A History of the Argead Empire - a TL

This should be 202 BC:

Argead Empire 202 BC.PNG
 
Update.


Chapter V: From Twilight to Nightfall, 202-107 BC.


His uncle became King Philip III and is generally seen as a bad ruler, usually referred to as “Philip the Proud”. He was described by contemporaries as stubborn, thick-headed, brash and arrogant and was said to neglect state affairs and leave them to his underlings in order to live a frivolous life of partying with numerous mistresses. He was also highly ambitious as shown by his war against Axum from 200 to 198 BC after which the Axumite Empire was annexed and the empire expanded all the way to the Horn of Africa, thus bringing it to its maximum extent, making it the largest empire ever known. Also, coincidentally, Macedonian soldiers discovered a bean growing in Axum which was highly energizing and ate it, and so it became part of their ration. It wouldn’t be until after the Macedonian Empire’s collapse that the process of brewing it into coffee was invented. Trade was blossoming and culturally the empire was too (except for the persecution of Buddhists, see below), and besides this the King of Kings lorded over an empire with an estimated 150 million inhabitants.

His delegation of state affairs to underlings who themselves were influenced by the King’s decadent lifestyle, however, led to a great deal of lethargy, apathy and corruption among them which not even the King could stop nor compensate with great conquests. He saw such work as tedious, unfit for a great ruler so he wouldn’t do anything even if it was necessary.

He was active in one thing, namely religion since he was fervently opposed to Buddhism which he saw as a religion for the “meek-minded” (such as his late brother). He believed that Buddhism was one of the causes of the apathetic, lethargic, corrupt and non-combative attitude which caused the state bureaucracy to hamper ever more to the point of dysfunction. He started to persecute Buddhists in the first religious persecutions in the empire’s history which some conservatives saw as good. His conquests were widely seen as good by all, his religious persecutions by some (mostly Zoroastrian and Macedon-Greek elites).

Little of him was remembered well in hindsight, which was no surprise considering the decline of his dynasty and empire that he set in motion. For now, however, the dysfunction of the Argead Empire’s state apparatus caused only annoyance, and was not an immediate problem. The economy was still running as good as ever and the military was strong, but their nonetheless was a subtle uneasiness as expressed by cultural pessimism.

In the meantime, imposed heavy additional taxes on Buddhists, their monasteries and their temples in order to bankrupt their holy places and encourage conversion to one of the religions he accepted. He also banned practicing Buddhists from the state administration which did little good as many of them were experienced administrators. It led to a decline in Buddhism in his realm, but only superficially so since many continued to follow Buddhist teachings in private and practiced passive resistance. An angered Philip III condoned a number of pogroms of Buddhist monks which in turn provoked an uprising in the eastern satrapies, where Buddhists were most prominent, in 191 BC. He crushed the rebellion, burning down several holy places, and shortly thereafter ended up in conflict with Satadhanvan Maurya (ruler of the declining Maurya Empire) in a border war known as the “Third Indo-Hellenic War” because the latter was angered about Philip’s persecution of Buddhism.

Philip died in 182 BC at age 53 after a two decade spanning reign. His reign marked the start of the Alexandrian Empire’s decline and it was followed by political instability and conflict between Philip’s offspring. Four of his sons reigned after him, three of whom didn’t reign for more than a few years thanks to internecine feuds which killed them. His sons were Alexander V (r. 182-179 BC), Philip IV (r. 179-177 BC), Perdiccas IV (r. 177-174 BC) and Amyntas V (r. 174-149 BC).

Amyntas V ended the persecution of Buddhism within his realm, lowered taxes to reinvigorate economic growth which was getting lower, reformed the bureaucracy by stamping down on sinecures, and re-established good ties with the Maurya Empire. Developments took place, however, that were outside of his control, and truthfully, he was only a moderate king when a great king was needed. He is therefore often seen as a tragic figure who tried his best, but who ultimately didn’t understand the times he was living in and how and why everything was going so wrong. The Alexandrian Empire’s death struggle had undeniably begun.

