Why did Alexander's empire not continue to grow?

Answer 1

It is one thing to conquer and empire but another thing to sustain one.

Alexander's empire stopped expanding because when, after a lot of hardships, his army reached the western edges of India, the men refused to continue eastwards. They were tired of conquest and wanted to get home.

They returned to Persia (after a terrible forced march through the desert, where many died) which was intended to be the centre of his Empire. On the way there, Alexander's lover Hephastion died, possibly poisoned, possibly from poor medical care after a bout of dysentery.

The loss seems to have driven Alexander partly insane - at one point he seems to have tried to starve himself to death. He recovered, and devised an immense state funeral for Hephastion, but was never the same again.

Although he was still young he had also received terrible injuries during the various battles he fought on his journey eastwards - including one where an arrow pierced his lung, shattering the rib and permanently damaging his breathing. He had recovered and continued to lead his army from the front, but it was taking its toll too.

When Alexander reached Babylon he caught a fever, possibly due to bad water, refused treatment, stayed up late drinking with his men (a Macedonian custom) and developed an infection from which he soon died. Overwork, grief and much damage to his body probably played its part.

He had no child and no obvious successor. His lesser wife (the daughter of of Sogdian king) was certainly pregnant, and gave birth to his son some months later. His chief wife (the daughter of the last Persian emperor Darius) may have been pregnant, too, but she was quickly murdered. His half-brother, Philip, was thought to be an idiot: he was there with the army but never considered as a serious successor. If Hephastion had survived, he (as second-in-command) would probably have had a good chance of taking over, but he was dead.

Without the dynamic, charismatic leader, the Empire he had only just put together collapsed. Each of his generals grabbed what he could, and they all fought each other. One of them kidnapped Alexander's surviving wife and his son, and later had them murdered. The Hellenistic empire became a number of different, often warring, empires, each of them ruled by a Greek-speaking dynasty descended from one or other Macedonian war leader.

The most successful was Ptolomy, who grabbed Egypt - and kept it. His line lasted until the rise of the Roman Empire. Cleopatra was a descendant of his.