That is Blasphemy!
That is MADNESS!!!!
Posted on 04/07/2011 5:34:56 AM PDT by Cronos
...
With Greece a Persian province what would have happened next? Forward into the Balkans and be met by Eastern Europe's barbaric tribes. It is likely on the evidence of the Romans occupation of that area that the Persians would struggle so far away from their own lands to subdue the Balkan and Italian areas even with the support of its Macedonian allies. But their incursion into this area of Europe would have stopped the formation of the Roman Empire as we know it, The Germanic tribes may have spread further and the migration of the peoples of the Steppes( Maygars etc) would have ended up displaced from the true history...
If the Persians had won we may never have heard or felt the greatness of Julius Augustus Caesar, the shape of Western Europe would be very different and Christianity may not have existed as we know it. Would all of Europe be living a religion still worshiping a sky God or would it be a religion based on the Persian belief structure
(Excerpt) Read more at hubpages.com ...
Diocletian. One of the very few absolute rulers in history who genuinely abdicated and went into retirement. And survived the experiment.
Although by his time the disguise had worn extremely thin. Diocletian simply brought the form of the state somewhat into line with its reality.
BTW, I thought it was odd the author of this essay drew a line between Greek/Roman and Persian attitudes towards the whole God-King bit.
Alexander had made himself a God-King while he was still alive and his diadochi followed suit enthusiastically. The Ptolemies and Seleucids were Gods.
Even the earliest Roman emperors were worshiped as Gods outside Italy while they were alive, and all but the most unpopular were deified and worshipped after death in Rome itself. There is a great story about Vespasian, one of the more attractive of the early emperors, renowned for an iconoclastic sense of humor. His last words reportedly were, “I feel myself becoming a god.”
The later Emperors, of course, were God-Kings from their accession.
What the author omits [or doesn’t know] is troubling. Two quick examples: Carthage. He totally ignores it. Then there’s the Magyars. They don’t arrive in the Hungarian plain until much later, like 300-400 years after the Huns do -and the Huns didn’t arrive until the late 4th-early 5th century, AD. Indeed, except for the Scythians [who the Persians had been fighting since the time of Cyrus the Great [they killed him]in the southern Steppe, there weren’t a lot of people around up that way [the great migrations started later] for the Persians to fight. And not much [wealth, ports, etc] to fight over.
Still, going with the author, I propose a slightly different result. With Persia beating the Greeks, the Greek colonies in Sicily and along the Mediterranean littoral will seek alliance with Rome. Rome will occupy Sicily without the need for war with Carthage. The two may ally against Persia. Roman military reform [weapons, organization, tactics] brought about by conflict with the Gauls in the Po valley would accelerate.
If there was a confrontation,a Roman- Cathaginian Army: Roman Infantry, Libyan infantry and Numidian cavalry would clean the Persians’ clocks. And unlike Alexander, the Romans would have destroyed Persia in it’s turn [see Third Punic War].
One other note. Xerxes regretted burning down Athens as soon as he did it [as a reprisal for the Athenians torching a Persian provincial capital-kind of like the Brits and DC in the War of 1812]. He ordered it rebuilt the next day. He sought Greece’s submision, and incorporation, not its destruction.
Diocletian was quite a character, though his reforms were doomed
You are overlooking recurring famines and plagues ~ which definitely served to keep down Persian population
True, but they also did a dandy job on the Greeks. Look up the Plague of Pericles.
Here's a cite for Persia having a population in the 5th century of 50M, 44% of the entire world's population. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria and the Indus had enormous populations for the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_empires#Largest_empires_by_land_area_and_population
Meanwhile, the two most powerful Greek cities, Sparta and Athens, had total populations of 250k and 315k.
http://www.ancientgreekbattles.net/Pages/47932_Population.htm
Population of the entire Greek world is estimated at 8M to 10M. A very large percentage of this number was on the Persian side during the wars. Ionia, Thracian and Black Sea colonies, Macedon, Thessaly, etc. A bunch of the rest were in Italy and Sicily and out of this fight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_demography
I disagree with that -- the Persians had to initially fight off the Babylonians and the Medes and prior to that the all-powerful neo-Assyrian Empire had been defeated.
Beside the Scyths, the Persians had to contend with powerful Indian dynasties and the Egyptians
and wealth -- there was a lot of it in the fertile crescent, indus valley and Canaan.
Good point - mercy and the SPQR were opposites
I forgot to say how right SL is on the god-king bit — the Persians did not have this as they worshipped Ahura Mazda.
That is Blasphemy!
That is MADNESS!!!!
You’re right. But the thrust of the article, as I understand it, posits a Persian thrust to the northwest of Greece, at a time when the Babylonians, Assyrians and Medes had already been assimilated into the Persian Empire. So I wrote accordingly.
One other factor the Persians would have faced with the Romans was spectacularly deep manpower pool that was largely homogeneous and higly militarized using the same system [see Second Punic War].
Hate to disagree, but it's just not that simple. There is considerable disagreement about whether the Persians of Xerxes' time were really Zoroastrians in the later sense of the term. They seem to have had other gods and goddesses, though it's not clear whether these were part of a pantheon or were demigods or angels. Somewhat similar to medieval Christianity with all its saints. An outsider, or even many of the uneducated at the time, might have thought these were gods.
In any case, the position of the Persian shahs was very darn similar to a God-King. The Greeks certainly picked up the idea from the Persians.
It is certain that the later Parthians and others heavily influenced by the Persians had other gods such as Mithras.
Full-bore monotheistic Zoroastrianism doesn't seem to have come in till the Sassanids of 225 AD on. And this may have been largely in response to Christianity.
Uff da!. People at the MacDonald's I mean the Jorgenson's would be ordering the lutefisk and lefse instead of burgers and fries.
It was OK. Mrs WBill liked all of the Beefcake in it. The stab-and-slash held my interest for a few minutes, but got awfully repetitive.
Was it factual, or even a well-told story? Not hardly. Worth 2 hours the next time it's on cable, maybe, if you've got nothing else to do, nothing better is on, and your ISP is down so that you can't surf FR.
Not worth spending anything more than that. :-)
Thanks. It sounds like something to put way down on the time-filler list, below a deep talk with the chameleon and cleaning the baseboards with a toothbrush.
Oh, thanks.
Depends on whether the chameleon talks back or not.
She changes color, and occasionally hisses.
Gerard Butler would have played Xerxes in 300......
I suspect, though I'm not certain, that your chameleon eats more flies.
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