EVIO Presents: Son of the Blade - Part Three

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1:04This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton cross-training tread plus, powered by Peloton IQ. With real-time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence. Helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at 1Peloton.com. Evio Babylon. June of 323 BC. The city was heavy with heat. The Euphrates moved slowly through its walls thick and brown beneath the summer sun. In the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man in the world was planning his next campaign. Arabia first. Then the Western Mediterranean. Perhaps even Carthage.

2:07There were new fleets to build, new roads to map, and new cities to found. The Empire, already larger than any in history, was about to grow again. Alexander was 32 years old. At a banquet one evening, he drank with his officers as he had done a thousand times before. The wine was strong, the air was thick, the conversation loud, confident, full of plans that assumed the future would continue exactly as the past had. Later that night, though, he developed a fever. At first, no one was concerned. Alexander had marched across deserts, had survived wounds, endured exhaustion that would have killed most men. He had faced blades, arrows, storms and disease. A fever? That was an inconvenience, not a threat. But the fever wouldn't break. Within days he struggled to stand, within a week

3:09he could no longer walk within two weeks. The strongest man in the world couldn't speak. And then he was dead. There was no battlefield, no assassin caught fleeing, no clear explanation, only silence. And almost immediately, the questions began. Welcome back to the Eids of April, the Sun of the Blade. This is part three, the death of the impossible man. In the last episode, we watched Alexander push his army to the edge of the known world and for the first time and counter a limit that he couldn't overcome. He turned back from India, but he didn't turn back from ambition. Tonight we follow his final months. The return to Babylon, the plans for even greater conquest, the sudden illness, and the mystery that still surrounds his death. Because when a man rises as high as Alexander did,

4:12the question is never just how he died. The question is, who needed him gone? The poet Pindar understood something about the arc of human greatness. Again, creatures of a day, what is a man? What is he not? A dream of a shadow. For most men, that truth arrives quietly. For Alexander, it arrived at the height of power. Chapter one, the return to Babylon. So the journey back from India didn't feel like victory. For years, Alexander's army had moved forward with the confidence of men who believed that momentum itself was a form of protection. Each campaign had opened another horizon, and each horizon had promised still another victory. But after the decision at the High Faces River, after the army refused to march one step farther

5:15east, the direction of the march changed, and with it, the spirit of the expedition. Returning turned out to be harder than advancing. Alexander chose a route that reflected both his ambition and his stubbornness. Rather than retracing the safer paths through fertile regions, he divided his forces and led a large portion across the harsh deserts of Gujarossia, a region so unforgiving that even Persian kings avoided it. In the decision may have been strategic, and attempt to test new routes and secure control over the southern coast. It may also have been something more personal, a refusal to accept that the limits imposed at the High Faces marked any true boundary to his will. The desert offered no forgiveness. For days at a time, the horizon dissolved into shimmering heat. Sand stretched in every direction, broken only by low ridges and dry riverbeds where water had once flowed, and might again, but not when it was needed. Supply animals collapsed under their

6:21loads, wells proved empty or polluted, sudden sandstorms virtually erased the landscape, turning day into a choking haze through which men marched blindly, guided only by the movement of those ahead of them. In the army began to shrink. Men fell behind and simply didn't reappear, horses died where they stood. Wagons were abandoned to lighten the load. Those who survived the crossing emerged months later, gone, burned, quiet. The confidence of earlier years worn down by exhaustion and loss. When the surviving columns finally reached the relative safety of Persia's interior, the campaign that had begun with brilliance and speed had become something heavier. Along accumulation of strain carried in bodies that had marched for nearly a decade without the sight of home. Yet if the army felt the weight of the years, Alexander didn't allow

7:23himself to slow down. At Susa he resumed the work that had come to define his later rule, the deliberate merging of Macedonian and Persian power into something new. The empire he governed could not be held together by force alone. It was too vast, too diverse, its peoples too numerous and too distant from one another. If it was to endure, it would require a ruling class that saw itself as part of a shared system rather than as conquerors standing above the conquered. And to that end he arranged a series of mass marriages between his senior officers and Persian noble women. Ceremonies conducted with careful ritual and public display. Thousands of soldiers followed their commanders example. Persian youths were recruited and trained in Macedonian military tactics. Administrative positions were increasingly filled by local officials who understood the languages, the customs and the economies of their own provinces.

