Could Alexander have defeated the Roman Republic if he had turned back after conquering Persia and set his sights on...

Could Alexander have defeated the Roman Republic if he had turned back after conquering Persia and set his sights on Italy? Could the Macedonian phalanx compete with the manipular legions of Rome?

Manipular formation wasn't adopted until after Alex died.

Check on those roman-greek battles. The phalanxes were giving the romans a hell of a headache. Had the greek generals been better and their armies more flexible and diverse (cavalry especially) it might have gone differently.

Rome was fairly irrelevant during the time of Alexander, it wasn't until after the Punic wars that Latin influence made a serious push towards being a strong Med power. From a strategic position it was too far west to be able to govern the entirety of Alexander's empire. It's more likely that carthago would have been targeted first. In which case it would be a difficult war to fight. Even though Alexander was an amazing General Carthage was a naval power

Not only this, but Rome was still very small and relatively weak in the late 4th century B.C. During the second Samnite war, at around this time, Rome has at most 6 legions active at any one time, and that's including allied troops. You're talking a peak strength of about 28,000. They're MUCH stronger even when facing Pyrhhus, let alone winding the clock back as far as an Alexandrian invasion.

Quite simply, they'd be smothered by a force that outnumbers them 2-3:1 and has superior levels of training, discipline, and organization. The tactics of infantry formation are a relatively minor factor next that.

Carthage can barely muster 70 warships to besiege Syracuse in 278 B.C. Alexander was rolling around with a much bigger fleet. Like Rome, they too were growing at the close of the 4th century B.C.

>conquer Egypt and Libya to get the Carthage
>suddenly, navy is irrelevant

So if the Hellenic generals had used armies the way Alexander did? and not what they turned it into?

The Successor Kingdoms continued to use essentially the same tactics and army composition that Alexander and Philip pioneered, while obviously also adapting to local traditions and whatnot. But the phalanx isn't perfect. It is vulnerable to flanking maneuvers especially. By the time Rome invaded Greece and Macedon, they had simply evolved their own tactics and military to the point that the fragmented and divided kingdoms were really no match for them.

> plans to slug through North Africa on foot instead of sailing from harbor to harbor

Hellenic generals *couldn't* use the same style of army that Alexander did. This is an era when the ability of a state to train, arm, and organize bodies of men is extremely limited, and governing powers is often a very complicated mess of treaties with individual rights and responsibilities spelled out and little more offered or taken.

Alexander and Phillip before him had the ability to reorganize Macedonian society and build a new type of army, out of Macedonian troops. Everywhere Alexander conquered, when he used local troops, they were with whatever martial traditions, equipment, and organization appeared before him. You start to get a very little bit in the way of hellenization of martial traditions as the Diodochi root themselves, but it's never anywhere close to complete. Most of them are fighting with what to Alexander would be insufficient quantities of psiloi and hetaroi not because they didn't see the value of such, but because they couldn't raise those classes of troops easily.

Yes? Why would you fuck with boats and risk losing your entire army to a superior navy when you can just conquer everything in your path much more easily? Alexander was the first person to take an army through the Gedrosian Desert successfully. Yeah, he lost a lot of men to attrition, but Libya back in Classical Antiquity was much more hospitable than it is today. The North African coast was a verdant forest for the most part.

No, the successor kingdoms slowly abandoned the combined "Skirmisher, Cavalry, Phalanx" that Phillip and Alexander perfected, and moved towards large and large phalanxes, as phalanxes became the thing that were seen as deciding battles more and more. Also, it was cheaper than raising horses, and skirmishers never won battles. You can see it in the size of armies in the successor kingdoms, where infantry become a bigger and bigger percentage, to counter other phalanxes, sacrificing the protection that cavalry gave to the flanks.

They could have if they had not been fighting other hellenistic powers, which called for larger and larger Phalanxes. The Ptolemaics could have raised those troops without any difficulty, but chose to simply increase their infantry instead.

>more easily? Alexander was the first person to take an army through the Gedrosian Desert successfully
He'd try to send his troops across the desert, and maybe they would temporarily take Carthage, then he would try to finish them off in the Iberian peninsula, but eventually his troops would mutiny because he is leading them on far flung ventures that they don't want to be involved in and that would be the end of that.

>I'll take "moving the goalposts" for 500, Alex.

>They could have if they had not been fighting other hellenistic powers, which called for larger and larger Phalanxes. The Ptolemaics could have raised those troops without any difficulty, but chose to simply increase their infantry instead.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Diodochi cavalry to infantry ratios stay more or less consistent to what Alexander had at 15-20% of the overall army by numbers. The Ptolemids did utiilize light troops, especially in their subject peoples, places like what's now Israel and into the Arabian peninsula. The Selukids did as well, although they drew theirs from Gallic mercenaries, Cilicians, and what's now northern Iraq.

A large part of this debate is also strategic, not just tactical. Rome was able to storm through Greece because the Diadochi kept beating up on each other.

Since every single successor was trying to backstab the other, Rome was able to take advantage of the chaos and conquer each Successor state piece by piece, starting with allying with the Aetolian League against Macedon.

This would have been different had Alexander lived, potentially. He may have turned his gaze eastward before the Roman Republic established their dominance over the Italian Peninsula and beat back the Carthigians. With a united Empire and consistent martial tradition, Rome may have been in trouble. I think this is further supported regarding Pyrrus' tactical successes; he beat the Romans on the field, but couldn't sustain his losses. Alexander probably could.

Honestly, any discussion of a potential Alexandrian campaign against Rome is mostly going to hinge on whether or not there is trouble at home when he's campaigning in Italy. While open revolts hadn't erupted during Alexander's reign, there was a LOT of tension between his various subject peoples and their overlords, and a revolt is definitely plausible.

Cambyses II actually attempted to conquer Carthage after completing the conquest of Egypt, but they couldn't get past the desert and the Phoenicians didn't want to sail against their own city.

>roman republic in the 4th century bc vs alexander
the mark of a smoothbrained moron

Are you trying to say the Roman Republic didn't exist at the time? Because I assure you it did, retard.

Rome was an insignificant backwater during Alexander''s time. He would have destroyed them easily.

>such a brainlet that you cant even understand why OPs proposed scenario is not worth devoting any sort of brainpower into debating
sad!

I think Etruscans and Samnites were more powerful than Romans at that time. They would have been tougher challenge for Alexander.