Alexander the Great conquered one of the largest empires the ancient world had ever seen. So why didn’t he set his sights on Rome? (Image credit: Andreas Wolochow)
Alexander the Great conquered a massive empire that stretched from the Balkans to modern-day Pakistan. But if the Macedonian king had turned his attention westward, it’s possible he would have conquered Rome, too, feasibly smiting the Roman Empire before it had a chance to arise.
How would the invasion have gone?
The route Alexander the Great and his forces took while conquering his vast empire from 334 B.C. until his death in 323 B.C. (Image credit: Shutterstock)
It’s ultimately unclear what would have happened if Alexander the Great had tried to invade Italy. The Romans were so strongly convinced that Alexander would have attempted the invasion that the historian Livy (lived circa 59 B.C. to A.D. 17) wrote a text speculating how the invasion would have ended, with Livy predicting that the Romans would have defeated Alexander. Livy noted that Alexander’s uncle, Alexander I of Epirus, who ruled a kingdom of the same name, tried to conquer part of Italy but was killed in battle in 331 B.C.
Waterfield noted that descriptions of Alexander’s plans indicate he would have invaded other locations in the Mediterranean before landing on the Italian mainland. This suggests that Alexander’s forces would have been overwhelming, even if the Romans had any allies in their fight against him.
“By the time he reached Italy and faced the Roman Republic he would have had the resources of the entire Mediterranean at his command — a vast mercenary army, and he’d have commanded all the supply routes,” Waterfield said. The “only thing that could have stopped him was internal rebellion or mutiny by his Macedonian troops.”
Philip Freeman, a humanities professor at Pepperdine University in California, said that if Alexander had invaded Italy, he likely would have succeeded, noting that there were a number of Greek colonies in Italy that might have supported Alexander’s rule.