8:24To Alexander, this wasn't compromise. This was the future. But for many Macedonian veterans, the transformation was unsettling. They had followed him as conquerors. Now they watched Persians trained to fight in their formations, saw Persian nobles welcomed into positions of influence and listened as the king spoke more often of unity than of dominance. The tension surfaced most clearly at the city of Opus on the Tigris River. There Alexander announced his intention to send some of his older Macedonian soldiers home, men who had marched with him since the beginning, while replacing them with newly trained Persian units. The reaction was immediate and emotional. Shouts rose from the ranks. Some soldiers accused him of abandoning the men who had carried him across the world. Others suggested

9:24that if he preferred Persians, he should continue his campaigns with only Persians. For a moment, the fragile balance of loyalty trembled. Alexander responded first with anger, the perceived ring leaders were arrested and executed. But anger alone wouldn't hold his army together and he quickly shifted to something more calculated. In a carefully staged ceremony, he publicly declared Macedonians and Persians partners in a single imperial order. A great banquet followed, thousands of soldiers and officers seated together as symbols of unity. And the crisis passed. The army submitted. The relationship between king and companions had changed. The easy familiarity of early years had been replaced by distance, by ceremony, by the quiet understanding that Alexander's vision no longer belonged entirely to the men who had followed him from Macedon. Remember, Pindar had written of the loneliness

10:26that comes with greatness. He wrote, the highest peaks are struck most fiercely by the winds of heaven. By the time Alexander reached Babylon in the spring of 323 BC, he stood at a height that no ruler had ever occupied. The city itself seemed built for such a position. Babylon rose from the flat plains of Mesopotamia and vast terraces and walls. Its gates faced with glazed brick that caught the sunlight in deep blues and gold. The Euphrates cut through its center, feeding canals that turned the surrounding land into a patchwork of green fields. Merchants arrived from India, from Arabia, Egypt, the Mediterranean, bringing goods, bringing languages, and bringing news from every corner of the known world. It wasn't merely a capital. It was a crossroads. From Babylon, Alexander could govern the empire that he had created, and more importantly, he could expand it. And as stated,

11:28plans were already underway. Exploratory fleets were being prepared to chart the coasts of Arabia. Engineers were surveying harbours and shipyards. Recruitment orders went out across the provinces. There were discussions of western campaigns against Carthage, perhaps even toward the distant lands of Italy. The momentum that had carried him from Macedon to India hadn't diminished. If anything, it had grown. And yet, those closest to him could see the cost of these years. Alexander drank heavily, often for long hours into the night. Old wounds still troubled him. The pressures of administration were relentless, requiring decisions about taxation, about governance, about military deployment, and diplomacy across a territory that stretched thousands of miles. The circle of trusted advisors had thinned. Some dead, some executed. Others

12:30increasingly cautious in his presence. Around him stood powerful generals, men who commanded armies, who governed provinces, men who had followed him faithfully, but who also understood how much authority that they now held. In beneath all of it, lay a dangerous truth. Alexander had built a system that depended entirely upon himself, and there was no clear successor, no established structure for the transfer of power. No agreement among his commanders about what would happen if the king were suddenly gone. The empire held together, because Alexander held it together. The poet Pindar had warned against the illusion of permanence. Remember, seek not to become Zeus. The mortal portion is enough. But in Babylon surrounded by wealth and armies, and all these plans for new conquest, there was little to suggest that Alexander considered himself bound to the ordinary limits of mortal men.

13:33The world was still expanding before him. The campaigns were not finished. The future seemed as wide and open as the plains beyond those city walls. And then, one evening, during a banquet among his officers and companions, with the heat of the Mesopotamian summer pressing against the palace walls, Alexander felt the first sign that the body which had carried him across the world had begun to fail. The fever came quietly, but it would not leave. Chapter 2 The Illness The fever began as an inconvenience. In Babylon, the summer heat pressed down on the city like a weight. The air hung heavy above the river, warm even after sunset, thick with dust in the slow smell of water and vegetation from the canals. Within the palace complex itself, life continued to

14:37add its usual pace, councils, inspections, planning sessions, and the long evening banquets that had become a familiar part of Alexander's routine. One of those banquets was held at the house of Medius of Larissa, a companion and officer who moved easily within the king's inner circle. There was drinking, of course, as there always was. Wine mixed with conversation about future campaigns, Arabia first, perhaps, and then farther west. The empire was stable, the army was rebuilding, new ships were under construction. The future still belonged to expansion. At some point during the evening, Alexander complained of a sudden pain after drinking. Some accounts describe it as sharp and immediate, others mention only the onset of discomfort and heat. What is certain is that by the next day, the fever had actually begun in earnest. Now at first known was alarmed, Alexander had endured worse. He had fought through wounds and exposure and illness

15:39during campaigns that stretched from the mountains of Central Asia to the river valleys of India. And fever was common in Mesopotamia, where marshes bred disease and the summer climate weakened even healthy men. Rest, hydration, and time were expected to bring recovery. But the fever still wouldn't break. On the second day, Alexander continued his administrative duties from bed. Orders were issued, officers came and went, plans for military and naval operations were discussed. The machinery of empire didn't pause simply because the king wasn't feeling well. By the third day, walking became difficult. The fever rose and fell, but never broke. Sweat soaked his clothing, the strength faded. The physicians attending him could offer little beyond cooling treatments and herbal preparations. Medicine in the ancient world relied more on balance and observation than actual intervention. There were no remedies for infection.

