previous next
[5] This was how he died after a reign of twelve years and seven months.1 He accomplished greater deeds than any, not only of the kings who had lived before him but also of those who were to come later down to our time.

Since some historians disagree about the death of Alexander, and state that this occurred in consequence of a draught of poison, it seems necessary for us to mention their account also.2

1 Alexander died on the 28th of Daesius (Plut. Alexander 76.4, so also the Babylonian records, but Aristobulus (Plut. Alexander 75.4) said the 30th; it was a hollow month, without any 29th, and Alexander died about sundown; this was the 10th of June), and it has been argued above that the assassination of Philip and the accession of Alexander must have taken place in the same month (Book 16.94.3, note). This would give Alexander thirteen years of reign, and this figure is actually given by the Oxyrhynchus Chronologer (P. Oxy. 1.12. v. 31-32). Since Daesius was the eighth Macedonian month, the "seven months" of Diodorus and the "eight months" of Arrian. 7.28.1 represent exclusive and inclusive counting from the first new year after Alexander's accession. Cp. Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, 3.2.59.

2 Justin 12.13.10; Arrian. 7.27.1.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: