Could the Persian Empire have really wiped Sparta from the history books?

Much of what we know about Sparta today comes from sources post-Persian Wars (Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon and so forth) and generally were foreign sources as the Spartans themselves didn't do much writing. That could be a problem as it would indicate the Spartans didn't have much of a written footprint before the Persian Wars either.
 
How plausible is it that the Persians might make the Peloponnese into a satrapy administered by the Messinians?

Also, how important would Rhodes be inside the Persian western provinces?
 
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How plausible is it that the Persians might make the Peloponnese into a satrapy administered by the Messinians?

Also, how important would Rhodes be inside the Persian western provinces?
Not very. You don't turn a subjugated and dispossessed people into overlords, you let the people in charge keep running things as long as they give you a cut and don't cause trouble. Argos, Corinth, Athens, and Thebes are all more likely satraps than the Messinians; one of the powerful Thessalian cities would also be interesting.

I don't think Rhodes would be very important, since the different cities on the island hadn't yet united like they would in the late 5th century.
 
If King Xerses had successfully conquered Sparta and Greece as a whole, could he have actually made good on his threat of wiping Sparta from the history records, by burning every parchment detailing Sparta as well as killing any living historians?
Reduce Sparta into a historical footnote only historians, archeologists, and history buffs know about? Yes. Completely wipe out all traces of Sparta? No.
 
50.000 obstinate Spartans being dumped on the banks of the Indos would be an awesome premise for a TL.

More like the remnants of 10,000 spartiates, less battle casualties, say half, died of wounds, died on the trek east, pissed off the guard, say another 2,500 being scattered amongst the already existing Hellenic/ Aegean settlers from previous revolts learning how to plough d looking for wives.

Tyrtaios who?

My point, and he predates classical Sparta so no more relevant than Menelaus.


sparta fragile? Well one of it’s limitations seems to have been the need to keep a very high proportion of citizens at home to repress the others. Once a sufficient number of Spartiates are dead, the whole system collapses in on itself.

Go Boetia go.
 
My point, and he predates classical Sparta so no more relevant than Menelaus.
That's a false equivalence; Menelaus is a purely legendary figure from a non historical source, whereas Tyrtaios was one of the most revered cultural figures in Greek history and widely attested as a real person, even if biographical details are sketchy. Moreover, you never specified the classical period. Even then, the lack of surviving written accounts from Sparta and other Greek cities compared to Athens is something of a fluke in the documentary record, and isn't really substantial evidence for a place's cultural output.
 
not impossible for Sparta to be made damnatio memoriae.

Because Alexander's damnatio of Herostratus worked so well? Not to mention others who were likewise damned in memory: Nero, Hatsheput, Elgabalus, Geta - it didn't necessarily take. Xerxes could only control what was written in his empire. If someone in Sicily wrote about the Spartans, Xerxes wouldn't have censorship over them. Plus, it's kinda difficult to "defeat" someone who officially "never existed". The Spartans might become like OTL's Etruscans - where they left their marks, but we don't know that much about them (at least, this is my understanding of the view of Etruscan culture, could be wrong).
 
That's a false equivalence; Menelaus is a purely legendary figure from a non historical source, whereas Tyrtaios was one of the most revered cultural figures in Greek history and widely attested as a real person, even if biographical details are sketchy. Moreover, you never specified the classical period. Even then, the lack of surviving written accounts from Sparta and other Greek cities compared to Athens is something of a fluke in the documentary record, and isn't really substantial evidence for a place's cultural output.


Oh bollocks. Below is the Brittanica entry for him. His works are very fragmentary and in no way can he described as one of the most revered cultural figures. Even as an elegaic poet he is one of about 5 equally obscure at this date.

