ricardienne | some bizarre 19th century alternate history

Courtesy of Jacob Burkhardt:

We ought to jettison the habit of wishing that past times might have been different from what they were, if only because in our own time and our daily life we often wish for foolish things. But at least in relation to Hellenism it is out of the question to wish things had been otherwise. It would make no sense -- and this is not merely a matter of the historian's quirky curiosity -- to wish that instead of the Macedonian supremacy in Greece, and the conquest of Persia, Greece in its divided and weakened condition should have been overrun by some new barbaric elemental force from Asia or the Scythian North. The most likely consequence of this -- that Rome should have remained deprived of Hellenic culture -- is something impossible to wish for; for it is only the Philhellenism of Rome, the love of a Greece that was still alive, that was responsible for the whole ancient world. Hellenistic Rome was the indispensable basis for the spread of Christianity, and Christianity, apart from its role as a religion, was to be the single bridge destined to unite the old world with its Germanic conquerors.

So we must imagine, I think, that there were 19th century German Hellenists who liked to fantasize about how wonderful it would have been if Germanic-type tribes (who would at that time have been from Asia or Scythia) had conquered and absorbed Greek culture without the intermediary of so much degenerate extra Mediterranean mediation.