This week on the blog: Alexander goes West! I don't usually indulge in counter-factuals, but I think in this case, walking through some of the scenarios is actually informative in thinking about both changes in Italy and the quality of our evidence from 334 to 218 BC. acoup.blog/2025/05/16/c... - ThreadSky

bretdevereaux.bsky.social • 33 days ago

This week on the blog: Alexander goes West! I don't usually indulge in counter-factuals, but I think in this case, walking through some of the scenarios is actually informative in thinking about both changes in Italy and the quality of our evidence from 334 to 218 BC.

https://acoup.blog/2025/05/16/collections-alexander-goes-west-a-silly-counterfactual/

Comments

mathetria.bsky.social•33 days ago

I'll have to read it when I get a spare minute! Did you know Melissa Scott (who's also Dr. Scott, military historian) did an alt-history novel in the '80s called A CHOICE OF DESTINIES? Terrible cover (tbh), but loads of fun to read for historians. More changes than just he went west, but logical.

thestarhart.bsky.social•31 days ago

I am currently working my way through your back-catalog and am only at your June 2020 posts. I will get to this one. Eventually, lol!

danielhaknsson.bsky.social•32 days ago

Good one! Also liked the reads on Alexander's greatness. A common theme on great people is exploiting a mismatch, tension or progress that is already there rather than creating this.
It is ofc to some extent great but it seems unlikely that such conditions would have remained unused for long anyway.

danielhaknsson.bsky.social•32 days ago

Also the ancient greats have gone through generations of image building. The most revisionist probably near their own time.

ilitarist.bsky.social•32 days ago

Finally a review of a less explored option in Rise of Nations Alexander the Great campaign.

biegeltoren.bsky.social•31 days ago

Expanding on this counterfactual, could a longer-lived Alexander with a successor have created a more mixed state and drawn on Persian manpower to leverage against Rome or Carthage, or was his kingdom always doomed do go down the route of small greek population ruling over subjugated peoples?

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•31 days ago

Much depends on who the successor is and how capable they are. I wouldn't rule anything out, but the institutional resistance to such fusion would clearly be considerable. The Seleucids end up doing a bit of it, but only a bit.

biegeltoren.bsky.social•31 days ago

That's fair enough, and they weren't particularly succesful at it. Are the republican governments of Rome and Carthage a factor in this equasion or would you say that's just a coincidence and an ancient monarchy could have expanded their manpower/citizen inclusion in a similar way?

hughmurnaghan.bsky.social•31 days ago

Personally, I think that it's quite likely that the Carthaginians would have formed an alliance with him.

biegeltoren.bsky.social•30 days ago

I can see that happening, but they would be in conflict over sicily and even avoiding that alliances between expanding empires rarely last.

jenjones42.bsky.social•33 days ago

The historical counterfactual I wonder about most often is what is Prince Arthur did not die of the sweat and lived to become King of England.

I love your blog; it’s always interesting!

lurks-no-more.bsky.social•32 days ago

I read about that somewhere! The author's view was that it's surprisingly likely that Henry ends up in the clergy (he was genuinely interested in theology in OTL), and whatever happens in England over the Reformation is going to be very different.

jenjones42.bsky.social•32 days ago

Ikr? I mean, does England even become Protestant? Would the Spanish Armada happen if England was still Catholic and (presumably) Arthur and Catherine’s son inherited the throne? Do England and Scotland eventually unite or stay independent? So many butterflies…

lurks-no-more.bsky.social•32 days ago

🦋!

I'm no expert, but ISTM that in this scenario any English reformation is not going to be driven by the Crown, quite the opposite. If Arthur and Catherine are married with heirs, and Henry is an archbishop or something, they have no reason to break with Rome.

lurks-no-more.bsky.social•32 days ago

The English protestantism would be even more Calvinistic (or Lutheran?), and I don't think there would be an Anglican Church. Would something like an earlier English Civil war, with Catholic royalists vs. Calvinist commoners & gentry be a possibility?

horseherb.bsky.social•32 days ago

Oh! I was thinking Prince Arthur as in the nephew of Richard the Lion-Hearted, but he probably died of a surfeit of King John's henchmen, not sweating sickness.

jottel.bsky.social•32 days ago

What points to Livy 8.8 being corrupt?
It’s certainly messy with the mixed leves-Hastati and the weirdness of the third line, the Triarii-Rorarii-accensi-like, but I’d be interested to know which aspects show corruption

devedy.bsky.social•32 days ago

It's probably an even harder counterfactual because of how little is recorded about him but the one I've always wondered again in the "Alexander lives longer" universe is the one where he comes into contact with Chandragupta Maurya

devedy.bsky.social•32 days ago

(obviously separate from going west to begin with)

spavel.bsky.social•32 days ago

The "no silver in Rome" problem makes me wonder about the historicity of the Total War: Troy economy. On the one hand they tried to diversify from a fungible "gold" treasury, but they kept one of their resources as gold rather than silver (which you did write about as ahistorical).

apcrft.bsky.social•32 days ago

📌

domeniccuggy.bsky.social•33 days ago

As a huge fan of Alexander, this was definitely a fascinating read, and I am very much looking forward to the Carthaginian posts in the future

logantomaz.bsky.social•31 days ago

I really enjoyed this! Tho at the start I thought "wait, wouldn't Alexander get thrashed like you just said phyrus & successors did" and yep, that was your conclusion. Ha!

joshbailey.blog•33 days ago

A question that this post raises: Should Pyrrhus have known better than to go west? Would all of these problems have been obvious to experts at the time before he invaded? I was under the impression the endeavor was regarded as highly ambitious but not totally crazy.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•32 days ago

I got into Pyrrhus' calculation in the original Pyrrhus post (https://acoup.blog/2024/03/08/collections-phalanxs-twilight-legions-triumph-part-iiib-pyrrhus/). The common view is that his aims were more limited - to consolidate the Greeks of Italy and Sicily (by 'delivering' them from the Romans and Carthaginians) in order to get the resources to take Macedon.

