Re: AH Challenge: Multipolar classical era

Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 09:25:06 GMT
Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if
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Rob wrote:
> The challenge is to keep something similar to the Hellenistic balance
> of power system going through about the 5th century AD. If you
> prevent the rise of an all-encompassing Euro-Mediterranean empire
> trhough that timeframe, you win.
>
> What are some of the likely effects of this on law, politics, religion
> and technology. In particular, will multipolar competition be likely
> to spur technology in the Mediterranean faster? Or will it be
> hampered by the less centralized structure?
POD? I'm uncertain which epoch/era you're referring to; the "classical
era" is that of Pericles and the Pelopponesian Wars; the term
"Hellenistic" generally refers to the post-Alexandrian age, i.e. the
Hellenization of the Levant. "Hellenic" would be the term for the
classical era, if any other than "classical.
If it's the classical era you're referring to, I gather you're talking
about the Spartan-Athenian rivalry; but even then the rise of Nova
Graecia and the incipient rise of Macedon was throwing that off a pure
binary dialectic.
If it's the Hellenistic Age (post-Alexander, rougly beginning during his
lifetime but usually reckoned off his death) then it's already
inherently multipolar due to the fractious nature of the Macedonian
inheritance, i.e. the Ptolemids, Seleucids, Baktria, Greece-Macedon and
Sicily and what was starting already on the Italian peninsula; and the
Phoenicians/Carthaginians were already in the mix from before the
Pelopponesian Wars......
i.e. it was already pretty decentralized; it was Roman that centralized
things shortly thereafter anyway....
MC
--
Mike Cleven
http://www.cayoosh.net/music/
http://www.cayoosh.net (Bridge River Lillooet history)
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