded. Let's say he conquered Italy before he died. It would be unlikely as it would probably be one of the Diadochi Kingdoms. Then again you have to think if Alexander picked an heir by then. Would he be good or bad? There are many possibilities.

[MathiasOfAthens]

There is an old saying and I dont recall the exact words, but paraphrasing "when an empire expands too far and too quickly it will expend too many resources and fall apart rather quickly as well with the death of the founder." So in the case of Alexander, a king, a dictator, the father of the empire that was rooted in his figure. In Egypt he was a god and in Persia he was the first. So unlike Rome that expanded slower and form of government was a republic and partly republican under the Emperors, Alexanders Empire quickly collapsed among the competing generals with his death. There is no saying that this wouldnt have happen had he conquered Italy, Carthage, and Arabia. Or even India.

Now on to that. I would wage it would be physically impossible for one man to conquer India and then the nations nearer the Pacific Coast. Maybe your including China in this, I dont think Alexander could have conquered China and held onto India and Afghanistan which were very tribal and independent. His supply lines would have been too far overstretched. Could he have taken Arabia, I would say yes if he wasnt killed. He had the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and tactics and I believe he could have adapted to fighting the tribal nomadic warriors in the desert. The point of this conquest I dont know.

Italy was like Greece except they didnt fight a devastating 30 war between all the city states. So Italy would have been far tougher if the states united against Alexander. If they didnt and Alexander was able to fight them independently then he would have been able to expand as far north as maybe the rubicon but then would get bogged down with the Boii and gauls would would attack Alexanders rear when he went after Siciliy and Carthage. So the question is if Alexander could have done all this, prob could have if he had the manpower. Italy and Carthage were not Persia, they were not poorly train fighters who were tribal and only followed one person a Great King. So unlike Persia where Alexander only needed to kill the king or rout him to win the battle and eventually the war Alexander would have to fight devastating battles to win in Italy and Carthage which had a navy.

[Antigenes]

Italy and Carthage were not Persia, they were not poorly train fighters who were tribal and only followed one person a Great King.

By that description, the Achaemenid Empire's army was not 'Persian' either.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

With the increasing tension in his empire, it would have simply fallen apart and his reputation as a great, undefeated conqueror would have been shattered.

There was not an increasing tension in his empire before his death. While it is true that over the course of the campaign a sense of estrangement had arisen on behalf of the soldiers, the fact is that the mutinies in India had long been appeased by the cancellation of further advance in the east and the celebrations at Susa reconciled Alex with the soldiers, if we assume that their bonds had been severed to begin with; although their reactions upon the false rumors of Alexander's death at the siege of Malli proves they hadn't.

We sometimes think that it was his death that caused the collapse of what he had created but regardless of whether he lived longer or not it would have fell apart anyway.

There is nothing to suggest that. On the contrary, the testimony to Alexander's perfectly efficient policy of pacification, either through the pillars of cultural unification, urbanization and preservation of political structures winning the hearts of the populace or through mass murders and sheer terror campaigns, is that not even upon the news of his death did any conquered people of the empire revolt. Not a single one of them: not the Egyptians who had been gained over by virtue of Alex's mantle of liberation, not by force of arms, not the Persians, the ancestral enemies of Greeks, not the Baktrians that had taken 3 years to be subdued, not the Indians that had suffered horrible massacres at his hands, not the always unruly Thracians and Illyrian tribes in the Balkans. Only a coalition of southern Greek states, which technically were autonomous and owing allegiance to Alex in specific, as hegemon of the League of Corinth, did revolt against Macedon; and to their detriment they proved less than a match for Craterus' grizzled veterans, who were returning home at the time.
The generals squabbling over control of the economically and strategically important territories of the empire, not liberational movements of the natives erupting here and there, is what caused the chaos after Alexander’s death. Whatever provinces were lost to exterior enemies had been first abandoned by their garrisons, which had been recalled to participate in the centered in Asia Minor infighting of the Diadochi. But as long as Alex was alive there was zero possibility that even a single unit of the army would accept service under another general, let alone march against him (testimony to this is the arrogance of the Silver Shields and the behavior in general of the Alexanderian era units towards their commanders in later years), and it goes without saying that there would have been no former commander of his daring to stand against him in the first place, because as Polybius noted, 'it was unanimously acknowledged that the king's genius had surpassed human nature'. It's very telling about the loyalty, in all ranks and ethnicities, which the personality of Alexander commanded, that even at the points when his standing with the army was at its lowliest, nobody attempted to capitalize on it. Or that the soldiers forgave for his shake the deaths of emblematic figures of the Old Army, like Parmenio and Clitus the Black, or even of that goofy Callisthenes, who had built quite a popularity by rejecting the eastern custom proskynesis.
In short, Alexander's construct could not have been put to jeopardy from the inside as long as he was alive, because the army would never have the will, commanders didn’t have the prestige or actual abilities and the natives didn’t have either the will or the power to withstand Alexander.