Economically, the empire was weakening due to a slow demographic decline caused by a global temperature drop. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia caused this global temperature drop was which in turn led to a decrease in agricultural production and thusly higher food prices and inflation in general. Culturally, the empire remained a melting pot as ever, but it was a superficial shadow of its former self with rising ethno-social and religious tensions. Politically, the bureaucracy stagnated, and due to decreased tax income combined with a lower population the empire was less able to maintain its enormous armies over (estimated at 600.000 men in peacetime at the peak of their size during the late third century/early second century BC). In the foreign field, the Han Dynasty in China expanded westward in the hopes of making contact and ally themselves with the “great empire in the west” against a federation of tribes dominated by the Xiongnu. The result was that many Turkic tribes migrated ahead of the Han invasions and exerted pressure on the Macedonian Empire’s borders at a time that the empire was at its weakest. Han forces indeed reached the border of the Argead Dynasty’s domain in 170 BC, but by then Amyntas V was in no position to assist them.

In combination with Turkic invasions against which the (faded) glory of the empire’s assembled armies were gathered, Amyntas was also faced with rebellion. Over the past decades, a rupture had grown between the western part of the empire which was oriented on trade around the Mediterranean Sea and the eastern part which was focused on Middle Eastern and Asian trade. In 167 BC, a peasant rebellion against Macedon rule erupted in Rome due to dissatisfaction with recent tax increases which was soon joined by the rest of Italy and then Iberia, Gaul and North Africa (except for Egypt). An east-west split occurred with Marcus Gaius Sulla, the new “King of the Romans”, at the head of the uprising that led to civil war. Battles were waged across North Africa, Iberia and Italy until Amyntas V finally besieged Rome after an eight year effort in 159 BC, leading to the epic “Fall of Rome” a year later in 158 BC.

Amyntas spent the rest of his reign trying to ward off Turkic invasions and internal rebellions across the empire and fought several of the largest battles of his time from the Siege of Rome in 159-158 BC against separatists to the Battle of Ecbatana in 152 BC against a confederation of Turkic tribes. Amyntas barely won both and died a broken man after 25 years of rule at age 52, broken because he knew his bankrupted empire was disintegrating and because his dynasty was most likely soon to end, making his victories Pyrrhic at best. He is since then known as Amyntas the Tragic, but also as “the last Great of the Argeads” for his efforts.

He was succeeded by his son Philip V (r. 149-138 BC) who was unable to handle the growing crisis, something which applied to Amyntas’ grandson Alexander VI (r. 138-131 BC) as well. Persia and Mesopotamia fell to the Turks who then established a “khanate” in 144 BC while Italy, Iberia, North Africa (except for Egypt) and Gaul broke off under Roman authority in 143 BC and declared a “Roman Empire” after a renewed insurrection which ended in 137 BC after a Roman victory in the “Second Siege of Rome”. The east-west split was now definitive.

By 125 BC, the Alexandrian Empire still existed under the rule of Perdiccas V (r. 131-119 BC), but by now it was a tiny speck compared to what it had been less than a century earlier. The Argead Dynasty was now confined to an empire that comprised Anatolia, Greece, the Balkans, the Levant and Egypt and was pressed in between the Romans and the “Turkic Empire”. The Alexandrian Empire had passed twilight and had gone into nightfall. Perdiccas V tried to retake Persia in a lengthy and futile decade long military campaign which drained the empire’s preciously little remaining financial resources.

In 119 BC, Perdiccas V died and was succeeded by Alexander VII (119-108 BC) whose incompetence did nothing good for the empire in this critical period in which it was defeated at Issus by Turks – who took the Levant and Egypt – as well as at Larissa by a league Greek cities led by Thebes, Athens and Sparta. In 110 BC, the Macedonian Empire was confined to Thrace, Byzantium and the Anatolian coast and in 107 BC the last Argead king, Demetrius IV, died in battle during the “Siege of Troy” in which the city was devastated (although Rome would rebuilt it as “Ilium”). His rump-empire was incorporated into the Roman Empire which claimed to be the legitimate heir of the Argead Dynasty, as did its Turkic competitors. Both Roman Emperors and Turkic Khans married descendants of Alexander IV’s six daughters who now formed the most powerful aristocratic families in Macedonia due to Alexander the Great and Alexander IV being their direct ancestors.

In the meantime, several male pretenders descending from one branch or the other of the Argeads led several uprisings, the most important ones being those led by Demetrius IV’s sons who assumed the titles Demetrius V, Alexander VIII and Philip VI. None of the three were successful because they were also fighting among themselves as well as against the Romans and Turks. None of them are currently considered as being reigning Argead Kings since the Argead Empire had fallen. 107 BC is the generally accepted end date of their dynastic rule, although some put it as late as 99 BC when the last rebellion ended.

