[dramatic music]
- Tonight, the suspicious death of a legendary leader.
- Alexander did more in 10 years
than other people do in lifetimes.
- He basically creates the largest empire
the world has ever seen.
- After all these years of campaigning and severe wounds,
he makes it back to Babylon
and then suddenly dies.
- Historians are still baffled
by what happened in the last few weeks of Alexander's life.
- He begins to see strange omens that convince him
that his days are numbered.
- Alexander sees enemies everywhere
and he drowns his fears in the bottom of a wine cup.
- Now we'll explore the top theories
surrounding the unsolved death
of one of history's most celebrated figures.
- It would only take a small drop in his cup of wine
for it to all be over.
- Alexander fails to name a successor
and that may have cost him his life.
- Whatever killed Alexander,
it sure doesn't look like a natural death.
- Who or what killed Alexander the Great?
[uplifting music]
323 BCE,
Alexander the Great lies on his deathbed in Babylon,
present-day Iraq.
His generals file past him
for a final glimpse of their king.
After all they've achieved,
it's hard to believe
that their seemingly invincible leader is dying.
- [Darel] Alexander was surely the most famous person
of ancient times.
He was feared, he was powerful, and he could be brutal,
but he was also highly educated and philosophical,
and that's what made him such an interesting figure.
- [Robert] Alexander the Great comes
from the Greek kingdom of Macedonia,
and during the fourth century BCE,
he basically rules over all of the city-states in this area.
- [Hugo] The biggest arch rival of the Macedonians
is the Persian Empire.
At this time, the Greek city states are reeling
from a violent attack from the Persians a few years earlier,
and so Alexander is now out for revenge.
- [Laurence] His plan,
to assemble the largest army Greece has ever seen
and march straight into enemy territory.
- One thing that a lot of people might not realize
is that Alexander, at least initially,
is actually the underdog.
Although he has a highly trained army,
they are tiny in comparison to the Persian army.
- [Hugo] What Alexander has in his favor
is that he's an expert at rallying troops
from all across these Greek kingdoms.
He's also someone who's a cunning military strategist.
- [Laurence] Alexander's army defeats Persia in 331 BCE,
and he's just getting started.
- In 10 years,
he conquers about two million square miles of territory.
It is the greatest empire
that had ever been seen at that time.
- [Darel] But as Alexander conquers this vast territory,
he changes,
he becomes removed from his own soldiers.
He begins to dress differently,
wearing luxurious robes and the crown of a Persian king
and even begins to think of himself as a God.
- [Laurence] But in 324 BCE,
a tragic event brings Alexander down to earth.
- [Hugo] Alexander's army is marching east
when his close friend Hephaestion falls ill.
Now, Alexander calls his doctor
and demands that he make Hephaestion well,
threatening him if he doesn't.
- [Nicola] After about a week,
Hephaestion rallies, he seems to be getting better.
And when they present him with some food,
he immediately starts going into convulsions and he dies.
For Alexander, this tears him apart.
He's so overcome with grief
that he falls down on Hephaestion's body.
He clings to his corpse for days
until the generals manage to wrench him off.
- [Laurence] After the funeral,
the Greek army continues marching west towards Babylon,
the empire's new capital.
But Alexander remains grief-stricken
and now obsessed with his own mortality.
- [Darel] As Alexander is returning
to the city of Babylon, right before entering the city,
they see ravens fighting in the sky
and several of them drop dead right at his feet.
Now, the actions of birds are often seen
as an omen of future events,
and having them fighting and dying is seen as a bad omen,
which made him paranoid.
- [Hugo] He acquires a seer,
to have an animal sacrifice performed,
and the goal is to find out from the insides of the animal
what your fate will be.
Well, the seer notes that death is lurking
for someone powerful inside Babylon,
and Alexander is convinced
that he's the person this omen is meant for.
- [Laurence] Once inside the city walls,
Alexander seeks distraction from his growing fears.
He finds it in alcohol.
- [Adam] By the time they get to Babylon,
the army, or at least what's left of it,
are in a celebratory mood.
And so we're talking about a lot of partying,
drinking fests going on for days, weeks even,
and Alexander is fully immersed in this.
- For the Greeks, everything was a chance to have a contest.
The king has to be best,
he has to be the best fighter, the best hunter,
and he needs to be the best drinker.
