I don't think I'm explaining my point clearly, then.
My objection is to the Dauni getting access to a large, stable, reliable pool of revenue. No matter how you slice it, that is bad for us.
It depends. If we're trading with them, their revenue stream will partly be redirected to us in exchange for goods we excel at producing. Moreover, beggaring our neighbors in an attempt to weaken them doesn't necessarily actually work in the long run. Impoverished neighbors can be chronic long-term threats, because they have strong incentives to raid their neighbors, and to hate and envy their richer neighbors. Consider the relationship between the Scots and English from the Middle Ages up through the early 1700s for examples of this.
Moreover, Dauni merchants growing fat and comfortable trading and interacting with Hellenes may have other benefits. They will learn to appreciate Greek culture and manufactured goods more, they will be more secure, and that may make them less inclined to desperate, adventurous measures to preserve their independence.
Remember that almost everything the Dauni have ever done to us was motivated by the fear of
us conquering them. Remove the fear, and they may well turn out to be much better neighbors than we'd thought.
And Venice managed to avoid being enslaved by its neighbors because of the defensible nature of the lagoon, the fact that its navy could prevent landings by hostile armies; not having to worry as much about landward defense allowed it to prosper as a thalassocracy.
Eretria, unfortunately, has no such convenient defenses. For several years at its founding, its defenses were literally the bodies of its citizens.
Fair.
On the other hand, none of our neighbors are
remotely equipped to break down our walls, and history shows examples of mercantile powerhouses building walls that resisted very long sieges. Athens being, again, a good example.
Well, it worked for starters but no. I feel like atleast in part your dislike of following such a strategy or atleast a modified version of it are for personal and RL ethical or moral reasons. Which isn't really a problem but shouldn't be considerd when deciding on what's best for a city state such as Eretria, what's most important is survival and prosperity in my opinion.
I mean.
Athens is a very survivable and prosperous city, to the point where the greatest threat to its well-being is its own overweening imperial overreach. We're not Athens, but on the other hand we have no enemy anywhere near as dangerous as Sparta.
And what is so wrong with that? It's just how life was back then, you can't expect to not get your hand dirty and roll around in the mud if you want to achieve something.
I literally just described a way to do things without murdering, dispossessing, and enslaving thousands... and you now argue that there is no way to do things without murdering, dispossessing, and enslaving thousands.
Really?
Who we have no history with and no reason to be hostile towards, building a proper diplomatic relationship with them should be the goal instead of the Dauni.
Also they are not yet a offensive threat but can easily become one through they may also cause a lot of headaches for Eretria should they decide to be sneaky about it in how to create problems for us, intrigue is still a thing and their King is clearly good at it.
Given that the entire peace is predicated on the idea that the Dauni will do no such thing, we have a solid
casus belli in the event that the Dauni start making trouble like that. Furthermore, since the Dauni ruler will just have broken an oath, there will be much more support for the ensuing war among the Eretrians, and less among the Dauni, than if Eretria simply launches an openly aggressive and predatory campaign to seize Dauni land for its own enrichment.
As to the Samnites, we have no history with them except "those foreigners who conquered our neighbors and who keep founding city-states and taking the coastline for themselves." Given the Samnites' OTL history, I suspect that will be enough.
If we're pursuing a pseudo-Roman strategy of conquering, enslaving, and redistributing land to our own citizens to raise a growing class of soldier-farmers with which to continue the conquests... Well, we can reasonably expect to have the same relationship with the Samnites that the Romans did. You
are aware of them as something other than just a name on a map, right?
Italian Greeks seemingly agree that they do not want eastern greeks such as Athens, Korinth, Sparta, etc to get a foothold in Italy it's why that one agreement between us was made to begin with. It would be easy for a united Italian-Greek front to oppose any advancement city states such as Athens should they try to conquer one of them. True this may be somewhat optimistic but it's a possibility I haven't seen mentioned before yet and worth to atleast think about before making such a statement.
The point remains that the greatest threat to a Greek city-state, Italiote or otherwise, is other Greek city-states. NOT the Dauni or anyone like them.[/quote]