Now on to that. I would wage it would be physically impossible for one man to conquer India and then the nations nearer the Pacific Coast.

Why? Cavaignac has estimated the population of India at the era of Sandrakottos, shortly after Alexander's death, to 40-45,000,000 people. Achaemenid Persia at the time featured a population of 50,000,000 people. The entire Indian Peninsula was another Persian Empire to conquer, only that this time the enemy was not unified but splintered between a multitude of warring kingdoms, and Alexander was in charge of a vastly superior launch pad for this campaign, the actual Persian Empire with its infinite wealth and resources and manpower, which could be assimilated in the Macedonian warfare as the program of the 30,000 Epigonoi showed.

I dont think Alexander could have conquered China and held onto India and Afghanistan which were very tribal and independent.

For all their tribalism and sense of independence nor Afghans neither Indians revolted after his death. Probably because he had spent 3 years reducing all fortified settlements of the former to dust and massacred tens of thousands of the latter in a single campaign (80,000 around Sindimana, 17,000 plus 70,000 hostages in Patala if we go by Arrian).

His supply lines would have been too far overstretched.

Why? He had built a multitude of military and trade posts in Bactria and Sogdiana to safeguard his lines for the invasion of India and he also had made sure to take on his side a number of local rulers in advance, like Taxiles. There is no reason to assume he would have abandoned the search for potential allies and friendly grounds as the campaign progressed and it never seems to have bothered Alexander or anyone in the army that their supply lines had been overstretched. He did not need trace them back to Pella, just the easternmost parts of the Empire.

I believe he could have adapted to fighting the tribal nomadic warriors in the desert.

He could and he did so in Baktria and Sogdiana, the terrain there consisting essentially of two patterns, huge mountain ranges and large deserts in between them. Fuller characterized this series of campaigns as "the pinnacle of Alexander’s generalship".

Italy was like Greece except they didnt fight a devastating 30 war between all the city states. So Italy would have been far tougher if the states united against Alexander.

That's true and what would have been more troublesome for Alex is that Italy could raise armies from a vastly larger pool of manpower. But the problem of Italy is that unlike Greece, where in certain places decent cavalry, archers and light infantry was furnished, it was completely devoid of any formidable specialist units other than heavy infantry: no good cavalry, no archers, no good javelineers, no horse-archers, no elephants, nothing. That's what allowed a lesser general like Pyrrhus (or Xanthippus) and a lesser army like that of Hannibal (or Xanthippus) to repeatedly beat the Romans. And Alexander was better than Hannibal (for Pyrrhus it goes without saying) and commanded a larger, more experienced, more balanced and better motivated army than Pyrrhus.

If they didnt and Alexander was able to fight them independently then he would have been able to expand as far north as maybe the rubicon but then would get bogged down with the Boii and gauls would would attack Alexanders rear when he went after Siciliy and Carthage.

Perhaps they would, perhaps they wouldn't. They didn't attack Rome's flanks and rear, when they were after Sicily and Carthage in the 1st Punic War or when they were preoccupied with Pyrrhus, did they? In case they did descent upon Alex, an offer of gold and valuables would have probably been enough to repel them, I think, as Gallic raid always revolved around bounty and loot, not pursuit of political goals. This simple trick worked on numerous occasions for the Byzies.

So the question is if Alexander could have done all this, prob could have if he had the manpower.

He did. He had the infinite numbers of Persians at his disposal to train them in the Macedonian fashion, as in the case of the Epigonoi, and should he or his native Macs not have a liking for this, he had enough gold to hire the entire Greece as mercenaries.

Italy and Carthage were not Persia, they were not poorly train fighters who were tribal and only followed one person a Great King.

