Listening to the daily reports for the Vigil (well done, Kallistos!), I saw a post conveying some of the anxieties of those Greeks, Macedonians, Persians, and more comprising the Empire as they heard Alexander was seriously wounded - and the fears of just what would happen if he died without an heir (although, as noted, I doubt that an infant or child heir, even if he had one, would have helped one bit).

It made me realize how very much I dislike reading about the Diadochi. The careers of Alexander's subsequent marshals, and of course of the infamous Cassander, make for such depressing reading about human nature in general, and Macedonians in particular, that it's very hard for me to acquire more than a cursory understanding about who did what to whom, over a 40-year period of civil war. Seleucus was one of the few whom I could more or less respect, because he was about the only marshal who followed some of Alexander's suggestions about working WITH the Persians, not just imposing Greek rule on top of them. Reading, for example, about just how severe Ptolemy was on the Egyptians - basically taking 90% of the country for himself and his Greek allies, and the devil with the demotics - is enough to make one cringe. And 2 centuries later, native Egyptians were STILL complaining bitterly that, unless one was or knew how to speak Greek, even the simplest legal rights were unobtainable.

They may have been fine generals under someone stronger than they, but they were absolute pirates on their own!

The more I think about it, the more I realize that, even if Alexander HAD done as Antipater supposedly asked back in around 35 BC, and married, his 11-year-old son would have been no match whatsoever for the snarling curs who followed after his death.