AHC: Athens as Rome

A city-state administrated by a representative government...
often overcome with internal strife between various sectors of the population...
that led a league of allied cities that it eventually dominated militarily...
faced off against a warlike neighbor of similar culture with excellent arms and tactics to the south...
while also dealing with a larger monarchial power to the north...

There's some fun parallels between Athens and Rome, don't you think? I know we always say that the classic 'WI Athens wins the Peloponnesian war' scenario will just end in Macedon steamrolling the victor anyway, but lets try this.

How can we get a scenario where Athens follows, roughly, Rome's course of development? Dominate its local peninsula of city states before coming to dominate its corner of the Mediterranean and then the rest of it?

And, given this situation, what sorts of developments might we see that would be different than Rome? Obviously, the location and culture would be different. Rome was much better at assimilation than Athens was, but then, Athens was never quite in the position to need to assimilate as Rome was. Rome's government was also the more stable of the two, from what the records say.

Its also likely that Athens might focus more on the Black Sea its environs than Rome did (after all, Athens relied on Black Sea grain the way Rome relied on African grain).
 
I wouldn't say Macedon was guaranteed to steamroll Greece at all. It's mere chance that Phillip was such a competent leader, and before him Macedon was just another Greek Kingdom, poorer than average and not about to go on a series of conquests.

Not only that, assuming Athens wins the Peloponnesian War and avoids the Athenian Plague, we'll still be looking at a major Mediterranean power, more so than, say, Sparta was after the wars (wars of attrition do that to you. Athens was much better suited to survive long term than Sparta). So we can see them continuing to have colonies, traders and influence on all ends of the Med and the Black Sea.

However, Athens cannot do what Rome did without massive changes to everything they stand for. Rome had a structure that was just outstanding at building Empires- for Athens, you're more looking at Venetian style rule than Roman.
 
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