'Greek tradition after the 6th century claimed that Tyrtaeus was a schoolmaster from Athens or Miletus, sent to Sparta in reluctant compliance with an oracle to strengthen Spartan morale. Stories of his non-Spartan origin were probably invented after the 6th-century revolution at Sparta, when there was only a distant memory of Sparta’s 7th-century-bc cultural vivacity. By the 5th century, Athenians’ claims to cultural monopoly distorted histories of other cities.'

Any evidence of pre classical cultural vivacity in Sparta ( or most other places outside Ionia ) is at best tenuous and requires a means of transmission which OTL is Athens, and its influence on Macedonian and later Roman culture as well as a massive transmissible cultural output of its own.

Sparta by contrast is a small inland town with little monumental structure, cultural output in any transmissible form and large numbers of locals who hate it.

Carthage survives in memory largely because the Roman state regarded the Punic Wars as their own epic struggle.
 
Has a civilization ever been successfully wiped from record?

well, "according to the Madrid Codex, an Aztec ruler, the fourth tlatoaniItzcoatl (ruling from 1427 (or 1428) to 1440) ordered the burning of all historical codices because it was "not wise that all the people should know the paintings". Among other purposes, this allowed the Aztec state to develop a state-sanctioned history and mythos that venerated the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli." Maybe there was info on the Toltecs or on other civilizations in Central Mexico that was lost forever.
 
Because Alexander's damnatio of Herostratus worked so well? Not to mention others who were likewise damned in memory: Nero, Hatsheput, Elgabalus, Geta - it didn't necessarily take. Xerxes could only control what was written in his empire. If someone in Sicily wrote about the Spartans, Xerxes wouldn't have censorship over them. Plus, it's kinda difficult to "defeat" someone who officially "never existed". The Spartans might become like OTL's Etruscans - where they left their marks, but we don't know that much about them (at least, this is my understanding of the view of Etruscan culture, could be wrong).

I think you misunderstand. It's not the fact that laws can successfully erase memory, but that our knowledge of history is ultimately a fragile thing.

As you say, it is possible that the Spartans can be remembered like the Etruscans, where we can match the artifacts we dig up to the records that contemporaries leave behind. Ort they could end up like the Indus Valley Civilization, where we can can unearth ruins, but without decipherable written records, we are really limited in figuring out who these people were outside of archeological deductions.
 
I think you misunderstand. It's not the fact that laws can successfully erase memory, but that our knowledge of history is ultimately a fragile thing.

As you say, it is possible that the Spartans can be remembered like the Etruscans, where we can match the artifacts we dig up to the records that contemporaries leave behind. Ort they could end up like the Indus Valley Civilization, where we can can unearth ruins, but without decipherable written records, we are really limited in figuring out who these people were outside of archeological deductions.

I totally agree with this idea. However, the Spartans wrote in the Greek Alphabet, right? Thus, there records would survive unless the Achaeminids truly had enough of the Hellenes and razed all of Greek literature and displaced all the antagonistic Hellenes in disparate corners of the Empire. The Persians could have specifically targeted the written records of the Spartans. This way all written records of them will be written by others.
 
I totally agree with this idea. However, the Spartans wrote in the Greek Alphabet, right? Thus, there records would survive unless the Achaeminids truly had enough of the Hellenes and razed all of Greek literature and displaced all the antagonistic Hellenes in disparate corners of the Empire. The Persians could have specifically targeted the written records of the Spartans. This way all written records of them will be written by others.

All I'll say is you have a lot more optimism in the survivability of both the records and the ability to read them.

Imagine for example that the Persians win the war. The major Greek City states who defied Xerxes are razed to the ground and new people's are imported to serve as colonists for the Satrapy of Greece. The Greeks who surrendered, like the Thebans are left alone, and they write histories of the Persian war.

Centuries pass, and the Persian Empire fragments. Nomadic pressure and civil war lead to a breakdown in security. As the Persian garrison armies weaken, the Celts that in OTL invaded during the reign of the Diadochi, strike. With the Satrap busy in another of the Persian civil wars, the Celts find great success, burning and pillaging Greece and Asia Minor over and again. They then begin to settle, much as the Slavs did when the Byzantines nearly collapsed in the 7th and 8th century.