And so Alexander would get involved sometimes
in these drinking contests,
and they were imbibing a fair amount of alcohol.
- At one of these parties,
Alexander consumes this massive bowl of wine,
and almost immediately after doing so,
he gets these acute abdominal pains, doubles over,
and a really high fever.
- [Robert] All of the advisors are beginning
to get a little worried
because they've just fought to create this great kingdom
and Alexander the Great doesn't have an heir.
And they all wanna know who's gonna take over
in the event that Alexander dies.
- They ask him over and over again,
"Who is gonna be your successor?"
And for the most part, he just refuses to answer them.
Finally, with one small breath, he says, "To the strongest."
- [Laurence] Not long after,
the great conqueror dies
without any official pronouncement
of what did him in.
- [Darel] After all these years of campaigning and severe wounds
and all the stress and the exhaustion,
here he makes it back to Babylon and then suddenly dies.
One potential cause, therefore,
might have been all that partying and drinking.
[dramatic music]
- [Adam] As Alexander and his army move east,
he becomes increasingly paranoid
that someone might try to assassinate him.
One of the ways that he deals with this paranoia
is by drinking.
- Alexander's fear grows
after an assassination attempt that involved Philotas,
the son of Parmenio, one of his closest advisors.
- Apparently Philotas had known
that there was a conspiracy afoot.
He had heard rumors,
and yet he did not report this to Alexander.
- [Nicola] Alexander gets wind of the assassination plot
and he goes absolutely ballistic.
He has Philotas killed
and he actually has Parmenio killed too.
And Parmenio is really an innocent bystander in this.
It's his son, but he doesn't know anything
about this assassination plot.
- [Darel] This means that no one is safe.
Anybody could be implicated in a conspiracy,
anybody could be killed.
- [Laurence] From this point on,
Alexander is said to experience
uncontrollable fits of anger and remorse,
usually followed by drinking binges that last days
and sometimes turn deadly.
- Alexander the Great has a friend named Cleitus,
one of his companions in battle,
who actually saved Alexander's life several times.
Cleitus is trying to give him some advice
and he says, "Now that you've defeated the Persians,
you should be following the Macedonian traditional customs
and not these Persian customs."
And Alexander gets so mad
that he actually takes a pike
and runs it through Cleitus and kills him.
- Alexander, though, is immediately distraught,
he can't believe what he's done.
He locks himself in his room for several days.
He calls himself a murderer,
feeling tremendous guilt and shame.
- Modern people would look at this and say,
this is classic alcoholic behavior.
We're talking about drinking leads to violence,
leads to grief, to shame.
He is volatile,
he is dangerous,
and for anyone around him,
they risk his wrath simply by saying the wrong thing.
- [Laurence] Now in Babylon with little to occupy his time
and many of his closest companions dead,
Alexander's unrestrained drinking consumes him.
- [Robert] Very few of his advisors wanna stop him
for fear of losing their own heads,
but his doctors do come in and say,
"Look, you have to stop drinking alcohol here.
Just drink some water."
- [Darel] Instead of getting better,
Alexander is spiraling downward.
And even though he's tremendously thirsty,
he wants more wine.
- [Hugo] Consuming excessive amounts of alcohol
without ever drinking water can lead to a condition
that's called acute necrotizing pancreatitis.
This is a condition where the pancreas rots
as it's overwhelmed with alcohol,
and so this can lead to pain,
it can lead to paralysis,
and ultimately death.
- [Laurence] For many scholars,
alcohol poisoning remains the most likely cause
of Alexander's slow and agonizing death,
but others say it's not so simple.
- [Robert] It could have been
that Alexander the Great drank himself to death,
but maybe it wasn't something that Alexander did to himself,
maybe something malicious took place.
- 323 BCE.
Alexander the Great,
one of the ancient world's most victorious leaders,
is dead at 32.
As soon as the news is announced,
accusations fly about who is responsible.
- [Adam] If anyone could have seen Alexander's death coming,
it might have been him.
In fact, in his final years,
he sees plots everywhere,
and so if someone were to kill him,
they would have to be within his very small circle
of trusted confidants.
- Very few Macedonian kings died of old age in their beds.
Most of them died with their boots on
and some of them died from assassination,
so conspiracies against the king certainly weren't uncommon.
