Monday, October 04, 2004

Whodunit

Who killed Alexander the Great in 323 BC? A popular historian claims the culprit is ...

But first, some hints: (1) Steve Connor wrote the piece; (2) Connor is the London Independent science editor; and (3) whenever a crime is reported in The Independent, you know the culprit is going to be:

Either (1) the US; (2) the US neocons; or (3) Israel. Or, in that best and most perfect of all possible worlds; (4) the neocons and Israel conspiring illicitly to hijack US policy. How could they have murdered anyone in 323 BC? Answer: they're fiendishly clever.

Alas, in the sui generis alternative interpretation reported by Connor, it was the spurned wife Roxane, and not those clever Jews, who used a then-obscure Indus Valley plant--strychnine--to poison ATG. Or so the theory goes.