Posted on 07/19/2010 6:39:05 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Styx River, the legendary portal to the underworld, harbors a deadly bacteria that may have ended Alexander's life. An extraordinarily toxic bacterium harbored by the "infernal" Styx River might have been the fabled poison rumored to have killed Alexander the Great (356 - 323 B.C.) more than 2,000 years ago, according to a scientific-meets-mythic detective study... reviews ancient literary evidence on the Styx poison in light of modern geology and toxicology. According to the study, calicheamicin, a secondary metabolite of Micromonospora echinospora, is what gave the river its toxic reputation... Another account by the Greek geographer Pausanias (110 - 180) reported that the river could ruin crystal, pottery and bronze. "(The) only thing able to resist corrosion is the hoof of a mule or horse," he wrote. "Indeed, no ancient writer ever casts doubt on the existence of a deadly poison from the Styx River," Mayor, author of the Mithradates biography "The Poison King," said. The researchers believe this mythic poison must be calicheamicin... Now called Mavroneri, "Black Water," the Styx originates in the high mountains of Achaia, Greece. Its cold waters cascade over a limestone crag to form the second highest waterfall in Greece... Whether Alexander really died from poisoning, as some of his closest friends believed, is pure speculation, Mayor and Hayes concede.... Retrodiagnoses for his mysterious death have included poisoning, heavy drinking, septicemia, pancreatitis, malaria, West Nile fever, typhoid, and accidental or deliberate poisoning (hellebore, arsenic, aconite, strychnine).
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
It would have been at the periphery of either, or else its own empire. That and a lot could have occurred between Alexander’s time (300s BC) and Mohammed’s (600 AD)- 900 years. Someone had to come to dominate that mess eventually- unfortunately, it was Mohammed.
If the Hejaz had been part of the Roman or a Persian empire, ...
True - It may have been more difficult had it been civilized by either the Byzantium (eastern Roman Empire) or Persia. Nevetheless the Sassanid Byzantine wars and the iconoclastic wars in Byzantium weakened both the East and West to the point that the heretical arabs swept through in both directions.
The oldest explanation was that he was poisoned; this is from the earliest surviving sources. They had a *lot* of known poisons available back then, and some of them wouldn’t have hurt his looks at all. :’)
He had two or three life-threatening wounds, including the last one during an attack on some city on the Indus River. But it took him and his land forces months and months to get home from there, and they crossed some awful terrain to do it. And he was as strong when they arrived in Mesopotamia as when he’d crossed the Bosphorus. He wasn’t as young though. :’)
That is a puzzle, isn’t it? Made no freakin’ sense at all to me, but figured, hey, great headline. :’)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059995/quotes
http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/pages/quotes/hollywoodsq.html
http://www.innocentenglish.com/celebrity-bloopers-news-quotes/funny-hollywood-squares.html
There was a book in the 1990s that said A the G was a big, huge alcoholic, which supposedly would explain his legendary mood swings, including one event in which he was drunk at the time and then threw a spear right through one of his father’s most trusted commanders. :’)
Forget it, he's on a role.
Malaria is another possibility that has been suggested over the years.
Wood or flesh ?
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