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Interesting speculation. If my Aunt had balls...well, never mind. The focus here is mostly on the interaction of the Persian empire with its neighbors, but it is difficult to say that any such conquest - they had, after all, Ionia in their pocket at that point - would have made a great deal of difference to the internal tensions that caused both Achaemenid and Roman Empires to fall, specifically with respect to the problem of succession. Neither empire dealt with that particularly well and for identical reasons. Were we to posit not only a Persian victory on the Peloponnesus but a solid continuity within the Persian government for a century or so we might be on to something. That same objection applies to the more or less contemporary Macedonians as well, and to the Mongols later. A change in the chief of state ruptured the entire enterprise. Succession is, after all, one of the principal advantages of representative government. The turbulence associated with faction therein, however significant it seems to us, the participants, it is nothing compared to a similar process within an unstable monarchy.

There is a great deal more to recommend the Greek civilization than ouzo and pederasty - that representative government thingy, for one - however, the principal reason we regard them as the good guys in all of this is that they wrote the histories available to us: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon. A similar champion of Persian virtue is yet to arise outside of a brief mention in the Old Testament by Jews grateful for the rebuilding of the Temple. The Greeks had a better agent. It happens.

An excellent post!

I have long believed the basic reason for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was its failure to develop an effective way to manage the succession. This led to destructive civil wars every decade or so.

What they had most of the time was an unstable cross between a hereditary monarchy and a winner-take-all free for all between the generals. This cross gave them the worst of both worlds.

Any emperor could be overthrown by a successful general, so he had to always be suspicious of any good officer. Usually killed them before they could kill him, kinda sorta in self defense. Yet both he and the empire had real enemies and desparately needed good generals.

Even the primogeniture monarchies of Europe were an improvement. Successful generals couldn’t aspire to the throne so the kings didn’t have to kill their generals. When the king died, you at least knew who his successor was.

This is a variant on the obvious notion that the ideal system of government is a benevolent absolute monarchy. The problem, assuming you manage to find a competent benevolent absolute monarch, is that he will eventually die, and expecting him to be succeeded by someone equally benevolent and competent is highly unlikely.