Death of Alexander the Great
Wednesday June 10, 2009
Macedonian Empire Under Alexander the Great © Clipart.com
What killed Alexander is still open to debate. An article claiming Alexander the Great could have died of West Nile Virus looks at the type of evidence most historians would overlook, including the fact that there is a swamp near where Alexander died that could have been the breeding grounds for insect-borne diseases. In The Death of Alexander the Great, Paul Doherty looks very carefully at the historical evidence and then concludes that Alexander died from arsenic poisoning.
Comments
Don’t we just looooove conspiracies? I prefer the conclusion of Andrew Michael Chugg of “The Quest for the Tomb of Alexander the Great” http://www.alexanderstomb.com/main/index.html who states that Alexander probably died from falciparum malaria. Mr. Doherty comes across as a man wanting to sell books rather than as a serious researcher.
I would just love to quote all of the eyewitness primary sources directly, but am having getting these on the web.Any suggestions?
Most of them you may have to buy or check out of a library. Here’s a list of sources: http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/alexandersources/p/alexandersource.htm Even though they wrote after him, they had access to better material than we have. Jona Lendering explains in the good sources on Alexander.