Death of Alexander the Great

Proposed causes of Alexander's death include alcoholic liver disease, fever, and strychnine poisoning, but little data support those versions.

[14] According to the University of Maryland School of Medicine report of 1998, Alexander probably died of typhoid fever[15] (which, along with malaria, was common in ancient Babylon).

[15] According to David W. Oldach from the University of Maryland Medical Center, Alexander also had "severe abdominal pain, causing him to cry out in agony".

According to Andrew N. Williams and Robert Arnott, in his last days Alexander was unable to speak, which was due to a previous injury to his neck during the Siege of Cyropolis.

[18] According to author Andrew Chugg, there is evidence Alexander died of malaria, having contracted it two weeks before the onset of illness while sailing in the marshes to inspect flood defences.

[citation needed] Throughout the centuries suspicions of possible poisoning have fallen on a number of alleged perpetrators, including one of Alexander's wives, his generals, his illegitimate half-brother or the royal cup-bearer.

[24] The poisoning version is featured particularly in the politically motivated Liber de Morte Testamentoque Alexandri (The Book On the Death and Testament of Alexander), which tries to discredit the family of Antipater.

[25] This theory was also advanced by Justin in his Historia Philippicae et Totius Mundi Origines et Terrae Situs where he stated that Antipater murdered Alexander by feeding him a poison so strong that it "could be conveyed [only] in the hoof of a horse.".

The article was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Clinical Toxicology and suggested that if Alexander was poisoned, Veratrum album offers the most plausible cause.

[27][28] This theory is supported by the writings of the Ancient Greek historian Diodorus, who had recorded Alexander becoming "stricken with pain after drinking a large bowl of wine"[29] at a banquet hosted by one of his officers, Medius of Larissa.

However, historian Robin Lane Fox has argued that allegations of poisoning are "technically implasuible"[6] given the length of time between Alexander's first reported symptoms and his death.

"[6] Epidemiologist John Marr and Charles Calisher put forward the West Nile fever as the possible cause of Alexander's death.

This version was deemed "fairly compelling" by University of Rhode Island epidemiologist Thomas Mather, who nonetheless noted that the West Nile virus tends to kill the elderly or those with weakened immune systems.

When Alexander's symptoms were entered into databases of the Global Infectious Disease Epidemiology Network, influenza gained the highest probability (41.2%) on the list of differential diagnoses.

Some believe that as Alexander fell ill in his final days, he suffered from progressive epidural spinal cord compression, which left him quadriplegic.

[40] One ancient account reports that the planning and construction of an appropriate funerary cart to convey the body out from Babylon took two years from the time of Alexander's death.

Dying Alexander, copy of a 2nd-century BC sculpture, National Art Museum of Azerbaijan.
With an effort he looked at them as they passed
The poisoning of Alexander depicted in the 15th century romance The History of Alexander's Battles , J1 version. NLW MS Pen.481D
"The Funeral of Iskandar," Folio from a Shahnama (Persian Book of Kings). Stories of Alexander's life and death detailed throughout his reign as ruler over the Persian empire.
Funeral of Iskander (Alexander): pallbearers carry his coffin draped with brocaded silk and his turban at one end. In Nizami 's version Iskandar fell ill and died near Babylon. Because it was believed he had been poisoned, no antidotes could revive him.