Of all the many counterfactuals, those “what-ifs” posed by history, perhaps the most arresting, if only because the most sweeping, asks: what if the Persians had defeated the Greeks in the Greco-Persian War of 490–479 B.C.? Had this happened, there might have been no Plato, no Aristotle, no Roman Empire, no Christianity, no Western Civilization. A Great King, a lineal descendant of Darius, might still rule the world. All might worship the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda, with men going about in turbans, women remaining at home or in harems. But that, as every counterfactual invariably ends—generally accompanied by a sigh of relief—didn’t happen.
Didn’t happen because the Greeks won the day, and with it freedom for the West. Outnumbered, both in men and ships, they were victorious owing to the combined bravery, endurance, guile, and idealism of a small number of extraordinary Athenians and Lacedaemonians, chief among them Miltiades, Leonidas, Aristides, Pausanias, above all Themistocles. These men won out over the best efforts of the Persian warriors Datis, Artaphernes, Mardonius, Masistius, Artemesia (tyrant queen of Halicarnassus), and of course Xerxes, king of kings and the leader of the Persian expedition into Europe.
The Greco-Persian War was, as the British classicist Peter Green put it in his Xerxes at Salamis (1970, later reissued as The Greco-Persian Wars), “the first great ideological conflict in European history.” Earlier battles had been fought over land and water, treasure and the simple urge to dominate. This war was won owing to Hellenic revulsion from the prospect of tyrannous Persian rule. Not that Persian rule was everywhere crushing. For most countries Persian domination meant paying tribute and recognizing the leadership of Persia. “By the standards of the time,” writes the military historian William Shepherd in The Persian War in Herodotus and Other Ancient Voices (2019), “the Persians were generally just and tolerant as rulers, even liberal, so long as the absolute power of the Great King, exercised directly or through his satraps (regional governors) was unequivocably accepted and taxes, tribute and military service rendered.” Although this could be an economic drain on the conquered countries, the Persians generally allowed conquered peoples to retain their religion and many of their institutions.
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