AHC: Archaemenid Dynasty Persia conquers Greece

In OTL, the Archaemenid Dynasty Persian Empire (from about 550 BCE till Alexander the Great conquered them) was powerful, even conquering Macedonia, and a large area to the north of Persia. And for years Greece and Persia were at war, but Persia eventually began to collapse from the inside out before Alexander came. What I am wondering is what is required for Persia to win a war with Greece. At least they should control Athens and Thebes but controlling all of the Peloponnesian City States (Corinth, Sparta, etc) would be nice.
 

Winnabago

Banned
I feel like a Persian invasion would butterfly away Alex, because almost certainly at least one of Alex’s great-great grandparents would die in the invasion of Macedon, or at least be prevented from marrying who they OTL married, or at least be prevented from having sex at the OTL times with the same OTL sperm reaching the OTL egg.

Even if Alex is born, he might not get the education and the kingdom that he got OTL, meaning no empire.

Great people are easiest to butterfly away.
 
willbell said:
What I am wondering is what is required for Persia to win a war with Greece. At least they should control Athens and Thebes but controlling all of the Peloponnesian City States (Corinth, Sparta, etc) would be nice.

That's pretty easy - just have the Persians win at Salamis. That gives the Persians naval superiority over the Greeks, and thus the ability to outflank and completely overrun any sort of Greek stand, and will bring most smaller Peloponnesian communities, including (most importantly) Argos, officially to the Persian side. With that, Achaemenid conquest of the Peloponnesus is inevitable, complete with satrapies and all that. Simple as that.
 
That's pretty easy - just have the Persians win at Salamis. That gives Persians naval superiority over the Greeks, and the ability to outflank and completely overrun any sort of Greek stand... plus, with a Persian victory at Salamis, most of the smaller Peloponnesian cities, and Argos, will join up with Persia immediately following it. With that, Achaemenid conquest of the Peloponnesus is inevitable, complete with satrapies and all that. Simple as that.

I think there's a Turtledove short story which manages to short-circuit even that; By removing the Athenian silver mines, and thereby butterflying away their "wooden walls," Persia conquered Athens, Greece is conquered and made into a satrapy of Persia.
 
As little as a shift in popular opinion could do it. Sparta was unstable, Corinth was happy to Medise, but with Athens in the anti-Persian camp, resistance seemed like a real option. They still had to get lucky, but whatever Herodot says, it wasn't that impossible a task. But if the faction in Athens that favoured negotiations or surrender had won out, the remaining resistors would have been mopped up and Sparta crushed like a bug.
 
Persia gains a few new satrapies and ultimately has a combination of ossification and the emergence of new, smaller successor empires. Persia in this case becomes the Near Eastern-Southern European version of the Han Empire, with Babylon perhaps being the Qin to Persia's Han. Actually, that process might be more akin to the evolution of medieval Middle Eastern states out of the Abbasid Caliphate. The system sees a gradual shift and the emergence of de facto autonomous dynasties out of the bigger, increasingly powerless Imperial state.
 
Persian victory, depending on the Greek political situation, isn't necessarily permanent, of course: the Persian Empire didn't maintain garrisons in its client states to much degree. The Ionian cities managed to throw off Persia and declare their independence without much initial issue, and it's difficult to imagine all the cities on the mainland - particularly Athens - settling for Persian client status as a permanent situation.

Of course, this still butterflies away all of the subsequent events, like the Peloponnesian War and Alexander...
 
Don't confuse Client states with satrapies. Anything that is integrated into a satrapy is by definition not a client state. In the case of the Ionian cities, they were under the responsibility of the satrap based at Sardis, and are not 'allies' of the Persian Empire. A far better example is Macedon, which was not formally part of a satrapy but was considered an ally of Persia until Phillip II or so.

The likeliest thing to happen in a successful conquest of Greece is that the states that resisted will be the ones integrated into a new satrapy, and the states that allied with them get to retain autonomy. The population of Greece would not be difficult for them to manage, this is an Empire that controls Mesopotamia and Egypt for goodness' sake.

Also, the part about not maintaining garrisons is not so true. All of the important cities of the Empire, especially in the Near East, had semi permanent garrisons. Personally I think that the Ionian cities didn't really matter that much to the Persians, relative to the rest of the Empire.

This is events 150 years or so after the time we're talking about, but in OTL Alexander's conquest, notice how no other state joins in attacking the Achaemenids. Likewise, there is a civil war going on at the time he attacks, but notice there is no evidence of revolts. This is a state that is completely militarily supreme. If the Persians managed to conquer Greece, I have absolutely no doubt they'd manage to get an iron grip on it.
 
I think there's a Turtledove short story which manages to short-circuit even that; By removing the Athenian silver mines, and thereby butterflying away their "wooden walls," Persia conquered Athens, Greece is conquered and made into a satrapy of Persia.
Alternate History doesn't mean changing...the laws of physics!
 
Alternate History doesn't mean changing...the laws of physics!

No, but it can mean delaying the discovery of a particularly rich vein of ore in the mines at Laurium for long enough that Themistocles can't persuade Athens to shell out for a new fleet...
 
No, but it can mean delaying the discovery of a particularly rich vein of ore in the mines at Laurium for long enough that Themistocles can't persuade Athens to shell out for a new fleet...

Hell it's enough just to have him lose the debate and have the money distributed among the citizenry.
 
Easiest way for a Persian conquest of Greece is Persia winning the Persian Wars. Although that may sound like John Green's crash course history lesson regarding the Greeks and the Persians.
 
Top