Darius had still not been captured and the easternmost parts of the Persian Empire did not yet recognize
Alexander as Darius’ successor. Alexander pursued Darius, but before he could overtake him Darius was
murdered by his satraps, who would not allow their king to fall into the hands of a usurper. Instead, one of
Darius’ satraps proclaimed himself king and for the next three years Alexander was occupied with
reclaiming parts of what he had come to regard as his empire. This involved him and his troops in
military operations in some of the most inhospitable terrain in all of Asia, in the territory of what is now
Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Once this region had been pacified and a number of new cities
named Alexandria had been founded, including those now known as Herat and Kandahar, Alexander
descended from the Hindu Kush into the Indus River valley with the intention of invading India. There
seems to have been no limit to Alexander’s energy or ambition. But there was a limit to what his army
could withstand. After nearly a year of campaigning in the Punjab, Alexander’s troops decided that they
could go no further. It was the summer of 326 BC and some of his men had been away from home (which
was now 4,000 kilometers away) for eight years.
Alexander was not a fool. He recognized that, despite his divinity and his extraordinary abilities, even he
could not conquer India without an army, so he reluctantly gave in to his troops’ request that they turn
back. With the intention, apparently, of punishing his men for their refusal to continue to the east,
Alexander led a large number of them back to Persia on a brutal march through the Makran Desert of
Pakistan and Iran, where many of them died from heat and dehydration. Alexander finally returned to
Babylon in the spring of 323 BC, where he began planning in earnest an invasion of Arabia for which
preliminary arrangements had already been made. But he did not live to carry out those plans, or plans for
any other conquests that he might have contemplated. On June 10, 323 he died, not yet having reached his
thirty-third birthday. It is not clear what the cause of death was, but malaria is considered a likely
candidate. In Macedonian fashion, Alexander had married more than once, but he did not have a living
heir, although his Iranian wife Roxane was pregnant and would later give birth to a son, Alexander IV.
Alexander had surrounded himself with a group of first-rate generals, each of whom thought that he, but
not any of the others, had the requisite qualities to succeed Alexander. The quarrels that ensued rapidly
caused the dissolution of Alexander’s empire, which consisted, by the end of the fourth century, of three
large and two smaller kingdoms, each ruled by a Macedonian who had served on Alexander’s staff or by
his successor. The history of the next century and a half is filled with a series of conflicts among these
kingdoms. Each kingdom sought to expand its territory at the expense of the others, but these conflicts did
little more than make the individual kingdoms vulnerable to encroachment from outside, and in the first
century BC the last of these successor kingdoms became part of the expanding Roman Empire.
Zetemata: Questions for Discussion
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the dialogue-form in writing about philosophical
matters?
How can we account for the existence of, say, justice if we do not follow Plato in recognizing the
existence of a permanent, unchanging Form of Justice?
How might the popularity of fifth-century Athenian drama have influenced both the development of
Attic oratory and Plato’s decision to express his philosophical inquiries in the form of dialogues?
What features did the oratory of Demosthenes and Isocrates have in common, despite the intense
rivalry of the two men?
What is the significance of asking whether or not the Macedonians were Greek?