Alexander the Great in alternate history

July 21, 2020 9:50 AM

Are there any good alternate history treatments of what might have unfolded had Alexander the Great not died in 323 B.C.E. at Babylon when he was just 33? Thanks!
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

This was the subject of one of the chapters in What If?: The World's Foremost Historians Imagine What Might Have Been.
posted by theodolite at 12:09 PM on July 21, 2020

Well, it's probably not what you were looking for, but there's Alexander X by Edward Savio which is alternate history but I can't go further without spoilers. Kindle and also audio book narrated by Wil Wheaton.
posted by forthright at 3:24 PM on July 21, 2020

"What If?" looks interesting, though amusingly, it's exactly the opposite of what I was looking for: Alexander dying even earlier than he had! It does mention, though, that Arnold Toynbee wrote a chapter called, "If Alexander the Great Had Lived On?"

An author named Periklis Deligiannis has also written a novel on the subject, though it's in Greek.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 5:36 PM on July 21, 2020

I had a look in Uchronia, which is a website that lists alternate histories, and found the Toynbee as well, along with this and this. Interestingly the last link references a section in Livy that deals with this, and it's suggested that this is the first known attempt at imagining alternate histories.
posted by Chairboy at 2:29 AM on July 22, 2020

Ah yes, good find! Mary Beard discusses Livy's take in SPQR. He concluded that (perhaps as a bit of a homer) the Romans would have beaten Alexander.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 10:12 AM on July 22, 2020

This is discussed in passing in the background of S.M. Stirling's "Conquistador", in which a parallel world is found where Europeans never conquered America. This is explained by Alexander living long enough to create a strong empire from Spain to India which is strong enough to turn the great barbarian migrations/invasions away to the east. The novel mostly takes place in this alternate America, so there's little direct discussion of Alexander, it's just implicit in the setting.
posted by yggdrasil at 12:25 PM on July 22, 2020