Maybe democracy died in Persia taking out the Greeks as a possible explanation if the Greeks had fallen?
That doesn't really work. Frank Miller's hilariously inaccurate comic book notwithstanding, as conquerors go the Persians were relatively nice (e.g. Cyrus the Great, the founder of Xerxes I's dynasty, was known for the abolition of slavery within Persian borders and is revered in Judaism for freeing them from the exile in Babylon), and there was significant cultural cross-pollination between Greece and Persia. There was also a problem in other Greek democracies that they would often give absolute power to a "tyrant" in times of national crisis, who would then refuse to relinquish power afterwards, and Athenian democracy ended up falling apart anyway due to the Peloponnesian Wars with Sparta.
That's Cyrus, not Xerxes. Xerxes was known for forcibly annexing neighbors just because he could.
Plz reread the post you quoted: I said the Achmaenids were relatively nice for conquerors. By which I mean they tended to respect local customs and religions and rule fairly as long as there weren't any revolts (they would still crush those, like any country ever), and those were customs that Cyrus started and his successors mostly kept. There's a reason the Persian Empire lasted basically continuously from approximately 550 BC until the rise of Islam in the 7th century AD (far longer than Rome, although it expanded and contracted quite a bit over that time).
Compare that to the Romans, who are probably the originator of the whole "evil empire" trope: they were huge racial supremacists, pillaged conquered lands and enslaved the occupants left and right, would happily go back on any deal they made if it benefited them...
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Maybe democracy died in Persia taking out the Greeks as a possible explanation if the Greeks had fallen?
That doesn't really work. Frank Miller's hilariously inaccurate comic book notwithstanding, as conquerors go the Persians were relatively nice (e.g. Cyrus the Great, the founder of Xerxes I's dynasty, was known for the abolition of slavery within Persian borders and is revered in Judaism for freeing them from the exile in Babylon), and there was significant cultural cross-pollination between Greece and Persia. There was also a problem in other Greek democracies that they would often give absolute power to a "tyrant" in times of national crisis, who would then refuse to relinquish power afterwards, and Athenian democracy ended up falling apart anyway due to the Peloponnesian Wars with Sparta.
That's Cyrus, not Xerxes. Xerxes was known for forcibly annexing neighbors just because he could.
Plz reread the post you quoted: I said the Achmaenids were relatively nice for conquerors. By which I mean they tended to respect local customs and religions and rule fairly as long as there weren't any revolts (they would still crush those, like any country ever), and those were customs that Cyrus started and his successors mostly kept. There's a reason the Persian Empire lasted basically continuously from approximately 550 BC until the rise of Islam in the 7th century AD (far longer than Rome, although it expanded and contracted quite a bit over that time).
Compare that to the Romans, who are probably the originator of the whole "evil empire" trope: they were huge racial supremacists, pillaged conquered lands and enslaved the occupants left and right, would happily go back on any deal they made if it benefited them...
To be fair the Roman Empire lasted until the 1460s with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Trezibond in 1461 to the Ottoman Turks though the damage had been done in 1204 when the Venetians sacked and looted Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the Roman Empire never recovered from that.
Here's a what if,
What if the Romans had won the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 AD and the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, would the empire have lasted longer?
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
If time travel is impossible, why is my present not the same as it was five minutes ago?
time travel IS possible-if you're going forward. It's returning to the past that isn't possible based on what we know of physics.
In Spider Robinson's second Callahan's Place story, published in the mid-'70s, the titular "Time-Traveler" was Rev. Tom Hauptmann, an activist preacher in 1960 who was thrown into prison in a South American banana republic and kept incommunicado for over ten years - emerging, after rescue, in the US of 1972, with long-haired war protestors, readily-available (although still illegal) marijuana, and (quite disconcertingly) President Richard Nixon (who famously whined, after losing to Kennedy in the 1960 election, "You won't have D.ick Nixon to kick around any more!"). People actually complained when Analog published the story, because "it wasn't science fiction". Spider pointed out that a) social science fiction is still SF; and b) Tom was indeed a time traveler. He just did it the hard way.
