I am reading Creasy’s The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: from Marathon to Waterloo, and while I’d love to skip ahead to see an Englishman of 1851’s take on the Battle of Saratoga, I have a dozen other battles to wade through first. In a nutshell, in 490BC Darius of Persia decided that Athens had been a thorn in his side long enough and that they needed to be taught a lesson. His army of from 20,000 to 600,000 infantrymen (estimates vary a bit) landed on the beaches of the Plain of Marathon and camped there. Athens knew they were coming and called up every able-bodied freeman and some slaves and foreigners hanging around Athens, totaling maybe 10,000, to meet the threat. Also there were roughly 1000 Plataeans, and the Spartans were planning to show up after celebrating some Spartan Holy Day of Obligation. The Athenian host blocked the two land exits from the plain and occupied the high ground, so good sense would tell them to stay put at least until the Spartans showed while the Persians stewed on the plain. The Persian cavalry was somewhere else, either sailing to invade Athens directly (why the idea that all the Persians could do that right off never occurred to anybody may be explained later, but I don’t think so) or gallivanting somewhere else–maybe JEB Stuart could explain.
Anyway, nobody’s sure what triggered the battle so I will state baldly and with no fear of contradiction that somebody was selling wolf tickets and a “Your Mama” joke got out of hand. I think it was about Miltiades’ mama because the Athenians and Plataeans left the safety of the hills and formed up across from the Persians. Battle ensued, Athens and Plataea won, Athens went on to its Golden age, Sparta missed the fun so they trashed Plataea 63 years later, and the Western World as we know it was allowed to happen. Yea, us!
But what if Athens lost? Creasy’s description of what was likely to have happened is:
So, what would have happened in your eyes? What would 2013 (2571 Central Persian Time) be like, besides there would have been no 300 movie because its portrayal of Xerxes was offensive and that battle wouldn’t have been necessary? Or would Sparta kicked the weakened Persian army out of the Peloponnese once Christmas was over? And could the Persians have held all that territory?
Creasey was not a professional historian he was a Barrister and Judge. Well I am neither a professional historian nor a judge (I am a Barrister though), and I disagree with his assessment. Firstly, if Athens had fallen is not a counter factual, it did actually occur a decade later and what is stated in the OP extract did not happen. Unlike His Lordship we have the benefit of 162 years of further historical research to consider. Secondly, a lot of the better Greek contributions were made by persons living in Persian areas, the Miletus school for instance (admittedly the city was burnt by the Persians after a revolt) and Herodotus also wrote some of his work while living in Persian ruled parts of Asia Minor. Thirdly, we also now know more about the Persian Empire than we knew in 1851. We know that the Greek operations were part of a series of border wars that the Persians carried out and the problems they had with maintaining control in border regions , Greece was just one of a multitude of operations carried out. Indeed Xerxes left after Salamis to deal with rebellions elsewhere. The Persians had great difficulty controlling border regions as said and would lose Egypt, the Indus Valley, central Asian areas. Failure in Greece was part of a process that was ongoing. Darius’s operation was a punitive expedition aimed, not a battle of conquest (arguably as was Xerxes on a larger scale). If he had taken Athens, it would have been 480BC, a decade early. He would have occupied it sacked it, and gone home. Athens would have been reoccupied as it was in 479BC.
Jesus, I had a running joke all planned but forgot to use it. But speaking of Jesus, without Rome would he have gained much traction? I recall the Bible having some very nice things to say about Darius’ predecessor, Cyrus, and I assume the people of Israel didn’t much mind living in a satrapy of Persia, so without Alexander and the Romans the job of Messiah had already been filled by Cyrus.
And that’s part of the fun of being an educated amateur. But yes, I realize 1851 was a long time ago in scholarly terms, and Rawlinson’s final cracking of the Old Persian cuneiform alphabet had only just taken place, but I used that quotation as a stepping off point.
490 years is more than long enough to ensure that he wouldn’t be born. A little detail like a particular person being born at a particular time and place isn’t going to survive all the random changes something like this would set off.
Everything from changes in population movements to changes in the spread of diseases to random changes in the weather. Any change is going to snowball until it radically alters relatively tiny details like individual humans. It’s the good old butterfly effect in action; 490 years is more than long enough for even a tiny alteration in history to completely alter the fine details of history.
That’s utterly ridiculous. To accept that destruction of Athens 10 years earlier than our timeline would effect events half a millennium later in another part of the world is to abdicate reason. We need to look at the Greco Persian Wars in their proper context, which was a great power policing action on the marches. Effects half a thousand years later? Sorry I do not see it.
What would have happened if Darius had won in 490BC, you would have the Peace of Antalcidas a century early.
No, it’s to recognize how the world works; small changes snowball into large ones. That’s why it’s called the butterfly effect; even a tiny difference will have huge effects over time. After 490 years, even the most miniscule change would massively change the world; a battle being won or lost is overkill.
“we shall find nothing at that period but mere savage …Celts[…] and Teutons” AKA the people who on several occasions kicked Southern European ass…I think they would be not quite the walkover Creasy seems to think they were - plus the notion of the Celts as being savages is so delightfully out of date.
I would agree on Marathon not being that important.
As stated by AK84, from the Persian view, this was just a border skirmish.
I would say that Salamis and Plataeae are of a different order.
This was a true attempt by the Persians to bring the area under control.
Had the Greeks been defeated at Salamis then there would certainly have been a huge butterfly flapping its wings.
Although I’m not sure how huge it would have been. One of the most outdated features of Creasy’s analysis is to assume that there’s some kind of well-defined natural existential divide between the “Western races of mankind” and “Asia”. Cultural, linguistic and ethnic dividing lines would probably still have been drawn between “West” and “East” and “North” and “South”, just in slightly different places.
It’s highly unlikely that all the sociocultural developments we now think of as “Western” would simply have died stillborn in a stultifying misery of “mental and physical prostration beneath the diadem, the tiara, and the sword”. That’s the attitude of a pompom-waving cheerleader for Team Classical Heritage, not of a responsible and well-informed historian.
I think it all rather depends on the question if the Persians would have been able to keep their empire together. Would there still be a King of Kings 200/300 years after?
With a Greece under Persian control, would there have been a rise of Macedon? Probably not. Without Alexander’s exceptional feat, would there have been anyone to challenge the might of the Persian King?
Without Alexander there would, of course, not have been a Hellinistic age.
I’m certainly not claiming that Greek culture was superior, just that history would be totally different.
Not direct control. They shoved some money here and there to keep the Greeks divided.
You could call that control but it would have been a totally different story if Greece would have been a real satrapy.
That ain’t nothin’ compared with his Standard British 19th (and 20th and, for some, 21st) Century Casual Racism toward the peoples of the Asiatic and African Persian Empire. But this thread isn’t about Creasy. Like I said, he was just a jumping-off point.
But please continue the discussion. I’m learning as it’s going, though I suspect the rises of Macedonia and Rome were inevitable, considering how unstable Persia was on its periphery,
I’m not quite certain why he thought Persia would have either continued or would have been able to conquer further west anyway. It’s highly unlikely they would have tried projecting force as far as Rome given the unlikelylyhood of conquering anything very rich - and given another century or so, Persia would likely have disintegrated anyway.
But as with all historical what-ifs, it comes down to this: Had things been different, then things would be diferent.
But yes, I realize 1851 was a long time ago in scholarly terms, and Rawlinson’s final cracking of the Old Persian cuneiform alphabet had only just taken place, but I used that quotation as a stepping off point.