Alexander the Great died in June of 323 B.C.E. from a fever that seized his body. He died before naming an heir and his monarchy had not developed far enough to be able to withstand the pressures of a crumbling empire. A quote from Professor Keyne Cheshire at Davidson College, Davidson, N.C., who specializes in ancient history, shares his opinion on the ability of the monarchy to withstand the pressure:
I believe that had Alexander lived on, the empire might have split into an eastern one ruled from Babylon and a Western one ruled from Macedon. The cultures of those regions were so vastly different, and the Greeks in particular thought themselves somehow culturally superior to the Persians. Many Greeks to the west disapproved of the integration policies that Alexander was adopting.
There was a great cultural rift between the different regions that Alexander the Great had conquered. Because the regions were held as a united empire for only a little over a decade, the regions quickly fell apart after the death of Alexander the Great. There had not been enough time for a bond of unity between the regions to form during the lifetime of Alexander, so could the have formed anyway, even during his lifetime? The answer, most likely not.