16:40There was no understanding of bacteria or germ theory, no way to stop a disease once it had taken hold. But still, the expectation remained that the illness would pass. I mean, it had to. He was only 32 years old. He was strong, physically hardened by years of campaigning. He had survived wounds that probably should have killed him. He had endured climates that weakened entire armies. The idea that a fever might succeed where blades and arrows in the Persian armies had failed seemed impossible. But each day brought further decline. And by the fifth day, he could no longer appear before his officers. Messengers were delivered through attendants and nurses. The palace corridors grew quiet. The flow of visitors were cautious. And rumors began to spread. First among servants, then among soldiers stationed nearby. By the seventh day, Alexander could no longer stand on his own. The fever continued to burn steadily. Weakness spread through his body. Some accounts suggest a paralysis, other extreme exhaustion.

17:48What is clear is that the king who had ridden at the head of his cavalry only months earlier, now lacked the strength to leave his bed. Outside the palace, the army began to gather. Macedonian soldiers had spent years watching their king survive the impossible. They had seen a bleed and recover. Collapsed from exhaustion and returned to command only days later. For many of them, Alexander's survival had come to feel less like endurance and more like inevitability. Now they waited for the inevitable recovery. Instead, the days just continued to pass. Inside the palace, the atmosphere shifted from concern to something even heavier. Senior officers gathered quietly speaking in low voices. Courteers began to consider possibilities that no one wanted to state openly. Because beneath the illness lay a question, none of them were prepared to answer. What happens if Alexander dies?

18:49The empire had grown too quickly for a clear succession plan. There was no adult heir. His wife Roxanna was pregnant, but the child had not even been born. His half-brother existed, but he was considered mentally unfit to rule. Around them stood powerful generals, men who commanded armies that had spent years building personal networks of loyalty. If the king died, the balance holding the empire together might dissolve overnight. Inside the chamber, Alexander drifted between periods of clarity and exhaustion. When conscious, he continued to ask for updates. He continued to issue instructions. Even as the strength failed, the habit of command remained. Pindar had written of the fragile boundary between strength and shadow. What is a man? What is he not? A dream of a shadow. For years, Alexander had seemed solid and unstoppable, defined by movement and force.

19:53Now, the empire watched as that force weakened day after day. Rumors of his death had begun to spread through the camp, the men who had marched across continents refused to accept uncertainty. In response, the officers allowed them to file past the chamber in small groups. One by one, Macedonian veterans entered the room. Alexander can no longer speak clearly. He lay motionless, his strength nearly gone, but he raised his head as each group passed. Some accounts say he lifted his hand slightly in recognition. Others describe only his eyes following the men as they move through the chamber. It wasn't a speech, it was not a farewell, but for many of those soldiers, it was the last time they would see the man who had carried them to the edge of the world. By the eleventh day, his ability to speak completely abandoned him.

20:55Commanders gathered around his bed and asked the question they feared most. To whom would he leave the empire? Now, according to the most widely accepted account, Alexander answered with a single phrase, to the strongest. Whether the words were spoken clearly whispered or later shaped by men who would soon fight for power remains uncertain. But the meaning, intentional or not, was unmistakable. The empire had no structure at all for succession. It would be decided by force. On the twelfth day of his illness, in June of 323 BC, Alexander the Great died in Babylon. He was 32 years old. For more than a decade, Alexander had outrun every enemy, every army, every boundary placed before him. In Babylon, the force that finally stopped him did not come from

21:58a battlefield. It came from within. And when the strongest man in the world, the most powerful man on the planet, died without a successor. The greatest struggle of his empire was about to begin. There are moments in life when talking to someone, a professional, an objective voice could make all the difference. But for a lot of people, the biggest obstacle isn't deciding to try therapy. It's finding a therapist who actually takes your insurance. That's where Rula comes in. Rula is an online mental health platform that works with over 100 insurance plans, making the average copay about $15 per session. In some cases, it can be even less. It's licensed therapy covered by insurance the way mental health care should be. Rula also takes the guesswork out of finding the right provider. Instead of assigning you the first available therapist,

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26:12off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code IDES. Chapter 3 The Silence After the King When Alexander died, the empire didn't collapse. Not immediately. For a brief moment, Babylon held its breath. The palace doors remained closed. Guards stood at their posts. Messengers moved carefully through corridors where conversations had dropped to whispers. Outside the walls, the enemy waited. Tens of thousands of men who had crossed deserts and mountains under a single command and now found themselves facing a future without it. For years, there had been no question about who decided. Now there was nothing but questions. The body of the king lay in state and around it gathered the men who understood better than anyone.