- The reality, though, is it's really hard to murder a king,
especially one who's doing everything they can
to protect themselves from precisely that outcome.
Even Alexander's own trusted advisors
were having trouble accessing him.
- There's really only one person
who would be able to get that close to him,
that's the person who shares his bed chamber.
- [Laurence] While fighting n Bactria,
near present-day Afghanistan,
Alexander becomes infatuated with Roxana,
the beautiful daughter of a defeated king.
- Scholars have debated
about exactly what she means for Alexander,
with many saying that in fact she was the love of his life.
Alternatively, she could have just been a pawn
in a political game to cement an alliance.
In either case, Roxana is incredibly ruthless
and capable in her own right.
- [Robert] You have to think through her eyes for a second.
Alexander has just defeated her father and her family,
and now he's literally taking her as his wife,
so she doesn't necessarily like this arrangement.
And then he's got this best friend, Hephaestion,
and maybe she's a little jealous of him.
- For many years, Hephaestion is Alexander's closest friend
and probably his lover.
And when Hephaestion falls ill,
Alexander brings his doctors in to try to treat him,
he gets better temporarily,
but then when he consumes a meal,
he suddenly convulses and dies.
- [Laurence] Some historians remain convinced
that these details point to one thing, poison.
- [Hugo] According to some scholars,
there was only one person in Alexander's innermost circle
who would have had the nerve
to have actually executed someone like Hephaestion,
that would've been Roxana.
- [Adam] She has the know-how and the access,
and so perhaps she poisoned his friend
to secure her position.
If she's willing to do that,
then what's to stop her from poisoning Alexander?
[dramatic music]
- [Darel] Alexander and Roxana are very close.
She travels with him everywhere.
In fact, he takes her on his subsequent campaigning
in Afghanistan and even into India.
This is very unusual,
this is not something Greeks and Macedonians do.
- Roxana poses another really important threat
to the Macedonian throne in that if she becomes pregnant,
she will produce a half-Bactrian offspring,
which could be a real legitimacy problem
for those who want him to have a purely Macedonian heir.
- [Laurence] But after the war is won
and Alexander and his wife march home,
their special bond begins to fray.
- [Adam] On his way home,
Alexander visits the Persian kingdom
in order to consolidate his territory.
While there,
he marries the daughter of the dead Persian king,
her name is Stateira.
Immediately she becomes a threat to Roxana.
Two women, both capable of producing male sons,
one of them is gonna have her son succeed, not both.
- [Laurence] Some historians theorize
that Roxana could be behind Alexander's death,
especially if the king decides that Stateira's child,
who is of more noble ancestry,
should inherit the throne and not Roxana's.
- [Robert] Let's remember that the progression
of Hephaestion's symptoms and ultimate death
are similar to Alexander's.
If it was a poisoning,
it's possible that the same poison may have been used
to kill them both.
- [Jeanne] At the time of Alexander's death,
both these women are pregnant.
And for women in a polygamous situation,
their main ties are not to their husbands,
but to their children,
that's how they stay alive.
- [Hugo] According to Plutarch,
after Alexander dies,
Roxana sends a letter to Stateira,
but she signs it under the name of Alexander.
It instructs Stateira to go to Babylon.
When she arrives,
both her and her unborn child are immediately slaughtered
and their bodies are thrown into a well
and covered with earth.
- [Laurence] It's an epic tale of jealousy and betrayal,
but to many it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
- Roxana would have a lot of trouble
going back to Greece without Alexander
because there are many native Macedonians
who could very easily take up the mantle
of Alexander's kingship,
and she would have no stake in continuing
to represent Alexander if she was alone.
- [Robert] Without the protection of Alexander,
she's a sitting duck.
And so once he's dead,
it wouldn't take much for any of the rival generals
to then turn around and have her killed.
- [Laurence] In 323 BCE,
Alexander the Great rules over an empire
that spans three continents,
but he neglects to do one final thing before he dies,
name a successor.
- [Darel] Remember, Alexander's last words
when asked to whom did he leave his empire were,
"To the strongest."
So it wouldn't be a stretch to think
that one of his close associates
would try to be the strongest, get rid of Alexander,
and take over the empire.
- [Hugo] According to several ancient sources,
Alexander's own mother has, quote, "Sound proof"
that somebody in Alexander's inner circle
was trying to poison him.
- [Laurence] One name quickly comes under suspicion.
