Without Alexander's Conquest, When Would the Achaemenid Empire Have Fallen Apart?

Red Orm

Banned
Could have some consequences for Rome though. You probably don't get the divide between Latin West and Greek-speaking East. It's Latin everywhere. could well make for a very different Middle Ages.

Or instead of Greeks and Macedonians serving as soldiers for decades and being settled into/emigrating to an area from the Hellespont to the Indus and Alexandria to Sogdia, they continue to find their way around the Middle Sea, forming or joining various colonies, many in Italy, strengthening them against Rome or other Italic peoples and aiding Epirus or some other stable western state in the aid of those colonies. Very many butterflies.
 
everyone is rather missing the point of the reason that the Greek states/Alexander/Macedonian empire overcame the Persians. Three major reasons one, demographic the Greeks/Macedonians were not expansionist because they were inherently aggressive it was because of population pressure due to inadequate agricultural resources (not enough fertile farm land), the Greeks expanded across the Mediterranean westwards because there was no major power to stop them until Carthage/Rome. Two the Macedonian empire was expansionist and had a centralized monarchy rather than city state and colony/empire set up that the Greek city states had by this point. Three Alexander was one lucky son of a bitch who also happened to be smart, ambitious and essentially brought up by one of the greatest minds that the human race has produced (Aristotle) and his timing was great! the cities of the Hellenic East were populated by Greek colonists spreading a cloak over the culture of the former Persian empire by Alexander for in places hundreds of years.
if he did not exist the suppression of the Greek colonies in Asia minor by the Persians would have provided the pretext to interfere at some point by the Macedonians, the Egyptians would Rebel, all you would need is a good civil war and the as Alexander found Persia was in some ways a glass tiger, boom there she goes!! I think Rome would not be unaffected but in the end if Persia goes who wants to conquer the Latin's? no cash, rude and made bad slaves! seriously though I just think the timing would a be affected not the outcome, Greek was on the up Persia is going down!!!
 
Those saying the effect on Rome would be huge are missing the point that the Greeks were in Sicily and influencing Italy LOOOOONG before Alexander showed up. Alexander and the Hellenistic East had nothing to do with the rise of Rome. Rome will conquer Italy, gets into disputes with Greek city-states like Syracuse, and have their showdown with Carthage regardless of the PoD of Alexander. Does Rome or Carthage turn to Persian Empire to help in the ATL Punic Wars though? Does the other side turn to various Greek city-state alliances? Persia almost certainly can't hold on to Egypt long term. IF Rome is the winner of the Punic Wars then eventually Rome will "protectorate" Greece and Macedonia to protect them from Persian influence and eventually take on Egypt. A Persian/Roman stalemate will form as per our OTL but with the border further west in this ATL. Instead of Armenia and Mesopotamia being the parts that go back and forth in wars, it will be Greater Syria (OTL current Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel) and Anatolia. Central Anatolia probably mostly stays with Persia, Greek-speaking Ionian coast and maybe Lydia and Caria probably more often is Roman. Rome's naval supremacy in the Mediterranean would outweigh the Phoenecian contribution towards a Persian navy. Persia probably still cycles through various tribal dynasties such as Parthians and similar Iranian steppe peoples.

Edit: as for language, obviously Aramaic would be the lingua franca for the Middle East including Egypt
 

Red Orm

Banned
Those saying the effect on Rome would be huge are missing the point that the Greeks were in Sicily and influencing Italy LOOOOONG before Alexander showed up. Alexander and the Hellenistic East had nothing to do with the rise of Rome. Rome will conquer Italy, gets into disputes with Greek city-states like Syracuse, and have their showdown with Carthage regardless of the PoD of Alexander.

Why regardless? Even one person, let alone the thousands (hundreds of thousands?) that went East during the Hellenistic period, can make the difference.
 
The Persian Empire was weakening for generations before Alexander turned up, more and more they were dependent on mercenaries to fight their wars (mainly Greek mercenaries at that), their dynastic politics were absolutely toxic and the satraps were growing increasingly independent-minded, and there'd been a series of major revolts already.