27:13The scale of what had just happened. Generals who commanded armies, governors who controlled provinces, companions who had ridden beside Alexander since the earliest campaigns, each of them knew the same truth. The empire was not a system. The empire was a personality and that personality was now gone. Pindar had written of the fragile nature of human greatness. Man is the dream of a shadow. Yet when a gleam of God-given glory comes, a bright light rests upon him. For more than a decade that light had rested on Alexander, but now the shadow remained. The first problem was immediate and brutal in its simplicity. There was no air. Roxanna, Alexander's wife, was pregnant, but the child was yet unborn. His half-brother, Arhadayas, again, was alive, but his mental condition made him incapable of ruling independently. No clear will existed. No structure for succession had been established.

28:18The empire, stretching from Greece to the Indus, had been held together by momentum and by loyalty to one man and by the assumption that he would continue to lead. And that assumption ended very quickly a matter of days, less than two weeks. The senior commanders gathered to decide what came next and their discussions were tense and cautious and quickly revealed just how fragile the unity really was. Some argued waiting until Roxanna's child was born. Others supported placing the half-brother on the throne as a symbolic king, but behind the arguments lay something deeper. Each general controlled troops, each commanded loyalty, each understood that power now belonged to whoever could secure it. The compromise they reached was temporary and very uneasy. Arhadayas the brother would be proclaimed king and would rule as Philip III, while Roxanna's unborn child, if male, would share the throne once more. Real authority, however, would rest with

29:21a region and the council of generals. Now this wasn't a solution, it was a pause. Outside the palace, the army reacted with a mixture of grief and uncertainty. Macedonian soldiers had followed Alexander for years without seriously questioning the direction of their campaign. His presence had provided certainty even when the future was unclear. Now that certainty was gone. They mourned him openly, tearing their clothing, shaving their heads, standing in long lines to view his body. Many had spent the better part of their adult lives under his command. For them, the empire was not an abstraction. It was the result of years of marching beside a man they had come to believe was protected by fortune. Perhaps even by the gods. Perhaps a god himself. His death felt unnatural, sudden, and incomplete. The circumstances only deepened that feeling.

30:24Alexander hadn't fallen in battle, hadn't been struck by a visible enemy. He had not died after a long decline that might have prepared the court for the transition. He got sick at a party and was dead in two weeks. In a world accustomed to political violence, that sequence of events just didn't make sense. And rumors began almost immediately. Some spoke of poison, slow-acting toxins that would produce fever rather than sudden death. Others suggested political motives. The empire Alexander had built was enormous, unstable, and filled with powerful men whose futures depended entirely on his continued presence. If he lived long enough to reorganize authority, replace governors, or name a strong successor, some of those men might lose everything. In later traditions, suspicions would fall unentipated, the powerful region in Macedon, and even in more elaborate versions on Aristotle's circle. Whether these stories reflected truth,

31:28fear, or the natural human desire to find intention behind sudden loss, it's impossible to know. But the suspicion itself mattered because that pattern was familiar. Philip II had died suddenly, struck down by a man from within his own guard. Now his son was dead, not by blade, but under circumstances that left room for doubt. In both cases, the result was the same. Power shifted violently, unpredictably, and always to the advantage of those who survived the moment. Meanwhile, the empire began to fracture almost at once. The generals who had agreed to cooperate in Babylon quickly began maneuvering for position. Provinces were divided among them as satrapies, but these assignments were less administrative than strategic. Territorial footholds and what many already understood would become a struggle for dominance. And within a few years, that struggle would erupt into full-scale war. The empire that Alexander had conquered would

32:32be torn apart, and not by foreign enemies, but by the men who had helped him build it. Pindar had warned that human greatness carries its own ending. Seek not to become Zeus. All things mortal must return to the measure given them. Alexander had outrun that measure for 13 years, but when he finally stopped, the force he had unleashed did not end with him. It multiplied, it spread, and it turned inward. Philip's death unleashed Alexander upon the world. Alexander's death unleashed his generals, upon each other. In both cases, the removal of one man did not bring stability. It released something far more dangerous. Alexander the Great conquered the largest empire the ancient world had ever seen. He defeated Persia. He marched to India. He reshaped the political and cultural map

33:38of three continents. But in the end, his greatest weakness was not an enemy army, but was the absence of a plan for what would happen when he was gone. Thanks for listening. Make sure you're following the Eyes of April so you don't miss our next series. The Eyes of April is an EVO production, recorded live at Beller Studios in Los Angeles, California. For the Eyes of April, I'm your writer and host, Brandon Morgan. President Barack Obama. Virginia, we are counting on you. Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to raid the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years, but you can stop them by voting yes by April 21st. Help put our elections back on a level playing field and let voters decide not politicians. Vote yes by April 21st.

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