I'd go with greece or macedonia. Start turtling after an initial blitz of the other to make a nice coherent kingdom of what is greece today. As greece you would have to abandon syracuse though.

If you don't want to blitz maybe you could try with armenia - you just have to sell most of your army to afford it...

I would also say no to a barbarian faction - not a good idea to sit idle for 100 turns with them...