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•32 days ago

In terms of 'would it have been obvious to experts at the time?' Absolutely not. Roman victories against Hellenistic armies in the second century comes as a huge, world-shattering shock, which you can feel reverberating through Polybius' efforts to explain it.

lovingboth.bsky.social•32 days ago

'They cause a lot of casualties, even when losing' plus 'they can keep producing replacement armies when they do'?

sungura-mclever.bsky.social•33 days ago

Given Pyrrhus’ huge resource gap verses his peer polities to the east it was probably the only reasonable idea for him.

ohdeerthermos.bsky.social•32 days ago

What is the distinction between Macedonian "heavy infantry" and those of its allies? Are the latter just conscripts?

absenescence.bsky.social•32 days ago

Nobody goes North. It's like we have a shitty climate and nothing worth having... Oh.

stubacca01.bsky.social•32 days ago

Like this a lot but it seems odd that it skips the one scenario suggested by Livy: Alexander simply not dying and heading to Italy next with all the resources of the Persian Empire behind him.

greenclock.bsky.social•32 days ago

This! That is kinda what i wanted to read.

vuk83.bsky.social•32 days ago

Alexander with all the ressources of the Persian empire behind him, invaded India with an army of about 45000.

The same size referenced in the blog post

dandan-noodles.bsky.social•32 days ago

His finances would be on sounder footing, though, and he would have the Mediterranean Sea to facilitate transport and seapower of west Asia vs the deserts and mountains of Iran<-> India

Think he would go for Sicily then Africa rather than Italy proper though

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•32 days ago

So, it's not actually clear his finances *would* have been on sounder footing - Alexander seems to have spent most of the loot as fast as he got it. He wouldn't be in debt, but he wouldn't have an inexhaustible warchest.

He also wouldn't necessarily have naval superiority, cause Carthage.

barnesarama.bsky.social•32 days ago

I have nothing useful to contribute on the history, but as a setting for stories, Alexander invading the western Med against an uneasy alliance of Carthage, Magna Graecia and Rome would be absolute gold, whether played straight or with some glitter as he was going mad from Apotheosis

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•32 days ago

But the more immediate 'Alexander-goes-West-in-323' problem is Alexander's position in 323 is not stable. He keeps having to deal with rebellious satraps in Persia/Media proper, and there's a non-trivial chance his next challenge before Italy is actually 'Civil War with Antipater.'

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•32 days ago

I cannot stress enough: when Alexander dies in 323, Antipater is stalling for time, sending his son (Cassander) rather than going himself, while sitting on his army, as Alexander is trying to replace him (with Craterus), which Antipater might well imagine to be fatal, given the situation.

namehereguy.bsky.social•32 days ago

Also for maintaining naval superiority, he wouldn't have the Alexander factor he does in land battles. As far as I know, Macedon doesn't have a strong naval tradition, so neither he nor the Companions would have been raised knowing a ton about naval battles.

namehereguy.bsky.social•32 days ago

He'd probably pull a commander from the same places he's getting the ships, but there's good odds they'd be replacement-level.

dandan-noodles.bsky.social•32 days ago

With the tax base of the whole levant, he would at least have more play vs the comparative shoestring of just greece and the southern balkans , and with levantine seapower he'd be in a much stronger position vs carthage than pyrrhus was

macedonian kings are inherently riding a tiger, though, yeah

bretdevereaux.bsky.social•32 days ago

Maybe? One of the striking things about the Hellenistic period is that controlling Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Mesopotamia and even the Iranian Plateau does not expand their military resources nearly as much as you'd expect.

nickkellett.bsky.social•32 days ago

Brilliant, thank you. It illuminates why Roman conquest of Italy was durable, and Alexander's surprising glass jaw which would have ended badly ( or at least not gloriously ) for him there. Loved reading it

prplmnkydw.bsky.social•32 days ago

This was a fun read. I agree, his conquests east were so contingent on the conditions.

baddvt.bsky.social•32 days ago

One of the points which your analysis avoided in the earlier scenarios was a "what if the Romans and Eturians/Samnites managed to combine armies for a field battle" which could plausibly result in a straight up defeat of Alexander, if they could manage some form of coalition (unclear)

potso.bsky.social•32 days ago

I believe Prof Dev. touched on this in his Imperator series, but diplomacy was fairly primitive at this time. Would be difficult to combine historically-hostile near-peers for a containment war against an enemy of unclear strength who is probably unable to achieve hegemony regardless.

evieghj.bsky.social•33 days ago

Ahhhh, the oldest recorded counterfactual of them all.

ajsoapmonger.bsky.social•33 days ago

Love your blog! This one reminds me of Napoleon saying about Frederick the Great “if he were here, we would not be.” Was that just a humble-brag, or is it true?

davidyul.bsky.social•33 days ago

Got partway through yesterday before life got in the way, but this is 100% my coffee read tomorrow.

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