A quick plug for a podcast organised by Richard Flower at Exeter, in which I waffle about ancient and modern historiography for half an hour or so. A slightly painful reminder that when I produce my own podcasts, I tend to edit out the really long pauses and so manage to sound far more articulate, and rather less like a baritone Kenneth Williams, than I actually am in real life.
It gets wackier at about 23’45” – and, yes, you can skip ahead very easily – when Richard drops the sensible questions and asks what in antiquity I would like to experience (boring answer: drop in to visit Thucydides, to find out if he did actually finish his work, or if his daughter did, and even see if I can grab a copy), and what I would want to change about the ancient world (setting aside the possibility of just making everyone nicer and less exploitative, then I’d like to save Plataea. Not sure why, as it wouldn’t in my opinion have made the slightest difference to the course of the war, but I have always felt terribly sorry for the Plataeans…). And a final question: would we have wanted the Athenians to win the Peloponnesian War?
Sphinx 
Would it really have made much of a difference if Athens had won the Peloponnesian War?
Within a century Greece was pretty much subjugated to Macedon. The tide was turning against the city states. KIngs and large political units were the coming wave, and Rome would be the big player after the Hellenistic kingdoms.
Well, at this point I am to a fair degree paraphrasing Ian Morris, in a series of lectures he gave at Bristol and then never wrote up for the publication: in brief, Athenian victory – and especially the expansion of Athenian power beyond the Aegean – raises the possibilities of a establishing the empire on a firmer basis, systematising the collection of tribute, securing supply lines and continuing expansion. Macedon triumphs in part because Greece is hopelessly disunited and weakened by constant small-scale feuding; not clear that they would have got very far against an Athens that commanded substantial empire, had probably anticipated Thebes in getting Messenians to revolt and thus undermined Spartan system, put the other cities in their place and reached an accommodation with Persia.
In other words, Athens *becomes* a large political unit; not clear that, so long as victories keep coming, democracy is necessarily weaker than e.g. Roman republican system.
I usually avoid What-ifs like the plague, because so many of the assumptions are impossible to prove or disprove, but how likely might it have been that the fractious nature of Athenian politics would have allowed an Athenian empire to flourish for long enough for it to impose itself upon the rest of the Greek city states without it disintegrating into factional strife? Wouldn’t the other cities have fought to prevent Athenian hegemony anyway?
Furthermore, what about Persia? How likely is it that the Achaemenids would have tolerated seeing one city rise to the level where it might challenge Persian domination of Ionia? I could envisage huge amounts of Persian gold being channelled into an anti-Athenian League of Greek Cities.
All speculation, of course, but possibly nice for a series of alternate universe historical novels.