So yeah, what if the battle of Thermopylae where lost within the first day of it starting (let's say the Persians manage to win the naval battle immediately, allowing them to surround and wipe out the Greeks on land), what are the consequences on the larger Greco-Persian war if the delaying action fails and the Athenian navy is devastated.
WI: Greeks Lose Thermopylae is Lost on the First Day
- Thread starter eliphas8
- Start date
To put it simply, the Athenians are doomed. As I understand it, that delay was essential to allowing the Athenians to evacuate Athens. If the allied greek navy is destroyed too...well Sparta doesn't stand much of a chance either. Greece is facing total defeat here.
What the guy above me said Athens is so screwed it might not even be the Persians who do it but any Greek City-State that's decided to gain the Persians favor(or saving their own skins when they sided with Athens) by helping them, or even doing it themselves.
Sparta might get divided after all a Spartan King is dead that's a sting that won't be forgotten, but he did go when their religious beliefs said it was a bad time to fight so some could say this was the gods punishment.
And now Persia gets a new land to rule they promote their vassal kings or King and go back to doing whatever Persia does.
The only wrench in the Cogs would be the Athenian navy.
Sparta might get divided after all a Spartan King is dead that's a sting that won't be forgotten, but he did go when their religious beliefs said it was a bad time to fight so some could say this was the gods punishment.
And now Persia gets a new land to rule they promote their vassal kings or King and go back to doing whatever Persia does.
The only wrench in the Cogs would be the Athenian navy.
Don't mean to sound dumb or anything but would a lose on the first day really have any long term affect? Athens was burned OTL, so no change there. The Greek fleet retreated to Salamis, not Athens, so the fleet wasn't in danger of being burned. Thermopylae ending two days earlier wouldn't have affected the battles of Salamis or Plataea. The only real change I can see here is Thermopylae isn't memorialized as a great last stand.
I would say it would have a fairly large effect because while Athens was burned, the delay was seemingly a worthwhile ammount of time (and I'm just going to work from the assumption the POD is that the fleet got beaten decisively on the first day).
While Athens was burned, it was basically empty when the Persians arrived.The 3 days was crucial in allowing the Athenians to evacuate the city to an island. Furthermore, if I am reading the OP correctly, the Greek fleet that was also near Thermopylae is crushed-whatever is left of it isn't going to be large enough to pose any threat to the Persians at this point. That in turn means Sparta is screwed. OTL, Sparta had already put most of their effort into defending the Isthmus of Corinth (that's why they only sent 300 of their own to Thermopylae and made excuses for not sending the bulk of their force) but that relied a lot on their being a Greek fleet that could prevent the Persians simply sailing around the Isthmus and landing in the Peloponnese, something the Spartans apparently didn't realize.
EDIT: IIRC though, there were already a sizable amount of the population of Athens that had fled to the Peloponnese (as Sparta had initially recommended as part of their "screw everyone else, we're defending the Isthmus" strategy), so if by some miracle the Persians could be stopped, there theoretically would be enough Athenians left to return to Athens still.