Although Alexander the Great has attracted more than his share of fanatical admirers, nobody ever topped Caracalla. Caracalla's day job was Roman emperor (great salary, solid perks, high turnover rate); but his real passion was being an Alexander fanboy. In each of his scowling portraits, he carefully cocked his head in imitation of his wrynecked hero. For his campaign against Persia, he shunted several thousand confused conscripts into a Macedonian-style Phalanx. And when he began the march eastward, he even started sporting Macedonian clothes (including a large and rather un-imperial Greek sunhat). The crowning moment of his obsession came when he visited Alexandria, and at last saw the tomb of Alexander, where he reverentially laid his purple cloak over the conqueror's body.

Caracalla is the last person known to have visited the tomb of Alexander. The best description of the tomb, composed more than two centuries before his arrival, informs us that it was located in the palace complex of the Ptolemies (later used by the Roman prefect of Egypt), near the sarcophagi of Ptolemy and his successors. When Alexander's body was first brought to Alexandria, it was interred in an elaborate golden casket. One of the later Ptolemies, strapped for cash, melted the casket down and replaced it with one made of glass or alabaster. The conqueror's body, embalmed immediately after his death, was apparently well-preserved - at least until the future emperor Augustus took it into his head to kiss Alexander's withered cheek, and contrived to break off the nose. Although Alexander's tomb was famous throughout the Empire, it seems that only high-status guests were allowed to visit. Only kings and emperors, one imagines, were allowed to crack the lid.

Most scholars think that Alexander's tomb was destroyed in the riots of 272 AD, when the whole palace quarter burned (Amm. Marc. 22.16.15). By the end of the fourth century, if we can believe the stray comments of patristic authors, even the location of the tomb had been forgotten. There are reports of travelers visiting Alexander's tomb - or rather, what their guides told them was Alexander's tomb - in subsequent centuries. None of these testimonia, however, are especially compelling.

Why don't we know more? Textually speaking, the disappearance of Alexander's tomb is a victim of the same conspiracy of time and neglect that has robbed us of the vast majority of classical literature. People at the time surely talked about the tomb's destruction; but no account has happened to survive. There have been many attempts to excavate the tomb, which is generally assumed to have been located near the crossing of ancient Alexandria's two primary boulevards. But densely-populated Alexandria is not an easy city to dig; and whatever remains still exist have likely been severely disrupted, or even destroyed, by the deep foundations of nineteenth- and twentieth- century buildings.

In the early 2000's, British historian Andrew Chugg made headlines by claiming that the body of Alexander has survived to the present day. The conqueror's embalmed remains, he contends, were assimilated to those of St. Mark by late antique Christians, and were carried - as the evangelist's relics - to Venice in 828. Chugg has lobbied for the opening of St. Mark's tomb and a careful examination of the remains within. The theory is fascinating - and I think every classicist secretly hopes that Chugg is right. But it is extremely unlikely that the body now in St. Mark's ever-soggier tomb belongs to Alexander.

So I think, and I imagine most ancient historians think, that we are never likely to find any substantial remains of either Alexander or his tomb. The hunt, of course, will continue, for the same reason that people keep hunting for the tombs of Alaric and Genghis Khan: hope springs eternal, and so does History Channel funding.