The situation eventually stabilises, and order is restored, but the land is depopulated. Many of the Greek City states, demilitarised by the Persians are completely decimated, their citizens now slaves to new masters, their records ash. Greece essentially becomes an ATL Galatia, where Celts rule over a mixed Greco-Anatolio-Persian population, while acknowledging Persian suzeiranity.

Centuries pass on, and more migrations bring more people groups to Greece, with new languages.

Eventually a thousand years past the sack of Sparta, the Greek language is extinct. Without a metropole to nourish them with new colonists and military support, the great Greek colonies have assimilated to their neighbouring cultures, much as happened to the many of the Greek and Punic Colonies of OTL. A noble from say, a steppe descended Turkic tribe rides past the ruins next to the village that was once Sparta. The locals speak a Celtic language and write in a script derived from Aramaic. In such a case, is it that far fetched that when asked by the noble whose these remains are, the local elders merely shrug at the engraved markings they cannot read and make up a mythical tale to explain things away? In such a case wouldn't the Persians have succeeded in wiping Sparta from history?
 
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All I'll say is you have a lot more optimism in the survivability of both the records and the ability to read them.

Imagine for example that the Persians win the war. The major Greek City states who defied Xerxes are razed to the ground and new people's are imported to serve as colonists for the Satrapy of Greece. The Greeks who surrendered, like the Thebans are left alone, and they write histories of the Persian war.

Centuries pass, and the Persian Empire fragments. Nomadic pressure and civil war lead to a breakdown in security. As the Persian garrison armies weaken, the Celts that in OTL invaded during the reign of the Diadochi, strike. With the Satrap busy in another of the Persian civil wars, the Celts find great success, burning and pillaging Greece and Asia Minor over and again. They then begin to settle, much as the Slavs did when the Byzantines nearly collapsed in the 7th and 8th century.

The situation eventually stabilises, and order is restored, but the land is depopulated. Many of the Greek City states, demilitarised by the Persians are completely decimated, their citizens now slaves to new masters, their records ash. Greece essentially becomes an ATL Galatia, where Celts rule over a mixed Greco-Anatolio-Persian population, while acknowledging Persian suzeiranity.

Centuries pass on, and more migrations bring more people groups to Greece, with new languages.

Eventually a thousand years past the sack of Sparta, the Greek language is extinct. Without a metropole to nourish them with new colonists and military support, the great Greek colonies have assimilated to their neighbouring cultures, much as happened to the many of the Greek and Punic Colonies of OTL. A noble from say, a steppe descended Turkic tribe rides past the ruins next to the village that was once Sparta. The locals speak a Celtic language and write in a script derived from Aramaic. In such a case, is it that far fetched that when asked by the noble whose these remains are, the local elders merely shrug at the engraved markings they cannot read and make up a mythical tale to explain things away? In such a case wouldn't the Persians have succeeded in wiping Sparta from history?

I was just trying to be conservative with the extent Sparta could have been wiped out from the history books. In addition, I would just like to say the sequence of events you have listed here would make quite an interesting timeline. You could honestly flesh out something if you wanted to do so.
 
50.000 obstinate Spartans being dumped on the banks of the Indos would be an awesome premise for a TL.

Well according to Daeres (it is at the bottom of the post) they would be pressed into military service, only to later escape and dissapear for centuries in the historical records. But then they turn up in China as invading buddhist barbarians on war elephants…

EDIT: But if someone wants to make that the focus of a TL, they should also include deported Athenians. Imagine after the fall of the Persian empire the Athenians and Spartans fighting 'un-Peleponesian Wars' in India.
 
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Well, by the mere nature of that question, we will never know
but by it mere question though there will be evidenced of something happening , we will notice that in an area it gone or that people will talk about some group where there nothing there exc esspically if it in a spartan area
 
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