Ancient Greeks in Ukraine

Optimus

I know that they actually colonized the area earlier but would it be possible for Pagan Greeks who don't want to convert to Christianity during the Christianization of Greece/Anatolia settle Ukraine / Caucasus area and set up a relatively strong state and dont got assimilated so that we can have renaissance much earlier?
 

Elfwine

Optimus said:
I know that they actually colonized the area earlier but would it be possible for Pagan Greeks who don't want to convert to Christianity during the Christianization of Greece/Anatolia settle Ukraine / Caucasus area and set up a relatively strong state and dont got assimilated so that we can have renaissance much earlier?
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No.

Not to mention that them settling the Ukraine/Caucasus area is not going to help bring an earlier Renaissance.
 

eliphas8

There wheren't enough greek pagans left to do anything like this by the time the empire was officially converting, the Greeks where the backbone of the christian community for most of its history by then. Had there been enough Greek Pagans left to do this the empire would never have become a christian state to begin with.
 

Gannt the chartist

It would need to be classical period (say Carthage wins big in Sicily) and a mixed scytho/hellenic culture, the Bactrian State and successors had some legs and arguably Parthia has a strong hellenistic component.

But then this bloke called Khan arrives and its mountain of skulls time.
 

Basileus Giorgios

Everyone's poo-pooing the idea, and I agree it's fairly unlikely, but don't forget that the Crimean Goths managed to do pretty damn well in the region for a good thousand years, and they seem to have had a mixed steppe/Germanic/Roman culture. They were Christian, though, and I strongly suspect they'd have gone under without Constantinople's support. Which would not have been forthcoming had they been pagans.

Not sure how paganism brings about an earlier renaissance...
 

Elfwine

Basileus Giorgios said:
Everyone's poo-pooing the idea, and I agree it's fairly unlikely, but don't forget that the Crimean Goths managed to do pretty damn well in the region for a good thousand years, and they seem to have had a mixed steppe/Germanic/Roman culture. They were Christian, though, and I strongly suspect they'd have gone under without Constantinople's support. Which would not have been forthcoming had they been pagans.

Not sure how paganism brings about an earlier renaissance...
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So damn well as to be pretty much unnoticable on the map.

It's something, and it's an interesting something, but it's hardly a powerful state.
 

chornedsnorkack

Very few Greek Pagans emigrated from Roman Empire to escape Christians. The philosophers of Athens schools did emigrate to Zoroastrian Persia - and returned in a few years.
 

DominusNovus

The problem with the initial idea is quite circular, much like many other problems when discussing alternate history. This is, generally speaking, why many such matters did not happen.

The specific problem, as others have mentioned, with urban civilization in the Urkrainian plains is that the area is tailor made for nomadic societies, who tend to have a military edge most of the time. Some settlements might be able to prosper along the major rivers, but they'd still be quite vulnerable to nomadic raids.

Of course, the one thing that changes that irreversibly is the development of reliable firearms. Simply discovering gunpowder earlier won't help; the Mongols themselves used gunpowder weapons. You need proper firearms. Which requires earlier technological developments on a wide variety of fronts, most notably chemistry and metallurgy.

Such development would negate the desire for an 'earlier renaissance.' History is generally too interconnected for simple 'cause and effect' scenarios to happen in a vacuum in such a fashion. Suffice it to say, the effects you're probably looking for from an 'earlier renaissance' are actually the causes that would enable such a development.
 

Optimus

Thanks for the answers, when i say strong state i actually mean strong enough to make sure Greeks survive, i am not searching for a rival for Byzantines or Khazars etc. it can be a weak and unimportant state especially militarily, what i want is a Greek population who culturally directly descended from Pre-Christian Greeks.
 

DominusNovus

Optimus said:
Thanks for the answers, when i say strong state i actually mean strong enough to make sure Greeks survive, i am not searching for a rival for Byzantines or Khazars etc. it can be a weak and unimportant state especially militarily, what i want is a Greek population who culturally directly descended from Pre-Christian Greeks.
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The Christian greeks are culturally directly descended from Pre-Christian Greeks. Its not as though these are two distinct and unrelated societies; the great Church fathers, particularly those of Greek extraction, were generally pretty well read up on their Socrates and their Plato.

But the point is that the location is simply not tenable for a sedentary population like the Greeks at this point in history. If it had been, they would have done it; the soil's great, there's some large navigable rivers, and its right next door. However, they'll get run over continuously by various nomadic tribes with each attempt.
 
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