What if: Athens won the Peloponnesian War?

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III


Wellthis is historical fiction, and I too would argue that what you say is one possible end of the story.
However, don't discard the possibility of a more stable Greek alliance and a quickly recovering Athens - then it would not have been so clear:
They would possibly have tried to go to war with Persia earlier, before Macedonians would act, or such an alliance could have proved strong enough to oppose the Macedons. Even as things really were, securing Greece was no easy walk for Philipp...

I'm not sure Athens alone (even with the help of (unrtustworthy) allies) would be capable of making a full-scale attack on Persia.
Greeks would never evolve into anything other than city states by themselves, so they were bound to be overtaken by some large power eventually.

[axi]

It depends on which phase of the war they would win.

If at the beginning, before the plague, then sure, Athens would have ruled supreme.

If they had won in Syracusae, then perhaps they would have upheld their position as a major power.

After that, even if they had won against Sparta (by inciting a helot rebellion f.e.), they were too weakened to matter.

[Ned]

Refresh my memory, why did Sparta want to destroy Athens?

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Ned
Democracy?

Imperialism would have had it dawn.

So democracy precludes imperialism, eh ?

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Arrian
Athens was kinda like an earlier version of Rome (republican, but imperial).

-Arrian

I don't think so.

When you look at how Athens evolved, it kept democracy at the height of its power, while Rome 'dropped' (in the sense of it being an historical necessity) the Republic when it became evident it wasn't suited to its empire anymore.

I'd guess this is due to cultural differences between Hellens and Latins — the Greek had a long, ingrained concept of sovereign city states, while Rome could feasibly extend citizenship over a certain period of time. Could you even imagine Athens granting citizenship to, say, Corinthian landlords ?

[BeBMan]

Republican Rome wasn't exactly keen on granting citizenship to others over quite some time. The Italic allies got it only after three years of war (social war 1st century BC)

Of course later nearly all inhabitants of the empire were given citizenship without such hostilities, but that was some centuries later.....how an "Imperial Athens" would have handled the issue over centuries we can't say.

[lord of the mark]

Re: What if: Athens won the Peloponnesian War?

Originally posted by Odin
Would democracy have become the dominant form of government in Greece? Could a victorious Athens and it's vassals of held off Macedon? Could Athens's naval empire have evolved into a pan-Hellenic federation?

Im currently reading Kagan, and one of the things that strikes me is how even when Athens was meddling in the affairs of the islands, and doing so in cooperation with local democrats, it never occurs to them to give ANY of the islands Athenian citizenship, or even to come up with some equivalent of "latin rights" or in some other way to make the Athenian polis something larger than Attica. I presume this has something to do with the Greek idea of a polis, as actually a real physical community, where everyone knows each other at one remove, and can actually meet together in one place. Rather alien to the concept of an abstract "state"

Or maybe its because as a maritime empire, they never had to settle Athenians (at least in large numbers) on land away from Athens, as Rome did, which necessitated the question of Roman citizenship for colonists. Of course Greek cities had colonies, but most were older, and were not really under the control of the mother city the way Roman colonies were of Rome.