Actually the civic Carthaginian army was crap, never distinguished itself in a single battle and always needed to be bolstered with, if not completely substituted by poorly trained and equipped tribal Celtic, Iberian and Numidian warriors, who only followed one person, whom they were paid by.
The Italian infantry were also poorly trained conscripts before Marius's reforms, seeking to make up for this with constant battle-hardness and experience from former campaigns, but this depended heavily on the individual and was never a frequent occurrence before the period of the Second Punic war and a few subsequent decades. Their difference with the Persian infantry was their superior equipment, organized array (maniples) and excellent motivation(yearning for virtus). But the lack of decent Italian cavalry made them more vulnerable to flanking and encircling maneuvers.

So unlike Persia where Alexander only needed to kill the king or rout him to win the battle and eventually the war Alexander would have to fight devastating battles to win in Italy and Carthage which had a navy.

Killing or routing the king is easier said than done. The battle-plan of Gaugamela is more complex both in conception and application than those of the battles of Cannae, Tunis or Asculum. Headed by king or democratically elected general alike, even the toughest army will collapse when attacked from the flanks and the rear. In battles between Alex and the Romans(or Carthaginians) victory would have been determined by cavalry, the domain where Alex's army was king, and that is excluding possible additions of excellent heavy/proto-cataphract Persian cavalry and Hyrkanian/Baktrian/Scythian horse-archers. One could assume heavy losses for Alex's phalanx, as Pyrrhus (but not Xanthippus) would suffer later, but at the head of a vast empire Alex was perfectly capable of replenishing his losses, whereas a lacking strong home-base Pyrrhus was not.


To conclude, my estimation is that after conquering and effectively consolidating his position as ruler of the Persian Empire, Alexander would have conquered any place on earth he would set his eyes on, provided he wouldn't get killed in battle while trying. Granted its practically unlimited resources and manpower, his military success would be certain, a conviction of mine dictated by the fact that in 13 years of campaigning he fought against all types of enemies in all types of terrain, in all types battlefields and in all types of warfare and he excelled every single time. But it would have made no difference at the end, because it would have taken a man of the same caliber to secure such extreme territorial holdings and prevent a future course of events, as it unraveled in actual history.

[conon394]

Timoleon

I don't disagree with most of what you posted - in fact I agree the only reason the Mongol empire is bigger is that Alex had such a short life, but one thing...

I do think Alexander faced a real test if he had not died in that I believe Antipater, Athens and Anatolia were more or least in the initial stages of a conspiracy against Alexander before his death. The outright rebellion of Antipater would be difficult test for Alex and might well draw away the key Macedonian commanders he depended on (Craterus for example was not making good time in replacing Antipater).

If Alexander did succeed in dealing with the nascent challenge from Macedonia and Greece under Antipater and Athens et. al. I don't see any reason he would not easily clean up around the Med. All in all if he would than be ready for a renewed adventure in India and no doubt relish the opportunity to face Chandragupta.

[Phoebus]

Timoleon, I think you phrased your argument excellently and eloquently. That having been said, I think the real challenege to Alexander's progress eastwards would have come from terrain rather than a battlefield enemy. The further one progresses through southeastern Asia, the more challenging terrain and logistics become. While Bactria, Sogdiana, etc., certainly posed difficulties to Alexander's armies, it's worth remembering that only a single trip is described as providing more hardship to the Macedonians than the Indian campaigns--that of the deadly Gedrosian desert. The monsoons, alien fauna and flora, sicknesses, etc., that so affected Macedonian health and morale (IMHO, moreso than the supposed manpower of the Nanda kingdom) would have remained ever-present throughout the ongoing journey to the east.

A lot also has to be said for the psychology and motivation behind the campaign. Was Alexander an incurable romantic, a cold-hearted conqueror, or a little of both (and more)? I, personally, do believe that there's something true behind his supposed motivation to reach Ocean. I also believe that he (mistakenly) believed that Ocean was far, far closer than it actually was. Upon reaching the eastern extremis of India and arriving to the conclusion that modern day Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Viet-Nam, etc., still needed to be conquered prior to his seeing Ocean... would he still hold to the same tune?

I'm not sure that he would. I also don't think he would be able to convince either himself or his troops* that "the juice was worth the squeeze."

* I suspect that the complete "180" the terrain and climate of India and, further, SE Asia offered to anyone from Bactria and on west played a role on the direction of growth of the Persian empires, and thus feel that Asiatic troops recruited from his holdings would be no more happy to campaign there than the Macedonians. With the exception of Indian allies, of course.

