Marathon reversed

[Byzantine Prince]

Pyrrhus, Prince of Molossians!!!
j/k
The name Pyrrhus still survive in northern Epirus (southern Albania), among the Greek minority. I suppose my compatriot BP could confirm this

Piro Dima the world's weight lifting champion comes to mind. He was born in Albania like me. Then he used his greek background(and athletic skill) to immigrate to Greece. Hell I think all of Greece's weight lifting champion have come from northern epirotes.

Some thing in the water maybe. I don't know, I am very weak in muscle mass.

[English assassin]

Dont forget that the rise of Rome began with the conquest of Greece, that Rome's biggest province. What would have happened if Rome had to fight against the Persians in order to make their first step into the East?

As Ceasar says the rise of Rome really began with the first Punic war and the annexation of Sicilly as the first Roman Province.

Unless the Persian conquest of Greece had affected the rise of Rome then with no disrespect to the Greeks its hard to see it would have had much long term impact. It seems to me that even after such a conquest, history would have been back on "our" track unless the Persian conquest of Greece had somehow stopped Alexander (or really Philip) arising. If Alexander still happened then the Romans would still have had three divided post-alexandrian kingdoms to deal with in the east instead of one unified power.

That in turn would mean Persia holding onto Greece for well over 100 years and then intevening to prevent the rise of Macedonia. IMHO its far too speculative to say whether or not that is likely but my guess, and it is a pure guess, is that the Greeks would have ejected the Persians at some point long before, and therefore nothing much would be changed. Thats assuming the Persians made any attempt to stay, as opposed to looting, placing clients as rulers in the cities, taking hostages, and then retiring gratefully back to somewhere altogether more civilised.

[Watchman]

Persia wasn't exactly the stablest of empires anyway. Didn't they go through at least one full dynasty change (with all the internal troubles and rebellions involved) between Marathon and Alexander, anyway ?

And for that matter, even had they taken over Greece at some point, how's that equal total disappereance of Greek culture ? Like most empire-builders they had a rather hands-off approach to their subjects - so long as the taxes came in regularly and the laws were obeyed in general terms, the natives could do pretty much as they pleased. And when you think about it, Persian overlordship would probably have done a lot to keep the Greeks off each others' throats...

[caesar44]

Persia wasn't exactly the stablest of empires anyway. Didn't they go through at least one full dynasty change (with all the internal troubles and rebellions involved) between Marathon and Alexander, anyway ?

And for that matter, even had they taken over Greece at some point, how's that equal total disappereance of Greek culture ? Like most empire-builders they had a rather hands-off approach to their subjects - so long as the taxes came in regularly and the laws were obeyed in general terms, the natives could do pretty much as they pleased. And when you think about it, Persian overlordship would probably have done a lot to keep the Greeks off each others' throats...

It is hard to belive that Socrates , Plato , Aristotle etc' were as they were , under Persian occupation

[Watchman]

Bluntly put - why ? I don't remember the Persians having a reputation as being overly picky about what the heck their far-flung subject peoples thought up so long as they didn't cause trouble. Few empires ever did - it just wasn't worth all the trouble and rebellions.

[Steppe Merc]

What about other Iranian philisphers? Alexander certaintly liked the Persian culture a lot...
But the Persians probably wouldn't have destroyed Greek culutre. They mainly just allow their subject kingdoms to continue as they were, without destroying their culture or turning them into "Persians".

[caesar44]

You have to realise that all greek philosophy was based on the concept of absolute freedom , because of that , they went to war in 480 . I agree that the Persians were tolerants to others , but still , think about Socrates and his words under persian-oriental-monarchial rule

[Watchman]

So he'd have to drop off the anti-monarchic bits ? Wow, big deal. And it's not like the Greek philosophers were anything of an united front in the issue of freedom, nevermind now having some pretty selective ideas about it in general. Slave-using society, remember ? Ever read Platon's State or whatever it's called ? That's a bloody dystopia by modern standards...

Now look. Imperial nationalism only became the order of the day in the 1800s AD, and then only half because the rulers had to adopt it to keep in the good graces of the (more important) majority segments of their subjects. As a rule of thumb before that they could hardly have cared less so long as their subjects paid their dues and didn't try to buck their overlords; this was particularly the case with "classical" empires of the Persian/Roman/Macedonian type. Even the more religiously monolithic ones were, whatever their rhetoric, usually willing to tolerate odd religious minorities (although only rarely "heretics", however defined; sectarian squabbles being notoriously often more bitter than those between main religions).

It's not like Persian overlordship over Greece wouldn't have resulted in a history different from ours. It's just that there's no real grounds for assuming such a history would automatically have been "worse" solely because the almighty, all-important Greeks didn't get to do their thing the exact same way they actually did.