Would Greek Civilization survive a defeat at Salamis?

[Snake Featherston]

Greek civilization would not have survived a Persian conquest. Materially and economically, they would have been just fine. Indeed, they might have actually been more prosperous under Persian rule than they were IOTL. But the most important qualities of Greek civilization were a product of political disunity and the institution of the assembly, which would have either vanished or been reduced to irrelevance under Persian rule.

They also vanished under the Macedonian kingdoms and Roman rule, but nobody says the Diadochi or Romans killed Greek civilization.

 

[Snake Featherston]

Then why did the most important cultural contributions of the Greeks come from mainland Greece or Ionia, rather than Sicily or Magna Gracia? Wealth does not necessarily lead to cultural vibrancy, and can even be counter productive under some circumstances. Athens, Corinth and Miletus were the true birthplaces of Greek culture; Syracuse and other western cities made smaller and later contributions.

Take Miletus, for example. It was pretty much the birthplace of rational inquiry and empirical science: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes and so forth. But when the Persians took over, Miletus sank into a cultural stupor.

If the Greeks were indeed so committed to disunity and assemblies, there was a noticeable paucity of resistance to the Athenian and Spartan Empires and a very few Greeks who fought Macedon in Greece and rather more who did not. If their culture depended on this, then their culture must have really, really catastrophically collapsed before the culture of Philip and Alexander and been all but forgotten when Greeks were perfectly content with God-Kings and giant armies.

 

[Flocculencio]

They also vanished under the Macedonian kingdoms and Roman rule, but nobody says the Diadochi or Romans killed Greek civilization.

White people can't kill civilization, silly.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

White people can't kill civilization, silly.

Indeed. It can only bring civilization. God bless the whites.

 

[Mikestone8]

White people can't kill civilization, silly.

Were Macedonians, or indeed Greeks, all that much "whiter" than Persians? Iirc they were all of Indo-European origin.

 

[Flocculencio]

Were Macedonians, or indeed Greeks, all that much "whiter" than Persians? Iirc they were all of Indo-European origin.

Regardless, if you took a European from almost any time period in history and asked him this he'd clearly posit the Persians as an Oriental Other to the Greeks. This is why the whole "Salamis as the last chance to defend the Cradle of Western Civilisation" has been so widespread historically while, as someone pointed out earlier, no one says the same about the Macedonians or Romans even though their conquests were as much a break from Classical Greek culture as the Persian one would have been- more so in fact since the Persians would have had little interest in Hellas as a backwater satrapy and it's the first place Persian control would slip from in the next round of civil wars the Empire would face as compared to the comprehensive domination Macedon and Rome were able to effect.

It's perceptions which are important, not genetic facts- for example I'm Indian and thus also (at least partially) of Indo-European origin but thats totally irrelevant in every sense but the genetic.