I would bet that the Achaemenids had maybe another generation in them... But that doesn't necessarily mean the end of the Persian Empire. The main thing that ended the Persian Empire in OTL was not Alexander's conquest, it was his generals squabbling over the empire after his death. It's quite possible to imagine an Acheamenid Shah managing to reform the empire, a usurper claiming the Acheamenid name and reforming the empire (it had already happened once before), an external conqueror coming in and taking over the empire but arranging their succession better than Alexander, a Greek (or other) mercenary taking over the empire from within...

The area between the indus river and the sinai peninsula seems to have formed a fairly natural imperial unit, so while Persia might never have too secure a hold on Greece and Egypt, it is fairly plausible to imagine a situation where Persia becomes an eternal empire like China (or rather, an eternal empire on a larger scale than OTL's Persia).

fasquardon
 
what about The Steppe ? if Achaemenid really in decline, they would have fewer resource to deal with nomadic invasion. is there some steppe tribes that 'scheduled' to fight Seleucid and Parthian ?

without Alexander (and Hellenic era) would some military invention, disciplined infantry or heavy horse, still retain popularity ? there are argument that Western military is better than Indian and Chinese due to Greece-Macedon-Rome example that Asiatic never develop.

I really don't think you can credit the relative effectiveness of Western arms to such an early point. I know that some historians have liked to point to the Greek hoplite as the ultimate ancestor of disciplined line infantry but I think the connection is tenuous.

Western military dominance was really a product of the infantry revolution of the Thirty and Eighty years wars, and the economic and logistics developments that occurred around the same time. Until the early 19th C there really wasn't much difference technologically between Western armies and those of organised Asian states- the edge came from the fact that Western armies could effectively supply their troops and rely on line infantry that was trained to hold its ground.
 
"The empire was already on a decline by the time Alexander popped up though, was it not?"

It was, but Artaxerxes III turned things around to a large extent. If he had held on until Alexander had shown up he might have even been able to handle the Macedonians.

As pointed out earlier, its not unusual for empires to get second and even third winds. And they had faced pressure by the Greeks for some time before Alexander and had been able to handle it through diplomacy.

I also don't see any butterfly effect on Rome. Before the third century BC, the Greek city states of southern Italy periodically asked and received help from states in Greece such as Epirus, so they would have come into conflict with the Greeks on the Balkan peninsula and Macedon at some point. Instead of facing Antiochus III and the Seleucids in Asia Minor later they face the Persians. After that it depends on whether the Persian Empire collapses after contact with the Romans, a struggle which initially they are going to lose.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Maybe this would actually be a good PoD for Rome to conquer all of Persia, if the Persian Empire hangs on intact, gradually stagnating. Post-Punic wars Rome would probably target Egypt first, but they might find the Persians easy enough to beat that they decide to keep grabbing more and more, and over a generation or two or three they've gobbled it all up, without anyone emerging in the eastern part of the empire capable of countering Rome?
 

Red Orm

Banned
Maybe this would actually be a good PoD for Rome to conquer all of Persia, if the Persian Empire hangs on intact, gradually stagnating. Post-Punic wars Rome would probably target Egypt first, but they might find the Persians easy enough to beat that they decide to keep grabbing more and more, and over a generation or two or three they've gobbled it all up, without anyone emerging in the eastern part of the empire capable of countering Rome?

No, because in this timeline there might never be Punic Wars, Rome might (actually probably would) lose the Punic Wars, there are more Greeks to go west and aid the cities of Magna Graecia against Rome, how and why would the Romans target wealthy, stable Egypt first when they haven't even conquered Macedonia and Greece yet....
 

scholar

Banned
Assuming either no Macedonian invasion or an easily thwarted one, when would the Achaemenids have collapsed? Did Alexander just deliver the coup de grace to a tottering state, or absent him,would the Achaemenids have survived for a while yet?
Well, in the timeline I'm writing, it would have lasted until the middle ages.

That aside, the Achaemenids were not a weak empire on the verge of collapse. There were rebellions, but the Achaemenids had those throughout their rule. Darius III continually put up massive armies to defend against Alexander, and the Achaemenids had more or less economically controlled Greece in the years leading up to Macedonia's rise. They were destined to fall, as all empires and dynasties must, but Alexander was an earth shattering event in human history, not merely the finishing blow on an already decaying state.

I would recommend The Persian Empire by John Lee.
 
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