Where the other targets some posters mentioned are concerned?... I trust Arrian more than Diodorus. The latter paints the more extravagant of intended adventures: a pyramid for Philip, the conquest of Carthage, plans to avenge his eponymous relative's defeat at Rome's hands (if I recall correctly), etc. The former, though, strikes me as more realistic. His Alexander is easily reconciled with the city-builder and promoter of great works. We see a might fleet built to facilitate conquest and trade along the modern-day Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean; engineering works meant to drain swamps and improve rivers; the (very sound) program to introduce a new Royal Army (which also--brilliantly--served to reduce the numbers of potential future rebels and to de-facto Hellenize large numbers of his subjects); etc.

I see Alexander consolidating his empire and cleaning house for a couple of years, or, at the least, the expansion of his holdings being much slower and focused in a more narrow direction. I imagine any hostilities taking place around future Arabic holdings and/or the Indian frontier (with the latter aiming more toward consolidation and security)... both to facilitate trade and to give his Epigonoi some experience at blood-letting. I don't see Alexander moving westward (Rome, Carthage) until either give him an "excuse" to do so. Tarentine's reasoning for Pyrrhus to move to Italy forty-something years later could work just as well for him much earlier on in the timeline. Carthaginian mercantile challenges could likewise provide similar motivation.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Well, the poor guy already died of typhus or malaria or somthing similar, which he contracted in India (some say he was poisoned, but I dont see a motive or a suspect). So I think its safe to say had he continued most of his veterans, who were just as vulnerable to it as he was, would have met the same fate, and he would have died an obscure and tragic death the jungles of India instead of in his palace in Babylon.

[Niles Crane]

We would instead be asking "If Alexander had turned back".

[Phoebus]

Well, the poor guy already died of typhus or malaria or somthing similar, which he contracted in India (some say he was poisoned, but I dont see a motive or a suspect). So I think its safe to say had he continued most of his veterans, who were just as vulnerable to it as he was, would have met the same fate, and he would have died an obscure and tragic death the jungles of India instead of in his palace in Babylon.

Alexander suffered crucial injuries in India--possibly a lung injury, depending on who you like to read. Such an injury--in conjunction with other hardships and injuries suffered throughout one's lifetime--may very well compromise long-term health prospects. So what you propose has merits on paper.

Things is, though, Alexander's pace of activities before and after his injuries do not suggest that he suffered from the sort debilitating sickness you propose would not have been able to fight at Hydaspes or storm citadels at Mali. And then, we have to consider his activities after India. Could someone suffering from typhus or malaria make it through the crossing of Gedrosia?

If Alexander did die of sickness (something I find eminently plausible, as the combination of his potentially compromised health with an unhealthy--read, excessive drinking--lifestyle and psychological issues plaguing him would have left him vulnerable), it's something he contracted after he got out of Gedrosia.

Oh, there are academics who will ascribe motives aplenty to poisoning Alexander. Most of them point to Antipater, in fear that Olympias had him marked for death and being recalled from his office, sending Cassander to do the deed.

Personally, I don't see it. Olympias' complaints centered around her own quarrels with Alexander's sister, Cleopatra, who found herself forced to move from Molossis (where the two had been) to the Macedonian court. Antipater gave her refuge, and that's as much as I can recall of his "mischief" and "spreading discontent". While it would have struck Antipater as patently obvious that Alexander was replacing him with Craterus, I don't see how he would have thought that he was being recalled to defend his life from impending execution.

Besides, how realistic would any charges of treason be against Antipater? Alexander and his lieutenants alike would have known he couldn't hope for a political or military victory over them. Antipater's forces and resources were paltry compared to Alexander's. Antipater would have to be insane to think he could seriously contend with such an enemy. Nothing regarding his actions later indicates a man not in control of his faculties.

Sure, there were rumors. Just as there were rumors that Alexander and/or Olympias had a hand in Philip's death. People always talk.

But I'm just rambling at this point!

[A Demented Goldfish]

If Roman did not become Greek first.

If alexander the great didn't turn back his uncle would have taken rome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_I_of_Epirus

[Emperor Napolean Bonaparte IX]

There would be thousands of cities named Alexaidra

[Hookah Smoking Caterpiller]

There would be thousands of cities named Alexaidra

There already are, Just that only one is still inhabited and uses the name Alexandria.