Alexander the Great had conquered an empire stretching from Greece to the Indus Valley by the time he died in Babylon. How old was he?
Alexander was born in July 356 BC and died in Babylon in June 323 BC — one month short of his 33rd birthday. He had been on continuous military campaign for 12 of the previous 13 years. Cause of death is disputed: ancient sources are split between an unidentified fever (probably malaria or typhoid, contracted in the Mesopotamian marshes), heavy drinking and acute alcoholism, and assassination by poisoning (advocated by Aristotle's nephew Callisthenes among others). The empire fractured within a year of his death among his senior generals (the *Diadochi*) and never reunified.
Read the full facts →Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BC) was the king of the Hellenic kingdom of Macedon who, between 336 and 323 BC, conquered the Achaemenid Persian Empire and built the largest empire of the classical world before his death at age 32. His campaigns spread Greek language and culture across the Near East, Egypt, and Central Asia, producing the Hellenistic civilization that lasted for the next three centuries.
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