Persian Victory at Marathon/Salamis/Platea?

[Noncommunist]

When people make lists of the world's most influential battles, Marathon usually tops the list. Western civilization and democracy are said to be some of the important things it protected. However, supposing history went a little differently and the Persians had won, how would history have unfolded?

Without the Greeks stopping the Persians there, would they have pushed further west? Were there reasons to push further west than Greece? Or would the opponents further west have been too difficult to conquer? And why did they stop where they did on their other borders in Africa, the Caucasus, Bactria, and India?

Culturally, would they have stopped Greece from flourishing as it did? How interrupted was Greek culture during their years under Macedonian and Roman rule? And were the other regions of Persia interrupted culturally? Would the Greeks have been allowed to keep some political autonomy allowing them to develop democracy? And if they hadn't developed democracy, would they idea still have arisen and become powerful in the world?

Also, if the Greeks had been conquered and culturally interrupted, how would Rome and Carthage continue to develop? Would the Greek colonies have still exuded the same influence? Would Persian cultural influence have competed as well? And would Rome or Carthage eventually fight Persia?

And how would the victory have affected Persia? Would they have been influenced by their new subjects in the way that Rome was affected by Greece? Were there factors that might have caused the collapse of their empire in the absence of Alexander the Great? Would their national psyche be different absent conquest by western forces? And in the absence of the west as we know it, would Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have developed?

[Kralizec]

I'm not entirely convinced that if Persia managed to conquer European Greece it would have been able to hold it, let alone pushing further west.

Democracy might have survived under the Persians for matters of regional autonomy, such as the organisation of religious festivals, public infrastructure and whatnot. It would probably have been a lot less glamorous, and its impact on political philosophy might have been smaller. I should add that personally I think that modern democracies draw more from Roman traditions than Greek ones, though.

Rome and Carthage would not necessarily have been affected that much, I think. They'd still collide when their spheres of influence encroached eachother, leading to Punic Wars and whatnot. Would Greek language and culture still be as important to the Roman people? I don't know.

I don't think that annexing European Greece would have had much effect on Persia at all. Their empire was organised in Satrapies which were more or less self-governing. Even if the King-of-Kings took a serious liking of Greek culture and practices he would probably lack the ability to impose it on his Satrapies. In any case, Persia did rule over a lot of Greek territories in Anatolia, did trade with the Greeks in Europe and had access to the products of Greek culture if they really wanted it.

[Hax]

The Achaemenid Empire was interesting in the way that it did not necessarily seek to impose an alien culture on the people they conquered, not much unlike the Romans (although the concept of citizenship didn't really exist under Persian rule). As long as people paid the taxes, they were happy to leave them be. I don't think there would have been that big an impact on "Greek" civilisation. However, although there were many developments made in terms of philosophy, pursuing actual science was sometimes strongly discouraged or even punishable by law. If my memory serves me well, one of Herodotus' friends was executed for doing astronomy. Interestingly, the Hellenes were viewed by the Persians as a minor nuisance, a local rebellious group with illusions of grandeur. Of course, that came back to bite them pretty hard some two-hundred years later, when Alexander..well, you know the story. So all-in-all, this wasn't a war of conquest. The Greek city states were already regarded as subject peoples. This was a war of retribution (namely, for Athenian support during the Ionian revolt).

The latter portion of your post is a bit too much "what if". Also, in my opinion, there's this idea of a clear-cut difference between "western" civilisation and "eastern" civilisation. Democracy-like institutions were not limited to Athens, there were many such political constructions to be found throughout the world at that time. I should probably add that the Golden Age of Hellenic science only commenced after the conquest of Babylonia and Iran by the aforementioned Alexander.


Without the Greeks stopping the Persians there, would they have pushed further west? Were there reasons to push further west than Greece? Or would the opponents further west have been too difficult to conquer? And why did they stop where they did on their other borders in Africa, the Caucasus, Bactria, and India?

Well, no. Greece was already seen as the periphery. Why would they go even further west? If we're talking about ~500 BCE, Rome constituted little more than a couple of hundred square miles around Rome. I don't know much about the state of Carthage at that point, but I think that taxing the trade from Carthage would be much more lucrative than a campaign of conquest. Don't forget that the Achaemenids were already pretty stretched at this point.

Why stop where they did: I think Cambyses II led an expedition into the Libyan desert, but then someone usurped the throne and he died (committed suicide or something else, I don't know). They more or less inherited (violently) the Caucasus region from the Medians, and probably didn't feel like stretching the borders there. Even if they had subjugated the mountainous regions, why would they conquer the steppes north of them? Cyrus (the Great) was killed during an expedition against a nomad people across the Amu Darya, so that probably scared them enough from going there again (it doesn't help that supposedly, the queen of this people used Cyrus' head as a cup).