achaemenid empire

In 516 BCE, Darius embarked on a campaign to India and marched through Bactria to Taxila in modern-day Pakistan. Darius spent the winter of 516–515 BCE in Gandhara, preparing to conquer the Indus Valley. Darius conquered the lands surrounding the Indus River in 515 BCE. This was around the same...

In Achaemenid Egypt a rebellion began under the command of Inaros, a Libyan king living on the border of Egypt. This rebellion quickly swept the country, which was soon largely in the hands of Inaros. He requested assistance from Athens which was granted. The alliance defeated the Persianw at...

The move that secured the Macedonian victory at Gaugamela - a massive charge straight into the Persian center, where Darius III was - was an immensely risky gamble for Alexander. Case in point, his manouver created a gap in his army's line, one which was exploited by a detachment of Persian and...

Tripolis, Phoenicia. ~November 333 BC: There’s trouble on the docks. Soldiers are taking control of ships, men are running, the citizens are panicking. Just a few moments ago, these very same soldiers were hurriedly making their way towards the city, claiming to be the mercenaries of Darius...

If Persian under Xerxes conquer Greece can Philip II and Alexander the Great still rise as rebel satraps, unite Greece and conquer Persia by Creating phalanx as Achaemenid macedonia had autonomy create armies and wage wars will they be more successful without disunity among Greece under...

What Achaemenid Persia transiotioned into a democracy with a constitution like Roman Republic and meritocratic bureaucracy voting rights to all Free males persian by descent of Persus(fars of today) as said by Otanes after Bardyia is overthrown and before darius is king just assume thing...

What if Cyrus the Younger survived the Battle of Cunaxa and overthrew his older brother Artaxerxes II? He had administrative experience thanks to his stint as satrap of Lydia, and, most famously, had ten thousand Greek mercenaries in his army, one of whom was Xenophon. What would he be like as...

The Battle of the Persian Gate was the Achaemenid Empire's last act of resistance against Alexander the Great. After an ambush that caused heavy casualties among the Macedonians, the Persians held the pass for a month before the invaders found an alternate path through the terrain (the battle...

This scenario would differ considerably from a scenario where the Persians don’t expand at all and their revolt is crushed by the Medians in very significant ways, in that we’d already have evidence for the “Persian interlude” establishing their presence and the sheer size of their empire, and...

Suppose that you have your run of the mill Achaemenid success story in Greece. Thermopylae fails to hold the Achaemenids for even a few hours, the allied Greek navy gets smashed at Salamis and Themistocles killed, and with both land and naval dominance, the Peloponnese, as well as some Aegean...

In October 539 BC, when Cyrus the Great conquered the Neo-Babylonian empire, he faced surprisingly little resistance, for which various explanations have been found, suggesting the unpopularity the favoritism the previous Babylonian monarch Nabonidus had for the god Sin over Babylon's...

Suppose that Bessus, along with his fellow conspirators, instead of tying up Darius III in a cart and wounding him with a spear, leaving him to die on the road, decide to tie him down and kill him inside an army camp, fearing their fate if Alexander learns about their heinous deed. Bessus...

Now that I've got your attention out to say, but this happened IOTL! I am not talking about the actual Byzantine Empire and the Macedonian dynasty, but it occurred to me today just how many parallels that a hypothetical Macedonian Empire under a Philip II that survived assassination would have...

In 499 BC, when the Ionian revolt flared up, Aristagoras, tyrant of Miletus and instigator of the rebellion, traveled to mainland Greece to seek support for the rebellion. While Cleomenes I was initially convinced to intervene and invade the heart of Persia, according to Herodotus at least, he...

The Battle of Gaugamela in many ways sealed the fate of Achaemenid rule in the western part of the empire and Mesopotamia, there was still a slim chance of survival. Alexander was approaching Parsa(Persepolis) itself, and the homeland of the Achaemenids. There wouldn't be the kind of submission...

Sometime around this era, in the 480s BC, there was yet again another attempt by the Egyptians to win their independence from the hated Persians. Herodotus mentions it being in the last years of Darius I and the early years of Xerxes I, and archaeological and epigraphic evidence supports this...

IOTL, the Achaemenids, while far from the undisciplined skirmishers that popular perception paints them as, could've done a lot better in military matters. They did not focus on heavy infantry as much as other peoples such as the Greeks, Carians, Egyptians and others had, and being a vast...

In 330 BC, there was a plot against Alexander's life lead by Dimnos, a Macedonian of Chalastra, for reasons somewhat obscure, but what Diodorus says was because Dimnos, "found fault" in something Alexander did. Either way, it isn't relevant, because the conspirators will be torn to pieces once...

Since we've been getting a few Ancient Egypt threads lately, I've decided to make my own contribution to this topic. Inaros II was an Egyptian nobleman who led a huge rebellion against the Achaemenid occupation of the Two Lands. For a time, it seemed that his victory was certain, especially...

Greetings all, for this thread I'll be asking about the enormous effects of a nonhellenized Judaism. To make things easy the POD is simply no Alexandrian conquests of the Persian empire. Any later or alternative Greek conquests are nowhere near as lucky, and just make it across Anatolia. That...