The Argead Empire had ceased to exist even if some distant descendants of their dynasty were still around; they were powerless. The Alexandrian Empire was no more after two centuries of greatness.



Epilogue



Alexander the Great’s empire met with an inglorious end, but it is remembered for its legacy of greatness for at one time it was the largest empire in existence in the entire world and was admired by many rulers who sought to emulate what the Argeads had done even after their empire had long since vanished.

It went so far that both the “Turkic Empire” and its various incarnations came into conflict with Rome about who was the rightful heir of the Argead Dynasty. The latter quickly became Persian while the former became very Greek in nature and in them the ancient struggle between the Greek and Persian worlds continued. Both adopted the bureaucracy left behind by the Macedonians and assumed the enlightened Macedonian style of rule that dated back over two centuries to Alexander the Great himself. Both were more similar to each other than either liked to admit.

Its military strength and superb strategies and tactics were unrivalled at its zenith to the point that Chinese Emperors and Indian Maharajas imitated them. Many of its leaders such as Alexander the Great, Alexander IV, Demetrius II and Amyntas V are still known today and are used as examples of good rule.

Economically, the empire had laid a foundation for future empires to build upon with its Royal Road that stretched from Gaul to the IndusRiver and enabled speedy travel for traders who were facilitated by the state with protected resting stations. Large sections of the Royal Road would remain in use for more than one-half millennium after which sea trade caught up with land trade. Even after that, monarchs from the various empires originating in the Mediterranean Sea, Persia and Mesopotamia used it to quickly move around their troops.

Culturally, the empire was a melting pot in which Buddhists, Zoroastrians, worshippers of the Egyptian pantheon, worshippers of the Greek pantheon, nature worshippers and many in-betweens existed. Rome and the Turks continued this for several more decades until enmity between them expanded to religion, leading to the former persecuting Zoroastrians and the latter persecuting anyone who worshipped Greek gods. These were the first religious persecutions in more than 150 years. In about a century, it wouldn't matter because a new syncretic monotheistic religion conquered the both of them, spreading from the Arab Peninsula.

Both empires carried on the Argeads’ advances in philosophy, science and technology as well and produced great thinkers that rivalled Plato and Aristotle. Due to influences from China as well as their own inventions they advanced. For example: the compass was introduced which improved sea travel, a heliocentric model for the solar system would become the norm where it wasn’t already accepted, and great advances were made in medicine such as disinfecting with alcohol and quarantine.

The most important legacy was that Greek remained the lingua franca for centuries onward and even after that was used for several more centuries as the language of the sophisticated elites as well as any philosophers and scientists worth their salt. Even now, the influence of Greek is still noticeable in many Mediterranean and Middle Eastern languages, and derivatives of Ancient Greek are still spoken from Iberia to the IndusRiver valley.

The Macedon legacy will never cease to exist. What the Argeads did in life, echoes on in eternity.
 
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I'm not so sure whether there was a significant Turkic presence in Central Asia in the second or first century BC. The major nomadic threats were Iranian tribes like the Saka or the Parni.

I don't think an Argead Empire would really be that large.
 
I'm not so sure whether there was a significant Turkic presence in Central Asia in the second or first century BC. The major nomadic threats were Iranian tribes like the Saka or the Parni.

I don't think an Argead Empire would really be that large.

There were the Yuezhi though I wasn't completely sure whether they can be classified as Turkic. Nonetheless, any Han movement westward would force them to move.
 
Little, but very interesting TL. However i hoped to see the post-Imperial history one day...

We're already some 200 years past the PoD so the butterflies are enormous. Going on now would just be me writing whatever I make up from scratch and think is cool.

Christianity and Islam as we know it for example will probably never rise (unless you beliebe Jesus or Mohammed were really the son of god). That alone will produce an unrecognisable world. Taking it until today has a billion possibilities to explore...

Anyone who thinks he can, may feel free to write a sequel to this. Possibly with a restored Argead dynasty...
 
There were the Yuezhi though I wasn't completely sure whether they can be classified as Turkic. Nonetheless, any Han movement westward would force them to move.

If we're to see the Kushans as a tribe of the Yuzehi, they would be Iranians.

It's an interesting timeline. Nice job.
 
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