What killed Alexander the Great?
What I take from this article is that we still don’t know what killed Alexander the Great, whose death puzzled me so much in the Richard Burton film I saw as a child. And I doubt we will ever know.
But one surprising thing (to me, anyway) I did learn from the article was that there actually is a river Styx:
Now called Mavroneri, “Black Water,” the Styx originates in the high mountains of Achaia, Greece. Its cold waters cascade over a limestone crag to form the second highest waterfall in Greece.
“Unfortunately, the geochemistry of the river has not yet been studied by modern scientists; therefore, there is no scientific data to support the plausible and interesting calicheamicin [toxic poison] theory [of Alexander’s death],” Walter D’Alessandro, hydro-geochemist at the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Palermo, told Discovery News…
Alexander fell ill at one of many all-night drinking parties in Babylon, in modern Iraq, crying out from a “sudden, sword-stabbing agony in the liver.” The overlord of an empire stretching from Greece to India, was taken to bed with abdominal pain and a very high fever.
Over the next 12 days, he worsened. Alexander could only move his eyes and hands and was unable to speak. He later fell into a coma.
So I guess that the Richard Burton film version was an example of poetic license, because he utters some dying words in it—after all, if you’ve got an actor with a voice like Burton, you want to make the most of it. But looking back on the scene now, I’d say that the script comes down rather heavily on the idea that it was hubris that did Alexander the Great in:
[NOTE: And then there’s the mystery of another demise: that of the Library of Alexandria, in Alexander’s namesake Egyptian city. It was another event that troubled me when I was young—all those books (actually, scrolls) lost! The answer is similar: we don’t know, but we’ve got theories.]
Mary Renault in, I believe, “The Persian Boy”, about Alexander, had a suffix in which she vigorously contradicted the drinking theory.
Yep and don’t forget the great Lighthouse of Alexandria. One of the Wonders of the ancient world.
As boys my younger brother and I spent alot of over-and-over-and-over time in, “Richard Haliburton’s Book of Marvels”. Loved it and its 7-wonders, etc. Bet there’s no RH app. on them i-Thingies.(-:
According to Obama & Co. it was Busssh.
Alexander reportedly clutched at his liver in great pain and hung around for twelve days before he died. He was a heavy drinker…I mean, a really, really heavy drinker…when he wasn’t killing people he was drinking, and a lot. Heavy drinker–liver pain. I can see a possible theory struggling to get out here.
As to Alexander himself, I can’t do better than the unjustly forgotten Will Cuppy:
Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous.1 He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time.2 He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?
As Cuppy points out, he had people executed for saying that he was *not* the product of sexual intercourse between a woman and a snake.
Alex.
V.D. Hanson likens Alexander to a Nazi, in terms of how he handled internal matters and how he attacked everybody he could find on a map.
Then, being a clear-eyed classicist, he also likens the Spartans to Nazis, with their helot slaves who were to be occasionally culled by the youth to “blood” them.
I say “Neener.” I say Styx not stones may float my bones but calicheamicin can never hurt me!
There is a really great but virtually unknown movie that deals with the destruction of the library in Alexandria, “Agora”. The main protagonist is the pagan philosopher and mathematician Hypathia, played by Rachel Weicz. Since it could be interpreted as anti-Christian and deals with science and math it never found much of an audience. Nonetheless the camera work and story are among the best I’ve seen.
Five stars, strongly recommend.
Why does the an anti-Christian attitude mean the move never found an audience? What Hollywood movie doesn’t have an anti-Christian message?
And really, given the diluted meaning of what is Christian, the term anti-Christian makes as little sense as Christian. But still, we all know what it means, really, don’t we. Christian, as that which offends modernity, is heterosexuality and property.
Love Rachel Weicz. She is superb.
I’ve seen “Agora,” Bob. I agree. It is a very good movie. If I recall, the filmmakers tried to balance the anti-Christian slant with some heavy Christian persecution by the Pagans.
I read an article that argued that Hypathia did not make the technological discoveries as shown in the film, but was rather a theoretical mathematician. I wish I could point to the article. I read too dang much good stuff on the internet, and forget too much to notate where I found it.
There is a need to understand what Greeks have seen as “heavy drinking”. For starter, all their vines were products of natural fermentation, because distillation was not discovered until 16 century. They also did not added sugar to them, because they had no sugar. And honey was banned to add to vines. So, they drunk only dry vines with 11% of alcohol maximum. Second, they always diluted vines with water by half. To do otherwise was rendered vulgar and barbaric. (Drinking undiluted vines was called “drink Scythian”.) Nobody can get liver cirrhosis from drinking 5.5% alcohol even in abundant quantities. And clinical picture of his disease has nothing to do with cirrhosis, it is of acute poisoning and hepatic coma. Hepatic cancer is also a probability. See “Death of Ivan Il’ich” by Leo Tolstoy.
sergey
You’re probably right, but recall that A was Macedonian. Not a proper, civilized Greek. Might have been a barbarian in his cups.
It has been speculated that there were Scribes at the Library sent from Rome to copy the text when it was learned the Muslim were entering the city. The Scribes gathered as much of the books and scrolls as they could, which was reportedly a most of the writings and fled. Some of the books were hidden in Jerusalem and some were taken to Rome. During the Occupation of the Temple Mount by the Knights Templar the portion of the library hidden there was rediscovered and taken back to France. This led to the technology that made the building of the 7 Great Cathedrals possible and possible led to the creation of the Free Masons. The collection that made it back to Rome was hidden by the Church and leaked slowly to the College of Science in Rome, which Galileo was a member of, and led to the Renaissance. The Muslims did destroy the building but the Library was gone. Europe flourished and the Muslims slowly fell back into tribal existence. If I was to guess I would say a majority of the writings are now housed in the Vatican Library. The portion that was found by the Templars; there is a very, very private bank in Geneva led by a family with a very shadowy past that showed up around the time of the French persecution of the Templars in 1307. But that’s another story
Knowing the unknowable is a tougher.
I have a theory about the Templars. It’s really cool.
Phillip the Fair–meaning good looking, not a good guy–persecuted the Templars to get their riches.
The Templars at the time were a financial house as well as their other activities, but lending at interest–usury–was a sin/crime for Christians.
So their paperwork may have been, “Owe the Screwloose of Toulose 5000 ducats May 1, 1333,”without mentioning S of T had given them 4000.
“Earl of Loamshire owes us 3000 ducats” without mentioning they’d given the E of L 2500.
If you think about it, “ninety days same as cash” is a loan without interest but the diff is built into the price. But not an interest-bearing note which would be a sin/crime.
And Phillip the Fair and his croneys were too dumb to think the Templars’ treasure was pieces of parchment, looking instead for gold.
Well, it’s fun to speculate without facts.
If you want to really appreciate Burton, I recommend Equus. A dark, anti-Christian movie of sort, I grant (though, its issues aren’t unfair — being about repression associated with some followers of Christianity), but an incredible performance by him.
The lead of the young boy got recent attention when Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) played the part on stage (it requires full frontal nudity… and note that for the movie, too…)
But Burton puts in one of the best performances of his career as the psychologist tasked with “curing” the boy of his problems, and his own self-doubts about the repercussions of doing that.