The Deadly Styx River and the Death of Alexander

Article

by Adrienne Mayor, Stanford University and Antoinette Hayes, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
published on 07 November 2011

Plutarch, Arrian, Diodorus, Justin, and other ancient historians report that rumors of poisoning arose after the death of Alexander in Babylon in 323 B.C. Alexander’s close friends suspected a legendary poison gathered from the River Styx in Arcadia, so corrosive that only the hoof of a horse could contain it. It’s impossible to know the real cause of Alexander’s death, but a recent toxicological discovery may help explain why some ancient observers believed that Alexander was murdered with Styx poison. We propose that the river harbored a killer bacterium that can occur on limestone rock deposits. This paper elaborates on our Poster presentation, Toxicological History Room, XII International Congress of Toxicology, Barcelona, 19-23 July 2010, and Society of Toxicology Annual Meeting, Washington DC, March 2011.

Written by Adrienne Mayor, Stanford University and Antoinette Hayes, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, linked by Jan van der Crabben, published 07 November 2011. Source URL: http://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/mayor/051101.pdf.

Disclaimer: Ancient History Encyclopedia claims no authorship, intellectual property, or copyright on the material below. It is used solely for non-profit educational purposes, and none of the data is stored on our servers. If you want this content to be removed from the site, please contact us.

[+] Enlarge article [-] View article page

Learn More

Remove Ads

Recommended Books

Alexander the Great

Philip Freeman

Simon & Schuster (18 October 2011)

Price:

$12.06

Alexander The Great: Selections From Arrian, Diodorus, Plutarch, And Quintus...

Arrian

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (15 March 2005)

Price:

$15.00

Alexander the Great: Journey to the End of the Earth

Norman F. Cantor

HarperCollins Publishers (20 November 2007)

Price:

$8.62

Alexander the Great

Paul Cartledge

Vintage (01 November 2005)

Price:

$10.74

Alexander the Great: Historical Sources in Translation

Anonymous

Wiley-Blackwell (09 January 2004)

Price:

$49.67

Cite This Work

APA Style

Pharmaceuticals, A. M. S. U. A. A. H. P. (2011, November 07). The Deadly Styx River and the Death of Alexander. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/article/272/

Chicago Style

Pharmaceuticals, Adrienne M. S. U. A. A. H. P. "The Deadly Styx River and the Death of Alexander." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified November 07, 2011. https://www.ancient.eu/article/272/.

MLA Style

Pharmaceuticals, Adrienne M. S. U. A. A. H. P. "The Deadly Styx River and the Death of Alexander." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 07 Nov 2011. Web. 23 Sep 2017.

License

Original article by Adrienne Mayor, Stanford University and Antoinette Hayes, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. Submitted by Jan van der Crabben, published on 07 November 2011 under the following license: Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Remove Ads