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what if?

• Message 1. 

  Posted by WW2Freak (U8931980) on Wednesday, 11th July 2007

  In the Battle of Thermopylae of 480 BC, an alliance of Greek city-states fought the invading Persian Empire at the pass of Thermopylae in central Greece. Vastly outnumbered, the Greeks held back the Persians for three days in one of history's most famous last stands. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road through which the massive army of Xerxes I of Persia (Xerxes the Great) could pass. After three days of battle, a local resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing a mountain path that led behind the Greek lines. Dismissing the rest of the army, King Leonidas stayed behind with 300 Spartans and 700 Thespian volunteers. The Persians succeeded in taking the pass but sustained heavy losses, extremely disproportionate to those of the Greeks. The fierce resistance of the Spartan-led army offered Athens the invaluable time to prepare for a decisive naval battle that would come to determine the outcome of the war.[3] The subsequent Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis left much of the Persian Empire's navy destroyed and Xerxes was forced to retreat back to Asia, leaving his army in Greece under Mardonius, who was to meet the Greeks in battle one last time. The Spartans assembled at full strength and led a pan-Greek army that defeated the Persians decisively at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War and with it the expansion of the Persian Empire into Europe.
  
  
  What would life be like if the Battle of Plataea was in the persians favor?

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Thursday, 12th July 2007

  It would be a major drawback to the anti-persian greek states alliance as they had gathered there most of their armies and a huge blow to the wind of pro-persian Greek states, notably Thebes. Do not forget that from the Persian camp, the ones that fought harder were the Thebans and the Thessalians (if I remember well) because they were the most interested in. A Persian victory would mean their hegemony under the eulogies of the Persian king. Hence, in case the free Greek cities lost, S.E. Europe like Minor Asia would become another satrapy of the Persian Empire and the fate of the cities would be not much different to the fate of Ionian cities in the west coast of Minor Asia: some would be destroyed and looted, others would face minor destruction, they would all pay heavy taxes to repay the Persians' and their allies' war expenses and soon you would have a super-city Thebes, base of the Satrap who would most possibly be a Theban as Mardonius had other plans.
  
  The plans of Mardonius was not of course to conquer the Greeks (interesting but marginal western neighbours for the great Persians in those times). Accidentally for those who had not noticed it Mardonius was not at all Persian but Phoenician and rose up to a powerfull position via political machinations (using his sister that was one of the kings wifes etc.). Mardonius had been in constant contact with the free Phoenicians (not that the Persian occupied ones suffered much!),i.e. the Carthagenians to aid the Persians and the latter attacked .... Magna Grecia! Did they do a mistake in the map then or what aid was the attack in Sicily to the Persian campaign against Eretria and Athens?
  
  Obviously, the whole Persian Wars were nothing but a theater hinding behind the scenes the great Mediterranean war, the shipping war that was waging on between Greeks and Phoenicians with the former having re-established their hegemony lost in Mycenean times and the latter (who had developed after the demise of Myceneans) trying to re-establish their hegemony of the 1100-800 B.C. times. Hence, under that light the attack of Carthagenians against Greeks of Sicily following communication with Mardonius is easily understandable.
  
  So dear Mardonius would have more business to do and so after consolidation of things in the greek peninsula, he would entrust the Satrapy to the Theban general, he would salvage whatever Greek ships from allied and conquered cities and would sail to Carthage or even directly to Sicily with an army of at least 50,000 men (mostly Greeks) to aid the 300,000 mercenaries that Carthagenians had managed to gather and already deploy in Sicily to attack at the same time as Persians.
  
  Now from there there are two scenarios. Had Carthagenians won the battle, the the whole Mediterranean would become a Phoenician lake half under the rule of the Persian king and half under the free Phoenicians of Carthage. Greeks would continue just as an important component of that double Empire but it would be rather the Phoenician language the standard. They would have some hope of regeneration especially in the case of an effort of Carthagenians to expand in the east against Persians (most possible scenario) and free their brothers, but mostly to have absolute control and pay taxes to none. In that scenario Carthagenians would highly utilise Greek armies that soon would be again powerfull enough to overturn the Carthagenians in the same sense that most mercenaries overturned their bosses in history (Persians overturned the Medes, Venecians and Franks the Byzantines and Turkish the Arabs).
  
  In the scenario of Syracusians winning they would instantly become the bastion of Greeks that withheld the onslaught thus much of the rest free Greeks would rush and unite around them. Perhaps the Greeks of Mardonius in Sicily would be either killed for co-operating with barbarians or lured to increase the armies of Syracuse (Syracusians were a bit more flexible) perhaps in a backlash onslaught against Carthage. Had they done that then the road was open for Sicilian Greeks to go east and free the greek peninsula, destroy Thebes and Thessaly and take the rest of the Greek cities (by then weak to have illusions of power) under their hegemony, thus creating an enlarged Greek state with a considerable number of army and navy enough to control the Mediterranean and establish a Syracusean Empire. In other words they could just go and do what Alexander did in the east and what Rome did in the Mediterranean. More forward than that you would have clashes between the two Empires in Palestine, Syria and eastern Minor Asia while things could go on as went for the Roman Empire with the difference that the international language would be only Greek (and not any other) and that the rate of scientific and artistic development would be considerably higher (jugding from the comparison between Roman Empire and Hellenistic Kingdoms).

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