For my birthday I gifted myself the complete collection of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. I hadn't heard the first 35 shows, so I thought it would be a good investment. As I was listening to one of the early episodes I heard him talking about how Thermopylae was more important than a lot of people realize. Sure, it's a great story, but if it had gone differently it might have changed the course of world history.
I found this a little difficult to believe. If you don't know the story, you know the story. It's the 300 Spartans holding off the Persian Army. The significance of their sacrifice was to buy the Greek city-states time to gather an army to head off Xerxes at the pass. They were able to do this and turn the Persians away.
But what if they didn't succeed? The idea is, Persia conquers Greece and then prevents Greek culture and ideas from spreading out across the world. And which modern country based a lot of their government on Greek culture and ideas? Is it possible that America would never have been founded? Or, at least not in the way that we think of as America. In this alternate reality there might even be a different name for it.
In all likelihood it probably wouldn't have happened that way. The Persians tended toward big picture things, not little picture things. They required a tribute of taxes and able-bodied men in the event of war, and that was it. They left everyone else to live and think and worship as they pleased. As "culture" doesn't really fall under the purview of the ruling empire, I'm pretty sure Greek ideas would have still gotten out there.
But it's kind of fun to think about.
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