Alexander the Great conquered most of the known world before dying in 323 BC at the age of 32.

His legacy lasted long after his demise and has influenced so much of world history.

But his death also altered history in ways untold.

Untold, that is, until now. One of our sister podcasts on the Parthenon Network,

History Unplugged, just released an episode on Alexander the Great, where host Scott Rank

interviews author Anthony Everett on his new book, Alexander the Great, his life and mysterious death.

Everett takes a look at what Alexander might have done had he lived to a ripe old age,

instead of dying when he did. Here is a short sample of that episode.

And Alexander wept, seen as he had no more worlds to conquer.

That's a quote from Hans Gruber in Die Hard, which is a very convoluted paraphrase from Plutarch's essay collection, Moralia.

Without getting into the accuracy of the sourcing, there's plenty of truth in that

unattributed quote for Mr. Gruber.

Alexander the Great's death in 323 BC in Babylon marked the end of the most consequential

military campaign in antiquity. He left behind an empire that stretched from Greece to India,

playing in the seeds for the Silk Road, and made Greek an international language across Eurasia

all in 13 short years. He became and remained the biggest celebrity in the ancient world,

but was probably only replaced by Jesus a few centuries into the Christian era. But what if he

hadn't died as a young man? What if he had lived years or decades more? How much more influence

could he have had? We have clues about Alexander's plans for the future, and they mostly come from

Greek chroniclers like Diodorus and Aryan,

writing centuries after his death. They include conquering the Mediterranean coast all the way to the pillars of Hercules, building a tomb for his father, Philip. It would have been as large as

the Great Pyramid of Giza, and transplanting populations from Greece to Persia and vice versa,

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