Extent of Hellenization in a Surviving Argead Empire

Supposing that a) Alexander the Great didn't die in 323 BCE and managed to deal with any unrest in his Empire by the time of his natural death, and b) his heirs manage to hold onto the majority of his conquests as a unified territory at least until 100 CE, what do you think the extent of Hellenization would have been in the empire and what would the effects have been?
 
Assuming all that (and that's a lot of assuming), I think that there would have been a real possibility of the court Persianizing. The Persians are numerous, in the geographical middle of the realm, and Alexander was very keen on integrating Persian officials and customs into his court. Historians would talk about how Hellas was conquered by Persia in conquering Persia.

There'd still be Hellenization, but I think it would be more of a two-way street.
 
I doubt Hellenization would occur much differently than it actually did in the seleucid and egyptian territories. Though I really don't know much about that so I could be completely wrong in that regard.


I guess it really depends on how Alexander's empire survives.
 
Assuming all that (and that's a lot of assuming), I think that there would have been a real possibility of the court Persianizing. The Persians are numerous, in the geographical middle of the realm, and Alexander was very keen on integrating Persian officials and customs into his court. Historians would talk about how Hellas was conquered by Persia in conquering Persia.

There'd still be Hellenization, but I think it would be more of a two-way street.

That was arguably the case OTL in the Far Eastern satrapies- Bactria, Sogdiana, Arachosia, India, all of these places ended up with something more like a fusion culture rather than with them fully Hellenizing.
 
I guess it really depends on how Alexander's empire survives.

The heirs are everything. If they half-Persian princes raised in Babylon by magi and eunuchs, the outcome is very different than if, like Alexander himself, they have Attic tutors and avuncular generals running everything.
 
That was arguably the case OTL in the Far Eastern satrapies- Bactria, Sogdiana, Arachosia, India, all of these places ended up with something more like a fusion culture rather than with them fully Hellenizing.

This is rather what I mean. There is still a lot of Greek features, and Greek art and architecture end up having a big impact (I think of all those Buddha-Apollos), but it adds to rather than displaces Persian cultural dominance in the Middle East.
 
Also, one must think if Alexander survives, what effects does this have on the rest of the world? Carthage, Rome, Spain, India?

Hellenic culture could spread much farther west.
 
I'm relatively biased on this matter; the entire basis of my timeline is on a surviving Argead Empire and its ramifications.

Rather than just plug it, this is the direction that I went; I felt that, given a more direct policy of integration, over time the Persian ruling class and the initial Macedonian aristocracy of the Empire would merge. In my timeline this eventually manifests in the Argeads themselves touting clearly Greco-Persian tendencies. However, the eventual growth of Greco-Persians and other fusion cultures would probably distance them significantly from any Greeks back West with rather different attitudes and no such fusion. In particular, even if Macedon remained part of the Empire it would likely grow completely disaffected from the Argeads if they persified over time.

A strong Argead Empire either leads to the conquest of Egypt, or a detente- the OTL Seleucid-Ptolemaic wars seem rather unlikely when the Argeads have the added claim of a) semi-genuine legitimacy and b) probably even greater resources to work with, though the early Seleucids were hardly destitute either. If a detente, you'd end up with quite a stable Eastern Mediterranean. If conquest, then the east Mediterranean is an Argead lake anyway and is similarly going to be fairly peaceful. Egypt denied expansion in the Mediterranean, if it remains independent, will likely turn elsewhere. That leads to Greek material culture becoming common across probably East Africa and Arabia (and OTL commerce was enough to result in the creation of imitation Athenian drachmae in Arabia).

A strong Argead Empire, if it's ruled relatively sensibily, will be unable to directly expand into Italy, or possibly as far as Greece without pushing things too far. It's likely to create a circle of client states around it, just as the Achaemenids for a time had several client states including Macedon itself. Rome, if it isn't butterflied away, is likely to figure into these calculations one way or the other. Epirus likewise. Any non-Greek state that's made a client in such a way is liable to either react against the perceived foreign influence.

However, if there is anything resembling an OTL succession war, the fallout from that could still result in an Argead Monarchy but a very different post-war climate in Europe. You might end up with Epirus conquered, with Greece remaining part of the Empire, or conversely with all of this territory completely lost. The question of Greeks in Asia and Greeks in their homeland going in completely different directions is again raised.

Arguably, the period likely to make the most significant difference to Hellenisation/fusion cultures is a) the start, based on whatever Alexander/his successor does, and b) starting in the 160s BC. The 160s is when the Seleucid Empire was clearly on the downswing, and around 140 is when the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was destroyed. The effects of surviving Hellenistic states past these key dates is likely to have a significant effect on the eventual cultural evolution of those states. Even in OTL, the after-effects of Greek culture in Central Asia and the Near East echoed for several centuries after they were no longer in control.
 
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