Achaemenid Triumphant - an Alternative History of the Mediterranean World

scholar

Banned
I'm wandering how Macedonia is dooing now under the thumb of Persia?
You'll find out a bit about them later on today when I finish up the Philhellenes update.

More or less, Macedonia is acting as any frontier vassal acts. It gives some tribute, adopts some Persian overtones, but otherwise behaves independently and can occasionally get involved in revolts and civil wars. The difference is its close proximity to the Greek world, making it more uniquely able to take on the trappings of both sides. This was ultimately what led to the rise of Philip and Alexander, since their army was a mixed form of Persian and Greek styles, and later Alexander found it relatively easy to adopt a more Persian overtone to his governance. The key difference between them is rather than an independent Macedonia by Alexander (the great grandfather) that was between two independent systems, it is an autonomous state caught between a Greek satrapy and the Persian empire.
 

scholar

Banned
Achaemenid Triumphant
an Alternative History of the Mediterranean World


Part 1.09
The Philhellenes


The flight of the Greeks lead to a generation of greater integration across the Mediterranean world, and where the Greeks would go, so too would their culture. The vast majority of those who would leave the Greek satrapy would find themselves in other areas of the Greek world, Sicily and Southern Italy would be the main destination. This made up about fifty percent of all those who left, and would amount to some two hundred thousand people. While a good deal of them would travel to the smaller Poleis, a sizable number went first to the legendary cities. Syracuse’s already massive population would grow even larger, while Nikiforos Athens would become swell to massive size on the grounds of its reputation as the city of Themistocles. This process led to a surprisingly urbanized landscape in the Greek colonies, at times rivaling and surpassing the Greek mainland. This detail would become increasingly important as warfare between the native populations, the Carthaginians, and the Greeks would soon threaten to empty the rural countryside of all men and women.

Further west a number of Greeks found themselves welcomed as an armed force in many different parts of the broader world. Near the Pillars of Hercules local Iberian chieftans would use small Greek detachments for elite soldiers, and the mines in that region made their reward sizable. Some cities like Massilia saw a massive influx of Greeks as migrating Phocaeans following the destruction of their homeland in Persia spoke of the wealth and opportunity of their distant colony. While these rumors were initially quite false, the influx of people and their property soon made such rumors reality. The various Etruscan leagues were powerful players, in some ways similar to the Greeks, though in other ways quite foreign. Many Greek men would be repulsed by the belief that husbands had no right to expose the children of their wives, but the wealth and power of their leagues drew in many. Carthage was also a destination for the Greeks, but Carthage had developed an image problem among the Greeks, one the Magonids had done little to dispense with.

Closer to home, the flight of the Greeks to neighboring pseudo-Greek peoples and races had helped spurn the evolution of a number of neighboring regions. The most powerful faction was formed under the Melossian Aecidae family. As members of the sacred envoys lists in Argos, and having secured stewardship over the Oracle of Dodona since Persians secured Greece, they were more attractive than the barbarian fair out west, and more Greek than the Persians. In fact, the Aecidae would insist that not only they, but the entirety of the rural region was Greek. That they did not live in Poleis did not make them not Greek. While many were divided on this issue, recent trends have made this a distinction that no one really makes anymore. The line between Greek and Barbarian has become looser than it had ever been before, and while clear cut examples like Persians and Carthaginians exist, the pseudo-Greeks are now only subject to the snobbery of aristocratic elitists. Though there is some issue over Demas claiming the title of King over the region of Epirus, like the Macedonians before them, the increasing number of migration to the issue has pushed its demographic development up significantly.

Perhaps most bizarrely, or perhaps most predictably, was the mass migration to the east and south into Persian held territories. While others might question the motivations of those leaving Greece under Persian rule to journey deeper into Persian controlled territory, it remained the second most popular destination for Greeks leaving the mainland for a very powerful reason. Persia was the most wealthy area in the world, and they had developed a taste for Greek soldiers. It became a status symbol among the lower level rulers, those who could barely understand Persian and mostly operated through Aramaic or another tongue, to have a dozen or so Hoplites. Greek doctors were also particularly prized, and while Greek medicine was somewhat stymied in the Greek mainland, the incorporation of Greece into the Persian empire allowed for open and free travel to areas of medical knowledge. Egypt was a particularly prominent example, and Achaemenes made particular accommodations for the training of Greek physicians, who would find themselves traveling the Persian courts. Other, more curious Greeks also traveled through Egypt, including one who was interested in learning about the history of Egypt, but got his information from the illiterate, and was obsessed with mummification.

While having a Greek group for body guards or a specialist or two as a physician were important status symbols, more practically speaking there were forty or fifty thousand Greeks operating as mercenaries scattered throughout the empire at any one time. Artaxerxes employed them prolifically in the Caucuses and Armenia, where his father’s manipulator sparked an unending enmity between the Persian King of Kings and the local leaders. Earlier in his reign, ten thousand Hoplites were deployed all the way to Bactria, and his cavalry put down rebellions among the Steppe. A number of military commanders developed strong respect for their Greek units, and several began organizing Persian infantry along hoplite models. In open areas where speed was effective, they went with Persian styles. If areas were defensive, or narrow, Greek styles were utilized. Artaxerxes’ second royal son, the future king Darius II, was particularly fond of his Greek mercenaries. Ostaxes was another prominent Persian who would develop close ties to the Greeks that he ruled over. In time, the migration of Greeks to the broader Mediterranean World would lead to the spreading of Greek culture, and the early patrons of this culture would be known as Philhellenes.
 
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