- If anyone out there thinks that they have rightful claim
to Alexander's empire,
it would be the person who is back in Greece
essentially keeping the throne warm
while Alexander's off on his exploits.
[dramatic music]
- [Darel] While Alexander was away,
campaigning in Asia for some 11 years,
he had left Greece under the watchful eye
of a regent named Antipater.
- [Adam] Antipater came to power as one of Philip II,
Alexander's father's generals.
Antipater, in his mind,
has been running things for Alexander for the last 10 years.
He should be in power if Alexander's dead.
Alexander never saw it that way.
In his mind, Antipater's handling of
the Greek city-states
is a minor issue next to this glory
that Alexander has seized for himself in Persia.
- [Hugo] Antipater might have expected
that eventually this man will fall in battle
and that he'll have an easy path to succession.
So when Alexander conquers Babylon and Persia
and now is preparing to come back to Greece a victor,
Antipater knows that his time is running out.
- [Robert] The idea would be to do it while he's still away,
maybe while he's still celebrating, while he's weak,
while he's not paying attention,
and so the place to do this would be Babylon.
- [Adam] If Antipater is gonna make his move,
it's gotta be now.
And in fact,
with Alexander drinking himself into a bloody stupor,
now is the perfect time.
- [Laurence] But Antipater can't knock off his rival
in person,
there are too many eyes on him.
Instead, some historians believe the general sends
one of his sons to do his dirty work for him.
All it will take is a dash of poison
and Alexander never leaves Babylon.
It's a clever plan if Antipater's son can pull it off.
- Alexander, at this point, is quite paranoid
about conspiracies,
so it's gonna be pretty hard
for somebody to smuggle poison into the palace.
- [Adam] In order for this to work,
it would have to be a very small amount of a lethal poison.
This poison would have to be so potent
that it would do the job in one dose.
- [Laurence] There is an ancient poison
that perfectly fits this description.
- Alexander has a decline that moves progressively.
It begins with stomach pains,
then he begins to experience a complete lack of energy.
His heart rate slows,
then he slips into a coma and dies.
- [Nicola] Scientists and historians have come up
with one potential poison
that seems to match what it was that Alexander suffered.
It's a small plant called Veratrum album,
and a little bit of this plant goes a really long way.
All it would take would be a tiny drop of poison in his cup
and it would all be over.
- [Laurence] But there's one key symptom
Veratrum album doesn't cause,
something mentioned in nearly every account
of Alexander's death,
a high fever.
- [Hugo] Historians theorize
that another poison could have also been used.
It's a little known poison
that would account for all of Alexander's symptoms,
it also is found along the River Styx.
- [Adam] In Greek mythology,
the River Styx,
besides being a gateway to the underworld,
is also the place where the God Zeus
has all the other gods swear oaths to him.
If they lie, he makes them drink from the River Styx
and they can't speak, they can't move,
they can't do anything.
- [Laurence] Modern toxicologists believe
there's truth behind this legend.
- The River Styx is a mythological river,
but is often identified
with the Mavroneri River on the Greek Peloponnese.
And in this river there is a bacteria
that grows there called calicheamicin,
and when ingested can lead to paralysis and then death.
And one of the things about calicheamicin
is that it causes high fever.
- [Darel] It would be easy to smuggle calicheamicin
into Alexander's palace
because it's basically in the form of water,
and so bringing in a jug of water
would be completely above suspicion.
- [Adam] There's no definitive smoking gun evidence
that it was Antipater,
but his actions after Alexander's death
do suggest a certain amount of ruthlessness.
In addition to immediately
consolidating his hold on Greece,
he also summons Roxana and her son back to him,
throws them in a dungeon,
and ultimately, his henchman murder them.
- [Laurence] Not everyone agrees that Antipater would risk
sending his son and heir to the banquet,
especially considering that Alexander deeply mistrusts him.
- [Jennifer] All of our major sources on Alexander's death
acknowledge this rumor that Antipater is somehow involved,
but it's very difficult to disentangle
what is the truth and what isn't
because the struggles between Alexander's generals
in the division of his empire following his death.
- [Jeanne] In the successor wars,
it got so incredibly nasty.
You wanted to blacken the name of your opponents,
and so this appears to have been a story that is fostered
by another side in this fight.
- While the citizens of Greece are shocked
by Alexander the Great's sudden death,
the king had feared it for years.
