What if Darius III had won?

How different do you think, both the ancient and modern worlds would have turned out, if....

As happened historically, another 1000 years of Rome vs Persia.

I think what people are overlooking is the cultural impact Alexander had.  If Darius had won the lingua franca of the east would remain aramaic it would not become greek.  Assuming the romans come along and create the empire, well instead of the entire eastern part of the empire being greek, all of a sudden it is a hodge-podge of cultures and languages, even more so than it already was.  Without the successor states there is no library of alexandria and all the other advances made by the greeks of the east.  Do the romans still borrow as much from greek culture as they did historically if the greeks never expanded?  How advanced would the greeks be without the hellenistic era?  In other words I would say if Darius III had won it would have been a huge difference.  Perhaps the persian empire eventually collapses, well who is going to fill the vacuum left behind?  I would imagine it would be numerous peoples taking a little more territory etc. not one people conquering the entire empire.

Parthia was under firm Achaemenid control and was practically considered a sister state like Media - it would not have had the guts to rise against Persia and what's more is that it wouldn't have been Hellenised.

Originally posted by Justinian If Darius had won the lingua franca of the east would remain aramaic it would not become greek.

Interesting. What effect do you think this would have on the Christian Scriptures. By this I mean to ask how well Aramaic lends itself to theological precision. Much has been made of the Greek vs. Latin debate in the sphere of Christian theology; is anyone familiar enough with Aramaic to hazard a guess?

-Akolouthos

P.S. I apologize if anyone feels this represents a digression from the thread.

Must disagree, Persia was by its sell by date then. Even if they had defeated Alexander, they would have steadiliy declined.

Firstly, Darius III was actually appointed as a puppet king by his grand vizier (who was promptly killed afterwards). Just like the Roman empire in the last stages, there was nothing to stop anyone killing their way to the throne - the nepotism that it had been founded on was simply not strong enough to maintain such a large empire in the long run, and when the people saw this, they realised how it could be manipulated. Even in Artaxerxes' time, when Xenophon was marching through the Persian empire with his 10'000 men, we can see that the empire was crumbling - Greek mercenaries and foreign raiders were actually inside Persia and they simply could not hold their boarders. Consider how strong the boarders were under the time of, say, Darius I or Xerxes - as soon as Cimon dared to make his attacks more inland from the coasts (like in Egypt) he was fiercely repulsed. Alexander was finishing off something that was already crumbling - like most near eastern empires, the Persian empire started off with a brilliant amount of quick conquest, and then slowly declined. For a nation in that area to work effectively (especially one of that size), all of the areas of society need to work together in such a harsh landscape with not many natural resources (yes, there were some good areas of the Persian empire, but the heartland and the area of their origional conquests were such places), and when they don't society crumbles.

...As for the cultural aspects of it, what one has to consider is that although Greek had not spread EAST under Alexander, it had already done so WEST- despite, as Paul correctly said, Roman disgust at Greek culture and language, there was a slow and subtle Helenization occuring right from the mid-republic that was to culminate in around 284 AD with Emperor Numerian turning the offical language of the Roman empire into Greek. Greek city states had swarned literally every area of the Mediteranian basin, so it's reasonable to assume that Persia would have had a considerable amount of Greek influence - their conquest of Pseudo-Greek states such as Lycia, Lydia and others must have simply quickened the effects of Hellenization. The truth is, that even without Alexander, Greek was still one of the Ancient World's most dominant languages - the Roman empire had serious subtle undercurrents of it occuring, and the entire med was covered with their cities - it wouldn't be suprising also if many eastern nations had native Greek speakers for commercial reasons. The Diodachi and Alexander were a huge contributor of Greek culture, yes, that nobody can deny, but to attribute the whole change to them is ridiculous.

Although the empire was not based on one uniform culture and race, and was remarkabily tolerant for the time, this also aided to cause it's ultimate downfall. Although it's multiculturalism was helpful in some areas, there was no uniform loyalty towards the king - it's not that those occupied peoples were being opressed - far from it - it's just that they had no reason to be loyal. Also, the Satrapies were based on Nepotism and Corruption rather than meritocracy, so there was no assurance that all the satraps of the provinces were ever going to be loyal. An empire that controlled all of the peoples of the ancient near east and was simply too multicultural couldn't use the race card as a rallying point to get support because there were too many internal differences between the people of the country. There's also size - the Persian empire was quite probably one of the largest in history - all empires reach a breaking point at some time (I am in full agreement with this school of thought), and the Persian empire just happened to break quicker because of the reasons that I've listed. Also, the size meant that military campaigns had to be successful almost immediately to secure the continuation of the empire, for by the time the messages can be sent back to Persepolis, the enemy have already got right into the heartlands of the empire.

Edited by Aster Thrax Eupator - 31-Jul-2007 at 08:57

I agree - the extreme pluetocracy that dominated the Persian courts would probably have prevented such tactics being used that probably would have actually worked against Alexander's huge army. The opulence of the Eastern courts around that time was something unheard of and something that was so despised by the Greeks and other westerners that it was stereotyped. The extreme pleutocracy probably didn't help the Persians when they needed such die-hard tactics at this time. It's amazing that the empire retained the wealth it did (per head and in small scale local economies) when a huge amount of it was royal property.

You can't compare the two.  The Sassanid defeat was down to subversion of a large proportion of the population due to its susceptibility after the oppression of the Magis during and before the 30 year war of attrition with Byzantium; Islam stayed in Iran post Arabs, Hellenic traditions pretty much disappeared with the Greeks; that means the Arabs took root among the population and that was the ultimate cause of the demise of Sassanids.  One of the main reasons for the amazing successes of the Arabs was defection and subsequent information on how to defend effectively against heavy Sassanid armies/tactics.