Time travel is a dangerous, it's like a genie in a bottle that once opened will not go back into the bottle.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
If time travel is impossible, why is my present not the same as it was five minutes ago?
time travel IS possible-if you're going forward. It's returning to the past that isn't possible based on what we know of physics.
In Spider Robinson's second Callahan's Place story, published in the mid-'70s, the titular "Time-Traveler" was Rev. Tom Hauptmann, an activist preacher in 1960 who was thrown into prison in a South American banana republic and kept incommunicado for over ten years - emerging, after rescue, in the US of 1972, with long-haired war protestors, readily-available (although still illegal) marijuana, and (quite disconcertingly) President Richard Nixon (who famously whined, after losing to Kennedy in the 1960 election, "You won't have D.ick Nixon to kick around any more!"). People actually complained when Analog published the story, because "it wasn't science fiction". Spider pointed out that a) social science fiction is still SF; and b) Tom was indeed a time traveler. He just did it the hard way.
There was also a Syfy channel movie about the consequences of time travel. A company took rich people back to prehistoric times, and I mean Dinosaur age, to "hunt" Dinosaurs. They were not supposed to leave this energy path, and they couldn't bring anything back because the dinosaurs they hunted were supposed to be found where they were "killed". One guy did get off the path and stepped on a bug.
He basically stepped on Evolution and their world started getting temporal ripples that changed things. First it was environmental where apparently higher temperatures were the norm, then animals. Finally, just after the protagonist jumps through the portal to try and undo the damage... a wave hit that replaced humans with something else.
There was also a Syfy channel movie about the consequences of time travel. A company took rich people back to prehistoric times, and I mean Dinosaur age, to "hunt" Dinosaurs. They were not supposed to leave this energy path, and they couldn't bring anything back because the dinosaurs they hunted were supposed to be found where they were "killed". One guy did get off the path and stepped on a bug.
He basically stepped on Evolution and their world started getting temporal ripples that changed things. First it was environmental where apparently higher temperatures were the norm, then animals. Finally, just after the protagonist jumps through the portal to try and undo the damage... a wave hit that replaced humans with something else.
So yea... Time Travel can be messy.
Haven't seen that, but it's based on a Ray Bradbury short, "The Sound of Thunder". It was short because it turns out that when someone comes back through the portal from the past with evidence they've changed the timestream (in this case, there were spelling changes, and the labels on his supplied outfit were "misspelled" now), the immediate response involves a shotgun - the "sound of thunder" in the title.
There was also a Syfy channel movie about the consequences of time travel. A company took rich people back to prehistoric times, and I mean Dinosaur age, to "hunt" Dinosaurs. They were not supposed to leave this energy path, and they couldn't bring anything back because the dinosaurs they hunted were supposed to be found where they were "killed". One guy did get off the path and stepped on a bug.
He basically stepped on Evolution and their world started getting temporal ripples that changed things. First it was environmental where apparently higher temperatures were the norm, then animals. Finally, just after the protagonist jumps through the portal to try and undo the damage... a wave hit that replaced humans with something else.
So yea... Time Travel can be messy.
It is called A Sound of Thunder which is based off of a short story by Ray Bradbury that was created in 1952. The most common adaption of the short story is from The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror V that also featured a Shining parody. The temporal ripples in the short story is not as drastic as the movie since the only noticeable changes are that English words have changed, the worst presidential candidate gets elected instead of the moderate candidate that got elected in the previous timeline, and the air quality was slightly worse. The movie was not a Syfy channel movie since it was created in 2005 and was a box office failure while the Sci-Fi Channel was rebranded as Syfy in 2009.
If time travel is impossible, why is my present not the same as it was five minutes ago?
time travel IS possible-if you're going forward. It's returning to the past that isn't possible based on what we know of physics.
Haven't you watched the The Late Philip J. Fry episode from Futurama? Travelling to the 'past' is possible. You just need to travel so far into the future where the universe resets itself through the Big Crunch and Big Bang.
Haven't you watched the The Late Philip J. Fry episode from Futurama? Travelling to the 'past' is possible. You just need to travel so far into the future where the universe resets itself through the Big Crunch and Big Bang.
They did find a time when backward time travel had been invented. Unfortunately, Bender was still annoyed that they didn't stay in the time when robots had taken over the world and killed all the humans, so he hit the time-travel switch again out of pique. (The lesson here, of course, is to never construct robots that are capable of pique.)
Haven't you watched the The Late Philip J. Fry episode from Futurama? Travelling to the 'past' is possible. You just need to travel so far into the future where the universe resets itself through the Big Crunch and Big Bang.
They did find a time when backward time travel had been invented. Unfortunately, Bender was still annoyed that they didn't stay in the time when robots had taken over the world and killed all the humans, so he hit the time-travel switch again out of pique. (The lesson here, of course, is to never construct robots that are capable of pique.)
There was actually two different instances of backwards time travel, Roswell That Ends Well where Fry is his own grandpa and Bender's Big Score. It is possible that the Nebulons erased the memories of Planet Express to protect the time travel. Therefore, backwards time travel is possible in the Futurama episode, but advanced alien races erase any knowledge of people using it. Although, this has to be the best moment of The Late Philip J. Fry episode at 4:10. 1:00 is pretty good as well.
Comments
Plz reread the post you quoted: I said the Achmaenids were relatively nice for conquerors. By which I mean they tended to respect local customs and religions and rule fairly as long as there weren't any revolts (they would still crush those, like any country ever), and those were customs that Cyrus started and his successors mostly kept. There's a reason the Persian Empire lasted basically continuously from approximately 550 BC until the rise of Islam in the 7th century AD (far longer than Rome, although it expanded and contracted quite a bit over that time).
Compare that to the Romans, who are probably the originator of the whole "evil empire" trope: they were huge racial supremacists, pillaged conquered lands and enslaved the occupants left and right, would happily go back on any deal they made if it benefited them...
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
To be fair the Roman Empire lasted until the 1460s with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and Trezibond in 1461 to the Ottoman Turks though the damage had been done in 1204 when the Venetians sacked and looted Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the Roman Empire never recovered from that.
Here's a what if,
What if the Romans had won the Battle of Yarmouk in 636 AD and the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, would the empire have lasted longer?
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
He basically stepped on Evolution and their world started getting temporal ripples that changed things. First it was environmental where apparently higher temperatures were the norm, then animals. Finally, just after the protagonist jumps through the portal to try and undo the damage... a wave hit that replaced humans with something else.
So yea... Time Travel can be messy.
It is called A Sound of Thunder which is based off of a short story by Ray Bradbury that was created in 1952. The most common adaption of the short story is from The Simpson's Treehouse of Horror V that also featured a Shining parody. The temporal ripples in the short story is not as drastic as the movie since the only noticeable changes are that English words have changed, the worst presidential candidate gets elected instead of the moderate candidate that got elected in the previous timeline, and the air quality was slightly worse. The movie was not a Syfy channel movie since it was created in 2005 and was a box office failure while the Sci-Fi Channel was rebranded as Syfy in 2009.
Haven't you watched the The Late Philip J. Fry episode from Futurama? Travelling to the 'past' is possible. You just need to travel so far into the future where the universe resets itself through the Big Crunch and Big Bang.
There was actually two different instances of backwards time travel, Roswell That Ends Well where Fry is his own grandpa and Bender's Big Score. It is possible that the Nebulons erased the memories of Planet Express to protect the time travel. Therefore, backwards time travel is possible in the Futurama episode, but advanced alien races erase any knowledge of people using it. Although, this has to be the best moment of The Late Philip J. Fry episode at 4:10. 1:00 is pretty good as well.