Linguistic impact of Achaemenid Greece

[Otto Kretschmer]

If somehow Persia managed to conquer Greece, what linguistic impact would there be?

If there is no independent Greece, there is no Alexander so Achaemenid Empire lasts at least until 250 BC

[keenir]

If somehow Persia managed to conquer Greece, what linguistic impact would there be?

The various greek languages and dialects would then provide..."local color" as some call it. There was already Koine Greek by this point, I believe, though this may pick up some extra strata from Persian?

If there is no independent Greece, there is no Alexander so Achaemenid Empire lasts at least until 250 BC

Why til 250, if I may ask?


If everything butterflies, then yeah, no Alexander the Macedonian.

But if the Tide of History brings an Alexander from the provinces to the Persian military, I could see him making a bid for the throne. This one, though, would not usher in a huge nationwide civil war upon his death, though - if he had no heirs, then it reverts to the preceeding dynasty, i believe.

[Moose-tache]

If there is no independent Greece, there is no Alexander so Achaemenid Empire lasts at least until 250 BC

TIL you can prevent being attacked by your rivals by just not agreeing to their nominal independence! If only the Americans had known that, the whole Civil War could have been avoided. Just kidding. I understand what you mean.

But the Achaemenids did conquer Greece, at least some of it. The 68 years Ephesus spent under Persia domination seem to have left little impact. In fact, the same could be said about most conquered territory within the empire. Persian rule was relatively indirect along the periphery of its empire. If Peninsular Greece had been conquered and spent, say, a century under Persian rule, I doubt there would be much impact other than some Persian words for administrative vocabulary.

[zompist]

If somehow Persia managed to conquer Greece, what linguistic impact would there be?

If there is no independent Greece, there is no Alexander so Achaemenid Empire lasts at least until 250 BC

Not enough info. What happened to the superiority of phalanx warfare? Are spears less pointy in this world?

It's not that a Persian victory at Salamis would be unthinkable. (Easy fix: knock off Themistocles, so the Athenians don't build a fleet.) Then you have Greeks fighting for the Persians... or rather, you have more Greeks fighting for them than they had in our history. Maybe it's like the medieval Arabic empires where Turkish mercenaries did most of the fighting. Note that the Turks sooner or later tended to just take power for themselves.

The Achaemenids were pretty terrible at stable monarchy: almost every reign began with a civil war. I'm not sure how you can just stipulate "no Alexanders"-- any of those civil wars would have been an opportunity for the Greek mercs to take over.

The Greeks in our timeline tried to expand west, and failed to take Syracuse and later Rome. Perhaps the Persians, with Greek support, could have mounted a better effort. On the other hand-- why bother? Those places are very far, and by Middle Eastern standards poor.

If you never get any Greek empires, you presumably don't get Koine as the koine of the east.

[Torco]

Alexander is born in Persia as a member of a well off ethnic minority family, and ends up making britain persian for a brief time. the persian satrap, who was very close to alexander, decides not to leave and becomes Shah of Britain, formally under the authority of the king of kings in Persepolis, but in fact alone. against all odds, the regime lasts for a few generarions. hundreds of years later, english a cousin of Farsi.

EDIT: zomp is right, but stil the persians *tried* to conquer greece, so they at least inclined towards westward expansion: perhaps with time and political innovation they could have stabilized their monarchy with conquering poorer lands and enslaving their peoples, maybe promising land in exchange for military service... after all, it worked for the latins.

[zompist]

EDIT: zomp is right, but stil the persians *tried* to conquer greece, so they at least inclined towards westward expansion:

Eh... the Persians conquered the Greek edge of Anatolia, with the typical mindset of continental powers: a few cities perched on the coast don't matter, we should be able to get the whole peninsula. They didn't care about Greece until Greece made a fuss about those Greek cities.

Really, for a country that had just conquered Mesopotamia and Egypt, everything to the west in 500 BCE was slim pickings. Yeah, they could have conquered Greece, though the actual war shows that it was pretty much at the limit of their interests and abilities. To conquer Carthage they would have needed a far more navy-oriented mindset. But the Greeks had such a mindset and failed to do it. And that was pretty much it-- there were no other major organized kingdoms.

perhaps with time and political innovation they could have stabilized their monarchy with conquering poorer lands and enslaving their peoples, maybe promising land in exchange for military service... after all, it worked for the latins.

It's not very nice to the Persians to compare them to the Romans. They were not a slavery-based economy-- the percentage of slaves among the Romans or even the Greeks would astonish Darius, Hammurabi, or Ramesses. Recall that in the other big literature that formed the West, the Bible, the Persians are big heroes, because they let the Jews go back to Jerusalem. Though I believe that AKAB (all kings are bastards), as empires go they were pretty benign. Note that none of the countries they conquered even switched to speaking Persian, or worshipping Ahura Mazda.

[keenir]

Though I believe that AKAB (all kings are bastards), as empires go they were pretty benign. Note that none of the countries they conquered even switched to speaking Persian, or worshipping Ahura Mazda.

Did they at least get Elamite a larger piece of the pie, in terms of how many documents (at least official or at least diplomatic) were written in it?

[zompist]

Though I believe that AKAB (all kings are bastards), as empires go they were pretty benign. Note that none of the countries they conquered even switched to speaking Persian, or worshipping Ahura Mazda.

Did they at least get Elamite a larger piece of the pie, in terms of how many documents (at least official or at least diplomatic) were written in it?

Yes and no. The height of Elam was the millennia before the rise of Persia-- in particular, they were constantly fighting with Assyria in the mid -1M. And the end result is clear enough: though the Elamites hung on for a few centuries, their lands-- Khuzestan and Fars-- became the homeland of the Persians.

My main modern source on the Persians (Matt Waters's history) emphasizes that the Elamites were far more important in Persian history than was traditionally thought. They were the model for kingship, they had a long-established civilization and writing system and cities-- it's no accident that Achaemenid inscriptions used Elamite (alongside Persian and Akkadian). IIRC they provided a lot of the bureaucracy at Susa and Persepolis. Yet the transition and the details are, as Waters says, "poorly understood."

[Torco]

It's not very nice to the Persians to compare them to the Romans. They were not a slavery-based economy-- the percentage of slaves among the Romans or even the Greeks would astonish Darius, Hammurabi, or Ramesses. Recall that in the other big literature that formed the West, the Bible, the Persians are big heroes, because they let the Jews go back to Jerusalem. Though I believe that AKAB (all kings are bastards), as empires go they were pretty benign. Note that none of the countries they conquered even switched to speaking Persian, or worshipping Ahura Mazda.

Absolutely. I think in my usage there political innovation was sort of an euphemism for a sudden inclination towards genocide, mass enslavement and cultural assimilationism. There are of course other possible motors we could imagine for a persian way to the west, such as a later conflict with the romans: this did happen, though with the relatively weaker Sassanian dynasty playing the persian part. maybe it could have happened earlier, and with a more vigorous persian polity, if that charming young man hadn't pwned them as hard as he did.