By the time he arrives in Babylon in 323 BCE,
Alexander is so paranoid
that the list of people who can get close to him
is very short.
At the top of that list is his most trusted friend,
and some say the man with the most to gain
by getting his king out of the way.
- [Darel] One of Alexander's closest associates is Ptolemy.
He had grown up with Alexander,
been educated with him, trained with him,
and he was there by his side through the whole campaign.
- [Robert] This was a general that Alexander trusted,
he was essentially his right-hand man.
So maybe Ptolemy is thinking to himself,
if anybody's gonna take over, it's gonna be me.
- Alexander treats him like a brother,
so if he's the one who's behind this suspicious death,
Alexander would never have even seen it coming.
[dramatic music]
- [Laurence] Ptolemy's insider knowledge of future campaigns
may give him a strong motive for ending Alexander's reign.
After a decade of relentless war,
Ptolemy and his army have had enough.
- [Jennifer] Alexander and his men saw everything
you could possibly imagine over the course of this decade,
arid desert, famine, monsoons,
winter in the mountains,
and it would have worn these men down
to an unimaginable degree.
- Once they get to India,
Alexander wants to keep going,
but his men have other ideas.
In fact, they mutiny, refusing to go further.
In a rage, Alexander says he's just gonna leave them behind.
If they don't follow him,
he's gonna keep going and take all of the glory for himself.
- [Nicolas] Once Alexander realizes that even his
own generals don't want to continue the campaign,
he retreats into his tent for three days.
- [Hugo] When he comes back out,
he tells everyone that he's communicated with the gods
and they have told him that it is unwise to advance further.
- [Darel] Of course, this allows Alexander to save face.
He doesn't have to say, well, I gave into the troops,
they made me turn back,
no, it was the gods who did this.
- [Robert] So now they're back in Babylon.
They've conquered everything that you can,
all of Western Asia.
They've watched a lot of their friends, their comrades, die
and they wanna go home.
- [Darel] Unfortunately for his soldiers,
Alexander is not finished.
He doesn't want to just go home,
he wants to embark on another huge campaign,
he wants to invade Arabia,
and no one is particularly eager to do that.
- It might be at this point that a man like Ptolemy steps in
if only to save the army from the commander.
Already the men are broken,
they don't wanna move on,
but Alexander does.
This is the time to put a stop to all of this.
- [Robert] So the idea would be that maybe Ptolemy used a poison
that wasn't super potent,
but that killed over a longer period of time.
And a poison that acted in this way
that was readily available is arsenic.
- [Hugo] Arsenic is found in soil and rock
all over the world.
It's tasteless and it's odorless.
It's a poison that works in a very generalized manner
across the body,
and so people will see physical symptoms,
but not necessarily be able to trace it to one cause.
- [Nicola] An interesting thing about arsenic
is that it gets into the tissues
and it slows the process of decomposition.
And one thing that the ancient sources say
is that Alexander's body took a very long time to decay.
- [Adam] But one has to wonder whether Ptolemy,
who is obviously traveling on campaign like Alexander
in much greater comfort than an ordinary soldier,
would've murdered his friend
just because the army had lost the will to fight.
- [Laurence] Ancient historians suggest
that a more personal motivation
may be behind Ptolemy's desire to kill his king.
- [Hugo] Alexander has never named a successor,
and there's a question of who is going to follow him
if anything happens to him on the field of battle.
Ptolemy might well have wanted to ensure
that he was the person who would take over.
- [Laurence] Some believe Ptolemy's actions
immediately after Alexander's death
suggest he played a role in the king's demise.
- [Jennifer] The body of Alexander becomes
a really important ideological tool,
and so his successors fight over his body as a way to show
that they are the real chosen heir of Alexander.
Ptolemy is the first one to hijack the body
and take it with him to Egypt.
- [Darel] By bringing Alexander's body to Egypt,
Ptolemy is being quite shrewd politically.
This legitimizes not only his reign in Egypt,
but perhaps a claim to Alexander's entire empire
as the rightful successor.
- [Adam] It also is a convenient way to control the body
and thus preclude any possibility
of people noticing any suspicious signs
of arsenic poisoning,
if that's indeed what Ptolemy did.
- [Laurence] Not everyone is on board with this theory.
