Could it have helped?

[MemnonOfRhodes]

I dont know what the situations were of Macedonia And Greece,But if they formed an alliance of some sort (Even the Greek city states) could they have stopped the Roman Expansion....?


(not an expert so if i'm wrong,fill me in )

[Akrotatos]

Possibly, yes. The City States alone were too weakened imo, but both Macedonia and the S. Greeks could have fared well. THessalian cavalry for example, could work like the Hetairoi had for Alexander, since Macedonia was too poor to field good quality cavalry at the time of the Roman expansion.

It would be hard though and only in fantasy would this alliance work with the divided nature of Greeks

[MemnonOfRhodes]

It would be hard though and only in fantasy would this alliance work with the divided nature of Greeks

Yeah i know ,but i'm into ''what if'' history

[Akrotatos]

Well for the shake of argument, drawing soldiers from all Greece would help re-use Alexander's and Philip's tactics of combined arms. You wwould have phalangitai, many peltasts, hoplites working as hypaspists, Thessalian cavalry, all the strength of Epirus and a lot more resources.

They would still have to face Rome's much larger recruitment pool however, and the legions. At least if it was a alliance of equals there should be some capable generals around to avoid the mistakes made in Pydna and Cynos Cephalae.

[MemnonOfRhodes]

But isn't it weird some Greek City States helped each other against the Persian Invasions but not a Roman invasion

[William the Bastard]

Individual city states didn't really matter too much in the Hellenistic post Alexander world. It was leagues and kingdoms. Rome won the first Macedonian War with help from their allies in the Aetolian League who later went on to defect to the Macedonians again after Rome began to interfere too much in Greece. You also had the Achaean League flitting to and fro also.

The Greeks were too busy fighting amongst themselves or being duplicitous to put up a combined resistance to Roman expansionism. So yeah it was possible for them to have done so but they were never going to.

Edit: Phoebus nailed it.

[MemnonOfRhodes]

Edit: Phoebus nailed it.

Pretty much yeah

[Claudius Gothicus]

But the Greek states and Hellenistic kingdoms weren't going to make an alliance against Rome, the Southern cities of Greece hated the Macedonians because they saw them as conquerors and oppressors, therefore Rome played the liberator part. The same happened with Seleucia and Pergamon, Pergamon was a lonely but powerful city state that was being attacked by Antiochus, Rome helped them against Seleucids and gained many Greeks trust.

Divide and Conquer, Divide and Conquer.

[Phoebus]

I don't see it. There was simply too much bad blood between the various poleis, monarchies, federations, etc. in Greece, the islands, Asia Minor, and Magna Graecia for such an arrangement to be tenable. Even if we want to talk about the purely fantastical--e.g., such an alliance of equals not just forming up but actually being able to stay stable and healthy--such an arrangement would have to have come about some time before Rome became a no-kidding threat.

Who knows? Perhaps a Philip (had he lived longer) or Alexander (ditto) could have eventually used their military might to break down the barriers between the individual states. I'm not convinced such a concept would have been impossible. Philip was recognized in his lifetime as de-facto ruler of Thessaly and may have had enough pull along marital lines to heavily influence Epirus (assumption on my part). Alexander, with far more resources, absorbed foreign aristocrats and land-owners in his government, bodyguard, and standing military formations. It wasn't a fluke; various Asiatic warriors--noble and common--fought for Greek-speaking monarchs for generations after his death. The idea that Alexander (or Philip, given another decade or so) couldn't have affected similar assimilations in the Greek heartland isn't impossible, IMHO. Its primary detractors, much like in Asia, would likely have been the no-kidding Macedonians, who would have found themselves having to include even more "equals" in their social strata.

But again, all this is assuming a start way back in the 320s-310s BCE... before Rome became a true powerhouse... and personages of such magnitude as to offset the "head start" advantages the Romans had in forming a more cohesive Republic and structure of alliances. Once we get into the 3rd century BCE, especially, the odds of any other single person being able to affect such an alliance are basically nil. The supposedly most talented warlord of his time, Pyrrhus, wasn't even able to keep Epirus and Macedonia under him--despite at one point being king of both. The political realities he had to face in trying to keep in line even those peoples who had begged for his help shows exactly how untenable it would be for anything other than a supreme power to try to pull in the various Greek factions.

[Julius Barca the Great]

I do agree that it is unlikely that the Grrek would ally themselves, but I am also in the opinion that it would not have mattered much. The tactics and overall strategies would have been the same, with the primary difference being more battles and more troops. The Successor states, in general, forwent the proper use of their armies, thus allowing Rome to easily (compared to a fully realized Hellenistic army with proper tactics and leadership) conquer them.