What if … Alexander had lived a few more years to conquer western Mediterranean?

That is another ball game altogether. Alexander definitely had drawn his plans as contained in his notebooks (hypomnemata). He had already started exploring the coastline of the Arabian peninsula, an expedition cut short because the peninsula turned out to be far larger than expected. His ships went as far as the Strait of Hormuz without knowing they had reached the headland that Nearchus had seen when sailing up from India into the Persian Gulf in 324 BC.

The projects were grand, far beyond the visions of any of Alexander’s successors, and are best documented by Diodorus and Curtius. Instructions had been given to build a thousand warships, triremes up to septiremes in Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, and Cyprus to be eventually sailed into Babylon’s harbor. They would serve in a campaign along the coast of North Africa to conquer the strong Carthaginian realm. Interestingly he planned to build a road along the coast of Libya, as North Africa was named in his days, running all the way to the Pillars of Hercules, i.e., modern Gibraltar. Knowing that the first coastal road through today’s Libya was built by Mussolini in 1937 clearly, shows how daring a project this was. The conquest of the coastal regions, which would also include Iberia (Spain) and Sicily, evidently implied establishing a series of ports and dockyards where the ships could forage on provisions and get repairs done. Curtius even goes so far as to mention that Alexander’s plan was to reach the Alps and return to Epirus via the seacoast of Italy.

Alexander’s visions were not limited to warfare only; they included the arts as well. Six expensive temples were to be built, each costing 1,500 talents, located at Delos, Delphi, and Dodona; one at Dion in his homeland and dedicated to Zeus; one at Amphipolis for Artemis Tauropolus; and finally, a temple in honor of Athena at Cyrnus (modern Corsica). Second to none, a particular temple dedicated to Athena should be constructed at Ilium (Troy) also. To remember his father, Philip II, he intended to erect a tomb as great as the largest pyramid in Egypt. Dinocrates of Rhodes, who had already worked for Alexander in planning the city of Alexandria in Egypt, reconstructing the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, and assembling the massive funeral pyre for Hephaistion, had also drawn plans to carve an immense image of Alexander in the flank of Mount Athos in Greece’s Chalcidice – a plan that may or may not have been taken into account by the king.

These plans prove Alexander’s determination and do not leave room for failure. He would conquer the entire Mediterranean, something the Romans achieved only several centuries later. Still, their empire was not the making of one man and did not take shape in one lifetime. The Greek language, for centuries the lingua franca all over the Middle East, including today’s Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, and helping to spread Christianity, would also be spoken and used in our western countries; Latin may not have had a chance beyond a local nucleus. Our world definitely would have looked very different, considering that the knowledge of Greek philosophers, mathematicians, artists, and sailors would have flowed straight through our veins!

Unfortunately, when Perdiccas found these orders after Alexander’s death, he decided that the expenses were far too high. Diodorus mentions that even the Macedonians, when these plans were read out aloud, realized that the projects were excessive and impractical. Well, I would say this is only one way to present the case since there certainly was no shortage of money to sponsor the Successors’ wars for forty years! But, on the other hand, if things had evolved differently with Hephaistion or Craterus at the helm in Babylon instead of Perdiccas, who knows what could have happened to Alexander’s dreams.