Many scholars contend that Ptolemy has more to gain
with Alexander alive than dead.
- Alexander is leading the army and Ptolemy has his ear.
There's no clear succession plan,
and so if Ptolemy were to plot his death,
he would have no way of knowing
whether he would end up being the successor.
- [Darel] Why take the risk of assassinating Alexander
when he could have simply succeeded him
had Alexander died of other unusual causes?
- [Laurence] After Alexander the Great ends
his military campaign,
he seems eager to regain the trust of his troops.
Some historians wonder if this desire may be behind
his untimely sickness and death.
- [Robert] When Alexander gets to Babylon,
he decides he's gonna make this his new capital.
For one, it's this famous city in the east,
two, it's much closer to all of this land
that he's just conquered.
- Babylon is 2,000 years old at this time.
It's a wonderful city,
but it is also cramped and in drastic need of renovation,
and so Alexander immediately inspects the defenses
to make sure they are secure.
- As a leader of men,
he wants to be close to his soldiers,
so he goes out there on inspections
and he shows his soldiers that he's not above them,
that he's willing to get his hands dirty.
- [Laurence] Military camps have long been known
as breeding grounds for all kinds of diseases.
- In the Old Testament,
there's a story about a Mesopotamian king
who lays siege to the city of Jerusalem
until a plague breaks out in his camp,
and suddenly the soldiers are thrown into disarray
and they stagger back home.
- [Nicola] It makes sense that if Alexander is out there
walking around in the city,
getting really close to people,
that he would've been exposed to very unsanitary conditions,
the precise conditions that would've given rise
to some sort of terrible illness.
[dramatic music]
- [Adam] History's earliest mention of an epidemic
actually comes from a Mesopotamian tablet.
It's a medical record that lists the cause of death
of the people on the tablet,
and it uses a word that most scholars translate
to either be plague or pestilence.
- In Alexander's home country of Greece,
there was a plague that is believed
to have originated in Ethiopia,
and it was carried to Athens on ships
and it killed about 1/3 of the entire population.
- Some scholars think that this might have been a variant
to bubonic plague.
Others think that this might have been typhus or measles,
both of which were incurable in this period.
- [Laurence] But there's a more likely killer
hiding in Alexander's military camps.
- [Nicolas] Today, the area around the city of Babylon
is this dry, arid desert,
but in Alexander's time, it would've been this marshland
that was a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
- [Hugo] Some epidemiologists have suggested
that the true killer might have been West Nile virus.
- [Jannifer] In very marshy conditions,
West Nile virus is rife
and it infects mosquitoes, but also birds.
And we know from the sources that Alexander saw ravens
that were fighting with one another
and then they just collapsed dead at his feet,
so they may have been infected with West Nile virus.
- [Nicolas] It's possible that these waterborne mosquitoes
contract the disease from these ravens,
and it's only a matter of time
before it transfers to the human population.
- What's interesting about West Nile virus
is that its symptoms mimic very closely
what Alexander's symptoms were,
so headaches, problems with breathing,
respiratory distress, and fever.
- [Laurence] Mosquitoes also carry
an even more lethal threat,
one of human history's greatest mass murderers.
- At one time, people speculated that malaria had killed
almost half the human beings who had ever lived.
While recent reevaluations have said
that statistic is probably a bit overblown,
malaria is still one of the biggest killers
of humans throughout history.
- [Nicolas] Ancient texts from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece
have described illnesses that have malaria-like symptoms.
And more recent studies have even shown
that malaria was present in these populations
at the time of Alexander the Great.
- [Adam] While there are four types of malaria,
only one, falciparum, is especially fatal.
The parasites develop silently in the liver
until they mature,
and then they multiply and invade the red blood cells.
- [Laurence] The trajectory of the disease closely mirrors
the account of Alexander's decline,
and ultimately, his death.
- Alexander dies in late May,
and mosquitoes are most active during this period
of the late spring and the early summer.
- [Darel] When you consider the incubation period of malaria
of one to two weeks,
that would fit with the timeline
with Alexander inspecting these camps,
possibly even boating in the marshes.
- [Hugo] Writings of the time also say
that as Alexander becomes sick,
his sleep patterns are thrown way off,
and this is a symptom that's also consistent
with falciparum malaria.
- [Adam] Additionally, malaria causes
stabbing back pain, delirium.
Both of those are things that Alexander suffers from
in his final days.
- [Laurence] We also know
that Alexander is susceptible to malaria
as he most likely caught it once before.
- The ancient records show that when Alexander was 23,
he did contract malaria,
but he was young, he was healthy.
And so after two months of bedrest,
he recovered and went on to become Alexander the Great.
- [Darel] 10 years later,
after fighting all these battles, accumulation of wounds,
excessive drinking,
it's possible that Alexander's body was not able
to fight off the disease in the way that it had before,
and he ultimately succumbed to it.
- [Laurence] Before Alexander the Great dies,
he leaves three odd instructions for his funeral.
One, that his unsuccessful doctors carry his coffin.
Two, that his earthly treasures be scattered
along the way to his grave.
And three, that his hand swings free from his coffin.
- [Robert] Alexander could be saying,
"Look, I'm mortal, I'm dying,
all of the best doctors couldn't save me,
I'm not taking anything with me.
Nobody could defeat me, only death itself."
- [Adam] Despite the oppressive Mesopotamian heat,
his body doesn't decompose in a normal way.
And so in fact,
his followers increasingly see him as a God.
- [Hugo] Alexander had actually been proclaimed a God
by Oracles in Greece and in Egypt.
And so as someone divine,
many people would've imagined
that perhaps his body would have never rotted or decayed,
that it would in fact have been preserved eternally.
- [Laurence] But a recent theory suggests
that what these mourners are witnessing is no miracle.
- According to this recent 2018 theory
from a New Zealand researcher,
Alexander was not mummified magically,
but was in fact trapped in his body,
unable to speak or even indicate that he was still alive.
[dramatic music]
- [Hugo] Guillain-Barre syndrome is a rare autoimmune disorder.
It essentially causes the body to be paralyzed,
even as the mind is still active.
- The exact cause of this disorder is actually unknown,
but interestingly, scientists have traced it back
to a particular bacterium called campylobacter.
It's often in uncooked poultry,
and if it's ingested,
then it multiplies and it ends up attacking the brain.
- [Darel] The syndrome progresses slowly.
It first begins with just a lack of energy,
and then some sleep aberrations,
but then you begin to get numbness in the limbs,
which eventually develops into paralysis.
- If the body is unable to fight off the disease,
then the brainstem begins to fail.
Heartbeat is going to slow,
respiration is going to slow,
almost to the point of people thinking that they're gone.
- [Robert] If this is what happened to Alexander the Great,
then what all of the ancient doctors would've seen
was a dead individual,
but actually Alexander would've been in a deep, deep coma.
- [Laurence] This could explain why Alexander's body
doesn't decompose for almost a week.
- We don't know for sure whether the mind is conscious
or simply functioning on a low level.
However, those infected could actually stay alive
for several days,
even though it appears that they're dead.
- [Nicola] Imagine if Guillain-Barre syndrome
is what Alexander suffered from.
He may well have still been alive and conscious
and witnessing his own funeral.
- [Laurence] Eventually,
Alexander's brainstem would stop working completely,
this is when true death occurs.
- [Jennifer] With Guillain-Barre syndrome,
one is comatose, but still alive,
potentially for almost a week.
And after six days,
Alexander's body does finally start to decompose.
- After Alexander's funeral,
his vast kingdom that he worked so hard to build up
immediately begins to fracture.
- [Hugo] Individual territories start rebelling
in the vacuum of power.
His generals, wanting to seize control,
begin fighting with one another.
And many different parts of the empire will collapse
within a few decades.
- [Adam] Alexander did more in 10 years
than other people do in lifetimes.
It wouldn't be until the Roman Empire
that you would ever see an empire as large,
and that took hundreds of years.
- [Darel] Alexander was more than
just a great military conquer.
By unifying three continents,
Europe, parts of Africa, parts of Asia,
it resulted in a mixing of cultures
that changed the course of history.
- [Nicola] Nobody has been able to accomplish something
like this either before or since Alexander,
and he did all this before the age of 32.
- Alexander the Great is regarded
as one of history's most successful military leaders.
He has inspired everyone from Julius Caesar to Genghis Khan
and Napoleon Bonaparte.
Even today,
Alexander's brilliant war strategies are studied
at West Point Military Academy,
but how this iconic leader died remains a perplexing riddle
yet to be solved.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mysteries.