This scenario would differ considerably from a scenario where the Persians don’t expand at all and their revolt is crushed by the Medians in very significant ways, in that we’d already have evidence for the “Persian interlude” establishing their presence and the sheer size of their empire, and they already would‘ve decimated the post-Assyrian multipolar world order and allow smaller states to arise, while still allowing for future Persian influence in the form of loyalist regions and breakaway states, and we also have more information on the main players thanks to the Behistun Inscription. While just a few years before the Achaemenids had conquered Egypt under Cambyses, coming close to the extent they would maintain IOTL for the next two centuries, and engaged in further expeditions in Libya, and possibly Nubia, thanks to an unknown reason, Cambyses died on his way back to Persia to suppress the revolt of a pretender claiming to be his brother, Smerdis, after a herald arrived from the pretender exhorting Cambyses’ army to switch sides, and Smerdis’ rule went unchallenged for a few months. That is, until Cambyses’ former lance-bearer, Darius, allied with seven other nobles after supposedly discovering that Smerdis was lying about his descent and that he was really a Magi called Gaumata, and went to a fortress called Sikayavautis where after a brief struggle, Gaumata was slain, and Darius took the throne. Smerdis had promised a three-year tax and levy holiday to the provinces, according to Herodotus, though it’s unlikely that Smerdis would take away one of the only aspects that enforced Persian rule over its conquered provinces, shoot himself in the foot by removing his ability to raise armies and revenues, and alienate some of his most powerful subjects, the Persian nobility, by forcing himself to rely on forced exactions and plunder, though the immediacy and severity of the rebellions that troubled the Achaemenid Empire in the crucial 522-520 BC period immediately after Gaumata’s overthrow does suggest some leniency on Gaumata‘s part, possibly attributed to his insecure position and status as an impostor, and that the subject peoples, angered at the death of their benefactor, rebelled en masse against Darius and his noble friends. So suppose that Darius and his allies were unable to crush the rebellions tearing their empire apart, perhaps due to a plague or well-timed ambush decimating Cambyses’ veterans and elite troops, infighting between the seven conspirators, or that a different noble ends up king and proves less competent militarily and administratively than Darius, and the Persians are ultimately reduced back to their homeland. Here’s a list of rebels:
Ndintu-Bel/Arakha in Babylonia and Assyria
Assina/Martiya/Atamaita in Elam
Phraortes in Media
Armenians
Hyrcanians
Parthians
Triantaechmes in Sagartia
Frada in Margiana
Vahyazdata, Smerdis impostor
Petubastis in Egypt
Oroetes in Lydia
Those are the main ones we know about. Other regions, such as Cilicia, still ruled by the Syennesis, and Lycia, still not fully subjugated as evidenced by the Persepolis Administrative Archives, might not actively rebel, but might assert their independence if they gauge that a Persian retaliation is impossible, and regions which did not rebel, such as due to having close ties to the Achaemenid monarchy and ideology, such as Bactria and Arachosia, might lose communication with the Persian heartland and be forced to declare independence. What would occur?
Ndintu-Bel/Arakha in Babylonia and Assyria
Assina/Martiya/Atamaita in Elam
Phraortes in Media
Armenians
Hyrcanians
Parthians
Triantaechmes in Sagartia
Frada in Margiana
Vahyazdata, Smerdis impostor
Petubastis in Egypt
Oroetes in Lydia
Those are the main ones we know about. Other regions, such as Cilicia, still ruled by the Syennesis, and Lycia, still not fully subjugated as evidenced by the Persepolis Administrative Archives, might not actively rebel, but might assert their independence if they gauge that a Persian retaliation is impossible, and regions which did not rebel, such as due to having close ties to the Achaemenid monarchy and ideology, such as Bactria and Arachosia, might lose communication with the Persian heartland and be forced to declare independence. What would occur?
Last edited: