§ 2.—THE SOURCES OF POLYBIUS’S HISTORY
Polybius always maintains that the study of documents is only one, and not the most important, element in the equipment of an historian. The best is personal experience and personal inquiry.
Of the sources of his own history, then, the first and best Personal knowledge. may be set down as knowledge acquired by being actually present at great events, such as the destruction of Carthage and the sack of Corinth; visits to the Roman army in camp; assisting at actual debates in his own country; personal knowledge of and service under men of the first position in Achaia; personal visits to famous localities; voyages and tours undertaken for the definite object of inspection and inquiry; and, lastly, seeing and questioning the survivors of great battles, or the men who had played a leading part in conspicuous political transactions.
From his earliest youth Polybius had enjoyed some special advantages in these respects. As he himself says, “the events in Greece fell within his own generation, or that immediately preceding his own,—and he therefore could relate what he had seen, or what he had heard from eye-witnesses” (4, [2]). And of the later period he “was not only an eye-witness, but in some cases an actor, and in others the chief actor” (3, [4]). When he was probably under twenty we hear of his being present at an important interview between Philopoemen and Archon;[72] and his election as hipparch in B.C. 169, soon after he reached the legal age, was in consequence of his having thrown himself with vigour into the practical working of the cavalry under Philopoemen. In regard to Roman history and polity, we have Cicero’s testimony that he was bonus auctor in primis,[73] and more particularly in regard to chronology, quo nemo fuit in exquirendis temporibus diligentius.[74] Nor is this praise undeserved, as is shown by his energy in pushing minute and personal inquiries. Thus he learnt the details of the Hannibalic war from some of the survivors of those actually engaged; visited the localities, and made the pass of the Alps used by Hannibal;[75] studied and transcribed the stele or bronze tablet placed by Hannibal on the Lacinian promontory;[76] travelled through Libya, Spain, Gaul, and the seas which washed their shores (perhaps even as far as Britain), in order to give a true account of them.[77] Conversed with Massanissa on the character of the Carthaginians, as well as with many of the Carthaginians themselves.[78] Carefully observed Carthagena.[79] Inspected the records at Rhodes,[80] and the Archives at Rome;[81] and studied and transcribed the treaties preserved there.[82] Visited Sardis,[83] Alexandria,[84] and Locri Epizephyrii.[85] To this, which is by no means an exhaustive account of his travels and inquiries, may be added the fact that his intimacy with the younger Africanus, grandson by adoption and nephew by marriage of the elder Scipio, must have placed at his disposal a considerable mass of information contained in the family archives of the Scipios, as to the Hannibalian war, and especially as to the campaigns in Spain.[86]
Such were some of the means by which Polybius was enabled to obtain accurate and trustworthy information.
It remains to inquire how far Polybius availed himself of Use of previous writers by Polybius. the writings of others. He looks upon the study of books as an important part of an historian’s work, but, as we have seen, not the most important. His practice appears to have been conformable to his theory. The greater part of his information he gained from personal observation and personal inquiry. Nevertheless, some of his history must have been learnt from books, and very little of it could have been entirely independent of them. Still, as far as we have the means of judging from the fragments of his work that have come down to us, his obligations to his predecessors are not as extensive as that of most of those who wrote after him; nor is the number of those to whom he refers great.[87]
Of his preliminary sketch contained in books 1 and 2, The Punic wars. the first book, containing the account of the first Punic war and the Mercenary war, appears to have been derived mainly from the writings of Fabius Pictor (b. circ. B.C. 260), and Philinus of Agrigentum (contemporary and secretary of Hannibal). He complains that they were violent partisans, the one of Rome, the other of Carthage.[88] But by comparing the two, and checking both by documents and inscriptions at Rome, he, no doubt, found sufficient material for his purpose.
The second book contains an account of the origin of the Illyrians and Gauls. war between Rome and Illyricum; of the Gallic or Celtic wars from the earliest times; and a sketch of Achaean history to the end of the Cleomenic war. The first two of these must have been compiled with great labour from various public documents and family records, as well as in part from Pictor. The sketch of Achaia. Achaean history rested mainly, as far as it depends on books, on the Memoirs of Aratus; while he studied only to refute the writings of Phylarchus the panegyrist of Cleomenes. He complains of the partiality of Phylarchus: but in this part of the history it was perhaps inevitable that his own views should have been coloured by the prejudices and prepossessions of a politician, and one who had been closely connected from boyhood with the patriotic Achaean party, led by Philopoemen, which was ever at enmity with all that Cleomenes did his utmost to establish.
For his account of Sicilian affairs he had studied the works Sicilian history. of Timaeus of Tauromenium. Although he accuses him bitterly, and at excessive length,[89] of all the faults of which an historian can be guilty, he yet confesses that he found in his books much that was of assistance to him[90] in regard both to Magna Graecia and Sicily; for which he also consulted the writings of Aristotle, especially it appears the now lost works on Polities (πολιτείαι), and Founding of Cities (κτίσεις). The severity of his criticism of Timaeus is supported by later authors. He was nicknamed ἐπιτίμαιος, in allusion to the petulance of his criticism of others;[91] and Plutarch attacks him for his perversion of truth and his foolish and self-satisfied attempts to rival the best of the ancient writers, and to diminish the credit of the most famous philosophers.[92]
As far as we possess his writings, we find little trace in Greek history. Polybius of a reference to the earliest historians. Herodotus is not mentioned, though there may be some indications of acquaintance with his work;[93] nor the Sicilian Philistus who flourished about B.C. 430. Thucydides is mentioned once, and Xenophon three times. Polybius was engaged in the history of a definite period, and had not much occasion to refer to earlier times; and perhaps the epitomator, in extracting what seemed of value, chose those parts especially where he was the sole or best authority.
For the early history of Macedonia, he seems to have relied Macedonia. mostly on two pupils of Isocrates, Ephorus of Cumae and Theopompus of Chios; though the malignity of the latter deprived his authority of much weight.[94] He also studied the work of Alexander’s friend and victim, Callisthenes; and vehemently assailed his veracity, as others have done. More important to him perhaps were the writings of his own contemporaries, the Rhodians Antisthenes and Zeno; though he detects them in some inaccuracies, which in the case of Zeno he took the trouble to correct: and of Demetrius of Phalerum, whose writings he seems to have greatly admired.
For the contemporary history of Egypt and Syria he seems Egypt and Syria. to have trusted principally to personal inquiry. He expressly (2, [37]) declines entering on the early history of Egypt on the ground of its having been fully done by others (referring, perhaps, to Herodotus, Manetho, and Ptolemy of Megalopolis). For the Seleucid dynasty of Syria he quotes no authorities.
On no subject does Polybius seem to have read so widely Geography. as on geography: doubtless as preparing himself not only for writing, but for being able to travel with the knowledge and intelligence necessary to enable him to observe rightly. He had studied minutely and criticised freely the writings of Dicaearchus, Pytheas, Eudoxus, and Eratosthenes. He was quick to detect fallacies in these writers, and to reject their dogmatising on the possibilities of nature; yet he does not seem to have had in an eminent degree the topographical faculty, or the power of giving a graphic picture of a locality. Modern research has tended rather to strengthen than weaken our belief in the accuracy of his descriptions, as in the case of Carthagena and the site of the battle of Cannae; still it cannot be asserted that he is to be classed high in the list of topographers, whether scientific or picturesque.
He appears to have been fairly well acquainted with the General Literature. poets; but his occasions for quoting them, as far as we have his work, are not very frequent. He seems to have known his Homer, as every Greek was bound to do. He quotes the Cypria of Stasinus, who, according to tradition, was son-in-law of Homer; Hesiod, Simonides of Ceos, Pindar, Euripides, and Epicharmus of Cos. He quotes or refers to Plato, whom he appears chiefly to have studied for his political theories; and certain technical writers, such as Aeneas Tacticus, and Cleoxenos and Democlitus, inventors of a new system of telegraphy, if they wrote it rather than taught it practically.
Even allowing for the loss of so great a part of his work, the list of authors is not a long one: and it suggests the remark, which his style as well as his own professions tend to confirm, that he was not primarily a man of letters, but a man of affairs and action, who loved the stir of political agitation, and unbent his mind by the excitement of travel and the chase. Nothing moves his contempt more than the idea of Timaeus living peaceably for fifty years at Athens, holding aloof from all active life, and poring over the books in the Athenian libraries as a preparation for writing history; which, according to him, can only be worth reading when it springs, not from rummaging Record offices, but from taking a personal share in the political strife of the day; studying military tactics in the camp and field; witnessing battles; questioning the actors in great events; and visiting the sites of battles, the cities and lands which are to be described.
§ 3. THE ACHAEAN LEAGUE[95]
To the student of politics the history of Greece is chiefly interesting as offering examples of numerous small states enjoying complete local autonomy, yet retaining a feeling of a larger nationality founded in a community of blood, language, and religion; a community, that is, in the sense that, fundamentally united in these three particulars, they yet acknowledged variations even in them, which distinguished without entirely separating them. From some points of view the experiment may be regarded as having been successful. From others it was a signal failure. Local jealousies and mutual provocations not only continually set city against city, clan against clan, but perpetually suggested invitations sent by one city, or even one party in a city, to foreign potentates or peoples to interfere in their behalf against another city or party, which they hated or feared, but were too weak to resist. Thus we find the Persians, Macedonians, Syrians, and Romans successively induced to interfere in Greek politics with the assurance that there were always some states, or some party in each state, who would welcome them. From time to time men of larger views had conceived the idea of creating a united Empire of Hellas, which might present an unbroken front to the foreigner. From time to time philosophers had preached the impossibility of combining complete local independence with the idea of a strong and vigorous nationality. But the true solution of the problem had never been successfully hit upon: and after various abortive attempts at combination, Greece was left, a helpless collection of disjointed fragments, to fall under the intrigues of Macedonia and Rome.
The Achaean league was not the first attempt at such a formation; though it was the first that ever arrived at anything like a complete scheme of federalism (unless the Aetolian preceded it); and was in many respects a fresh departure in Hellenic policy, and the first experiment in federation which seemed to contain the elements of success. From the earliest times certain Greek states had combined more or less closely, or loosely, for certain specific purposes. Such were the various Amphictyonies, and especially the Amphictyonic league of Thermopylae and Delphi. The object of these was primarily religious: the worship of a particular deity, the care of a particular temple; the first condition of membership being therefore community of blood. But though this was the origin of their being, there were elements in their constitution which might have developed into some form of federalism, had it not been for the centrifugal forces that always tended to keep Greek states apart. Thus we can conceive the idea of the Pylagorae from the various states gradually giving rise to the notion of a central parliament of elected representatives; and the sphere of its activity gradually extending to matters purely political, beginning with those which were on the borderland of religion and politics. And, indeed, the action of the great Amphictyonic league at times seemed to be approaching this.[96]
But the forces tending to decentralisation were always the stronger: and though the league continued to exist for many centuries, it became less and less political, and less and less influential in Greece. So too with other combinations in Greece. The community (τὸ κοινὸν) of the Ionians, beginning with a common meeting for worship at the Panionium, on one memorable occasion at least seemed for a brief space to promise to develop into a federation for mutual succour and defence. In the Ionian revolt in B.C. 500, the deputies (πρόβουλοι) of the Ionian states met and determined to combine against the enemy; they even went so far as to appoint a common general or admiral. But the instinct of separation was too strong; at the first touch of difficulty and hardship the union was resolved into its elements.[97]
The constitution of the Boeotian league was somewhat more regular and permanent. The Boeotarchs appear to have met at regular intervals, and now and again to have succeeded in mustering a national levy. There were also four regularly constituted “Senates” to control them, though we know nothing of their constitution.[98] But the league had come to nothing; partly from the resistance of the towns to the overweening pretensions of Thebes, and later from the severity of the treatment experienced by it at the hands of Alexander and his successors.
Thessaly, again, was a loose confederacy of towns or cantons, in which certain great families, such as the Aleuadae and Scopadae, held the direction of their local affairs; or some tyrannus, as Alexander of Pherae, obtained sovereign powers. Still, for certain purposes, a connexion was acknowledged, and a Tagus of Thessaly was appointed, with the power of summoning a general levy of men. For a short time prior to the Roman conquest these officers appear to have gained additional importance; but Thessaly never was united enough to be of importance, in spite of its famous cavalry, even among Greek nations, far less to be capable of presenting a firm front to the foreigner.
One other early attempt at forming something like a Panhellenic union ought to be noticed. When the Persian invasion of B.C. 480 was threatening, deputies (πρόβουλοι) met at the Isthmus, sat there in council for some months, and endeavoured to unite Greece against the foreigner.[99] But the one expedition which was sent solely by their instigation proved a failure.[100] And when the danger was over, principally by the combined exertion of Athens and Sparta, this council seems to have died a natural death. Still for a time it acted as a supreme parliament of Greece, and assumed the power to punish with fine or death those Greeks who had medised.[101]
Besides these rudimentary leagues, which might, but did not, issue in some form of Panhellenic government, there were periods in Greek history in which the Hegemone of one state did something towards presenting the appearance of union. Thus Polycrates of Samos seemed at one time to be likely to succeed in forming a great Ionian Empire. And in continental Greece, before the Persian wars, we find Sparta occupying the position of an acknowledged court of reference in international questions,[102]—a position in which she probably had been preceded by Argos. And after those wars, by means of the confederacy of Delos, formed at first for one specific purpose—that of keeping the Aegean free of the Persians—Athens gradually rose to the position of an imperial city, claiming active control over the external politics of a considerable portion of Greece and nearly all the islands (B.C. 478-404). But this proved after all but a passing episode in Greek history. Athens perhaps misused her power; and Sparta took up the task with great professions, but in a spirit even less acceptable to the Greek world than that of Athens; and by the peace of Antalcidas (B.C. 387) the issue of the hundred years’ struggle with Persia left one of the fairest portions of Hellas permanently separated from the main body. Asiatic Greece never became Hellenic again. The fall of the Persian empire before the invasion of Alexander for a while reunited it to a semi-Greek power; but Alexander’s death left it a prey to warring tyrants. It lost its prosperity and its commerce; and whatever else it became, it was never independent, or really Hellenic again.
For a few years more Sparta and then Thebes assumed to be head of Greece, but the Macedonian supremacy secured at Chaeronea (B.C. 338), still more fully after the abortive Lamian war (B.C. 323), left Greece only a nominal freedom, again and again assured to it by various Macedonian monarchs, but really held only on sufferance. The country seemed to settle down without farther struggle into political insignificance. The games and festivals went on, and there was still some high talk of Hellenic glories. But one after another of the towns submitted to receive Macedonian garrisons and governors; and Athens, once the brilliant leader in national aspirations, practically abandoned politics, and was content to enjoy a reputation partly founded on her past, and partly on the fame of the philosophers who still taught in her gardens and porches, and attracted young men from all parts of the world to listen to their discourses, and to sharpen their wits by the acute if not very useful discussions which they promoted.[103] Sparta, far from retaining her old ascendency, had been losing with it her ancient constitution, which had been the foundation of her glory, as well perhaps as in some respects the source of her weakness; and for good or evil had ceased to count for much in Hellenic politics.
In the midst of this general collapse two portions of the Hellenic race gradually formed or recovered some sort of united government, which enabled them to play a conspicuous part in the later history of Greece, and which was essentially different from any of the combinations of earlier times of which I have been speaking. These were the Aetolians and Achaeans.
With regard to the former our information is exceedingly Aetolian league. scanty. They were said to have been an emigration from Elis originally;[104] but they were little known to the rest of Greece. Strange stories were told of them, of their savage mode of life, their scarcely intelligible language, their feeding on raw flesh, and their fierceness as soldiers. They were said to live in open villages, widely removed from each other, and without effective means of combination for mutual protection. Their piracies, which were chiefly directed to the coasts of Messenia, caused the Messenians to seize the opportunity of Demosthenes being in their neighbourhood in B.C. 426, with a considerable Athenian army, to persuade him to invade the Aetolians, who were always on the look-out to attack Naupactus, a town which the Athenians had held since B.C. 455,[105] and which was naturally an object of envy to them as commanding the entrance to the Corinthian gulf. But when Demosthenes attempted the invasion, he found to his cost that the Aetolians knew how to combine, and he had to retire beaten with severe loss.[106] The separate tribes in Aetolia seem soon afterwards to have had, if they had not already, some form of central government; for we find them negotiating with Agesilaus in B.C. 390, with the same object of obtaining Naupactus,[107] when the Athenians had lost it, and it had fallen into the hands of the Locrians.[108] The Aetolians appear to have gradually increased in importance: for we find Philip making terms with them and giving them the coveted Naupactus in B.C. 341, which had at some time previous come into the possession of the Achaeans.[109] But their most conspicuous achievement, which caused them to take a position of importance in Greece, was their brilliant defeat of the invading Gauls at Delphi in B.C. 279.[110] By this time their federal constitution must in some shape have been formed. The people elected a Strategus in a general meeting, usually held at Thermus, at the autumn equinox, to which apparently all Aetolians were at liberty to come, and at which questions of peace and war and external politics generally were brought forward; though meanwhile the Strategus appears to have had the right of declaring and carrying on war as he chose. There was also a hipparch and a secretary (21, [22]); and a senate called Apocleti (20, [1]); and a body called Synedri (C. I. G. 2350), which seem to have been judicial, and another called Nomographi (13, [1], C. I. G. 3046), who were apparently an occasional board for legislation. They produced some writers, but their works are lost. Accordingly, as Professor Mahaffy observes, “we know them entirely from their enemies.” Still the acknowledged principle on which they acted, ἄγειν λάφυρον ἀπὸ λαφύρου[111]—that is, that where spoils were going, whether from friend or foe, they were justified in taking a part, speaks for itself, and is enough to stamp them as at least dangerous and unpleasant neighbours.
The Achaeans have a different and more interesting Achaean league. history.
The original Achaean league consisted of a federation of twelve cities and their respective territory (μέρος): Pellene, Aegira, Aegae, Bura, Helice, Aegium, Rhypes, Patrae, Pharae, Olenus, Dyme, Tritaea.[112] This league was of great antiquity, but we know nothing of its history, or how it differed from other leagues, such as I have already mentioned, in adding political to religious unity. In B.C. 454 it submitted to Athens; but was restored to its original position in the same year on the signing of the thirty years’ truce between Sparta and Athens;[113] and though the Athenians demanded that their authority over it should be restored to them in B.C. 425, when they had caught the Spartan army at Sphacteria, no change appears to have been made.[114] Thucydides certainly seems to speak of it, not as entirely free, but as in some special manner subject to the supremacy of Sparta. Polybius, however, claims for them, at an early period, a peculiar and honourable place in Greek politics, as being distinguished for probity and honour. Thus they were chosen as arbitrators in the intestine of Magna Graecia (about B.C. 400-390); and again, after the battle of Leuctra (B.C. 371) to mediate between Sparta and Thebes.[115] They must therefore, between B.C. 425-390, have obtained a virtual independence. They shared, however, in the universal decline of Hellenic activity during the Macedonian period (B.C. 359 to about B.C. 285), and Polybius complains that they were systematically depressed by the intrigues of Sparta and Macedonia; both which powers took care to prevent any Achaean of promising ability from attaining influence in the Peloponnese.[116] The same influence was exerted to estrange the Achaean cities from each other. They were garrisoned by Macedonian troops, or fell under the power of tyrants; and to all appearance the league had fared as other such combinations had fared before, and had been resolved into its original elements.
But the tradition of the old union did not die out entirely. Eight of the old cities still existed in a state of more or less vigour. Revival of the league, B.C. 284-280. Olenus and Helice had long ago disappeared by encroachments of the sea (before B.C. 371), and their places had not been filled up by others. Two other towns, Rhypes and Aegae, had from various causes ceased to be inhabited, and their places had been taken in the league (before the dissolution) by Leontium and Caryneia. There were therefore ten cities which had once known the advantages and disadvantages of some sort of federal union; as well as the misfortunes which attached to disunion, aggravated by constant interference from without.
The first step in an attempt to resuscitate the league was taken in the 124th Olympiad (B.C. 284-280). Macedonia was at the time weakened by the troubles of a disputed succession: Pyrrhus was absorbed in his futile Italian expedition: B.C. 284. First union of Dyme, Patrae, Tritaea, Pharae. a change in the sovereign of Egypt opened a way to a possible change of policy at Alexandria: and the death of Lysimachus gave the monarchs something else to do than to trouble themselves about the Peloponnese. At this period four of the Achaean towns, Dyme, Patrae, Tritaea, and Pharae, formed a league for mutual help. Adherence of Aegium, B.C. 279. This proving, after a trial of five years, to have some stability, it was joined by Aegium, from which the Macedonian garrison was expelled. At intervals, of which we are not informed, this was again joined by Bura and Caryneia. B.C. 279-255. These seven cities continued to constitute the entire league for twenty-five years; the federal magistrates consisting of two Strategi, elected by each city in turns, and a secretary. As to the doings of the league during this period we are entirely in the dark. Margos of Caryneia first sole Strategus, B.C. 255. The next step that we hear of is the abolition of the dual presidency and the election of Margos of Caryneia as sole Strategus. We are not told the reasons of the change; but it is clear that a divided command might often give room for delay, when delay was fatal; and for the conflict of local interests, where the interests of the community should be the paramount consideration. At any rate the change was made: and Margos, who had been a loyal servant of the league, was the first sole Strategus. His immediate successors we do not know. The next fact in the history of the league was the adherence of Sicyon, a powerful town and the first of any, not in the number of the old Achaean federation, to join. This therefore was a great step in the direction of extending the federation over the Peloponnese; and it was the work of the man destined to do much in moulding the league into the shape in which it attained its greatest effectiveness, Aratus of Sicyon. He found it weak; its cities poor and insignificant; with no aid from rich soil or good harbourage to increase its wealth or property;[117] he left it, not indeed free from serious dangers and difficulties,—in part the result of his own policy in calling in the aid of the Macedonians, in part created by the persistent hostility of Aetolia and Sparta,—but yet possessed of great vitality, and fast becoming the most powerful and influential of all the Greek governments; although at no time can it be spoken of as Panhellenic without very considerable exaggeration. Aratus had been brought up in exile at Argos, after the murder of his father Cleinias (B.C. 271); and, when twenty years of age, by a gallant and romantic adventure, had driven out the tyrant Nicocles from Sicyon (B.C. 251). He became the chief magistrate of his native town, which he induced to join the Achaean league, thus causing, as I have said, the league to take its first step towards embracing all the Peloponnese. It seems that for five years Aratus remained chief magistrate of Sicyon, but a private citizen of the league. In B.C. 245 (though of the exact year we have no positive information), he appears to have been first elected Strategus of the league. But it was not until his second year of office, B.C. 243-242, that he began putting in practice the policy which he proposed to himself,—the expulsion of the Macedonian garrisons and the despots from the cities of the Peloponnese, with the view of their joining the league. He began with the Acrocorinthus. Corinth, freed from the foreign garrison, joined the league, and was followed soon after by Megara[118] (B.C. 240). From this time Aratus was Strategus of the league in alternate years to the time of his death, the federal law not allowing two consecutive years of office.[119]
The death of Antigonus Gonatas (B.C. 239) led to a new departure. Hitherto the Aetolians had been in league with the Macedonians to vex and harry the Achaeans. The two leagues now made peace, and the Aetolians aided the Achaeans in their resistance to Gonatas’s successor, Demetrius (B.C. 239-229). Still the despots in many of the Peloponnesian towns held out, trusting to the support of Demetrius. When he died (B.C. 229) there was a general movement among them to abdicate and join their cities to the league. Lydiades of Megalopolis had done so during Demetrius’s lifetime; and now Aristomachus of Argos, Xeno of Hermione, and Cleonymus of Phlius did the same. The rapid extension of the Achaean league, however, could not fail to excite the jealousy of the Aetolians, to whose league belonged certain Arcadian cities such as Mantinea, Tegea, and Orchomenus. These they imagined to be threatened by the policy of Aratus, which was apt to proceed on the line that even a forcible attachment of a Peloponnesian town to the league was in reality a liberation of its people from a constraining power. The Spartan jealousy was aroused by the same fear. And then, as Polybius puts it, the Aetolians connived at the extension of Spartan power, even at the expense of cities in league with themselves, in order to strengthen Cleomenes in his attitude of opposition to the Achaeans.[120] Aratus, however, resolved to wait for some definite act of hostility before moving. This was supplied by Cleomenes building a fort (the Athenaeum) at Belbina, in the territory of Megalopolis, a league city. Cleomenic war, B.C. 227-221. Upon this the league necessarily proclaimed war with Sparta. Thus does Polybius, a warm friend of the league, state the case in its behalf. The league, he argues, had been growing by the voluntary adherence of independent towns: it had shown no sign of an intention to attack Laconian territory, or towns in league with Aetolia: while Cleomenes had committed an act of wanton aggression and provocation by building a hostile fort in its territory. But what the other side had to say may be gathered from Plutarch’s life of Cleomenes, founded principally on the work of Phylarchus the panegyrist of Cleomenes.[121] Here the case is put very differently. Aratus, according to him, had made up his mind that a union of the Peloponnesus was the one thing necessary for the safety of the league. In a great measure he had been already successful; but the parts which still stood aloof were Elis, Laconia, and the cities of Arcadia which were under the influence of Sparta.[122] He therefore harassed these last by every means in his power; and the erection or fortification of the Athenaeum at Belbina by Cleomenes was in truth only a measure of necessary defence. Aratus, indeed, held that some of these Arcadian cities had been unfairly seized by Cleomenes, with the connivance of the Aetolians;[123] but to this Cleomenes might reply that, if the league claimed the right of extending its connexion with the assent, often extorted, of the various cities annexed, the same right could not justly be denied to himself. B.C. 226-221.A series of military operations took place during the next five years, in which Cleomenes nearly always got the better of Aratus; who, able and courageous in plots and surprises, was timid and ineffective in the field. The one important blow struck by Aratus, that of seizing Mantinea, was afterwards nullified by a counter-occupation of it by the Lacedaemonians; and in spite of troubles at home, caused by his great scheme of reform, Cleomenes was by B.C. 224 in so superior a position that he could with dignity propose terms to the league. He asked to be elected Strategus, therefore.[124] At first sight this seemed a means of effecting the desired union of the Peloponnese; and as such the Achaeans were inclined to accept the proposal. Aratus, however, exerted all his influence to defeat the measure: and, in spite of all his failures, his services to the league enabled him to convince his countrymen that they should reject the offer; and he was himself elected Strategus for the twelfth time in the spring of B.C. 223. Aratus has been loudly condemned for allowing a selfish jealousy to override his care for the true interests of his country, in thus refusing a prospect of a united Achaia, in which some one besides himself should be the leading man.[125] But I think there is something to be said on the other side. What Aratus had been working for with a passionate eagerness was a union of free democratic states. Cleomenes, in spite of his liberal reforms at home, was a Spartan to the back bone. Aratus would have no manner of doubt that a league, with Sparta supreme in it, would inevitably become a Spartan kingdom. The forces of Sparta would be used to crush dissenting cities; and soon to put down the free institution which would always be disliked and feared by the Spartan government. Security from Macedonian influence, if it were really obtained,—and that was far from certain,—would be dearly purchased at the price of submission to Spartan tyranny, which would be more galling and oppressive in proportion as it was nearer and more unremitting. With these views Aratus began to turn his eyes to the Macedonian court, as the only possible means of resisting the encroaching policy of Cleomenes. The character of Antigonus Doson, who was then administering Macedonia, gave some encouragement to hope for honest and honourable conduct on his part; and after some hesitation Aratus took the final step of asking for his aid.[126] I do not expect to carry the assent of many readers when I express the opinion that he was right; and that the Greek policy towards Macedonia had been from the first a grievous error,—fostered originally by the patriotic eloquence of Demosthenes, and continued ever since by that ineradicable sentiment for local autonomy which makes Greek history so interesting, but inevitably tended to the political annihilation of Greece. Had some modus vivendi been found with the series of very able sovereigns who ruled Macedonia, a strong Greek nation might have been the result, with a central government able to hold its own even in the face of the great “cloud in the West,” which was surely overshadowing Greek freedom. But this was not to be. The taste for local freedom was too strong; and showed itself by constant appeals to an outside power against neighbours, which yet the very men who appealed to it would not recognise or obey. The Greeks had to learn that nations cannot, any more than individuals, eat their cake and have it too. Local autonomy, and the complete liberty of every state to war with its neighbours as it chooses, and of every one to speak and act as he pleases, have their charms; but they are not compatible with a united resistance to a great centralised and law-abiding power. And all the eloquence of all the Greek orators rolled into one could not make up for the lack of unity, or enable the distracted Greeks to raise an army which might stand before a volley of Roman pila or a charge of Roman legionaries.
The help asked of Antigonus Doson was given with fatal readiness; but it had to be purchased by the admission of a Macedonian garrison into the Acrocorinthus, one of those “fetters of Greece,” the recovery of which had been among Aratus’s earliest and most glorious triumphs. The battle of Sellasia (B.C. 221) settled the question of Spartan influence. Cleomenes fled to Alexandria and never returned. Sparta was not enslaved by Antigonus; who on the contrary professed to restore her ancient constitution,—probably meaning that the Ephoralty destroyed by Cleomenes was to be reconstituted, and the exiles banished by him recalled. Practically she was left a prey to a series of unscrupulous tyrants who one after the other managed to obtain absolute power, Lycurgus (B.C. 220-210), Machanidas, B.C. 210-207; Nabis, B.C. 207-192; who, though differing in their home administrations, all agreed in using the enmity of the Aetolians in order to harass and oppress the Achaeans in every possible way.
Aratus died in B.C. 213. B.C. 213. Death of Aratus. The last seven years of his life were embittered by much ill success in his struggles with the Aetolians; and by seeing Philip V., of whose presence in the Peloponnese he was the main cause, after rendering some brilliant services to the league, both in the Peloponnese and the invasion of Aetolia, develop some of the worst vices of the tyrant; and he believed himself, whether rightly or wrongly, to be poisoned by Philip’s order: “This is the reward,” he said to an attendant when he felt himself dying, “of my friendship for Philip.”[127]
The history of the league after his death followed the same course for some years. The war with the Aetolians went on, sometimes slackly, sometimes vigorously, as Philip V. was or was not diverted by contests with his barbarian neighbours, or by schemes for joining the Carthaginian assaults upon the Roman power.
The next phase of vigorous action on the part of the league is that which corresponds with the career of Philopoemen, B.C. 208-183, Philopoemen. who had already shown his energy and skill at the battle of Sellasia. He was elected Hipparch in B.C. 210, and Strategus in B.C. 209. In his first office he did much to reorganise the Achaean cavalry and restore them to some discipline,[128] and he extended this as Strategus to the whole army.[129] His life’s work, however, was the defeating and either killing or confining to their frontier the tyrants of Sparta. But while he was absent from the country after B.C. 200 a new element appeared in the Peloponnese. In 197 the battle of Cynoscephalae put an end for ever to Macedonian influence, and Flamininus proclaimed the liberty of all Greece in B.C. 195 at the Nemean festival. B.C. 195-194. But Nabis was not deposed; he was secured in his power by a treaty with Rome; and when Philopoemen returned from Crete (B.C. 193), he found a fresh war on the point of breaking out owing to intrigues between that tyrant and the Aetolians. B.C. 193. They suggested, and he eagerly undertook to make, an attempt to recover the maritime towns of which he had been deprived by the Roman settlement.[130]193-192.Nabis at once attacked Gythium: and seemed on the point of taking it and the whole of the coast towns, which would thus have been lost to the league. Philopoemen, now again Strategus (B.C. 192), failed to relieve Gythium; but by a skilful piece of generalship inflicted so severe a defeat on Nabis, as he was returning to Sparta, that he did not venture on further movements beyond Laconia; and shortly afterwards was assassinated by some Aetolians whom he had summoned to his aid.
But the comparative peace in the Peloponnese was again broken in B.C. 189 189-187.by the Spartans seizing a maritime town called Las; the object being to relieve themselves of the restraint which shut them from the sea, and the possible attacks of the exiles who had been banished by Nabis, and who were always watching an opportunity to effect their return. Philopoemen (Strategus both 189 and 188 B.C.) led an army to the Laconian frontier in the spring of B.C. 188, and after the execution of eighty Spartans, who had been surrendered on account of the seizure of Las, and of the murder of thirty citizens who were supposed to have Achaean proclivities—Sparta submitted to his demand to raze the fortifications, dismiss the mercenaries, send away the new citizens enrolled by the tyrants, and abolish the Lycurgean laws, accepting the Achaean institutions instead. This was afterwards supplemented by a demand for the restoration of the exiles banished by the tyrants. Such of the new citizens (three thousand) as did not leave the country by the day named were seized and sold as slaves.[131]
Sparta was now part of the Achaean league, which at this B.C. 188. time reached its highest point of power; and its alliance was solicited by the most powerful princes of the east. 188-183.It is this period which Polybius seems to have in mind in his description of the league at its best, as embracing the whole of the Peloponnese.[132]Lycortas Strategus, B.C. 184-182.was in this third period of the existence of the renewed league that his father Lycortas came to the front, and he himself at an early age began taking part in politics.
But the terms imposed on Sparta were essentially violent and unjust, and, as it turned out, impolitic. Cowed into submission, she proved a thorn in the side of the league. The exiles continually appealed to Rome; and after Philopoemen’s death (B.C. 183) the affairs of the league began more and more to come before the Roman Senate. As usual, traitors were at hand ready to sell their country for the sake of the triumph of their party; and Callicrates, B.C. 179.sent to Rome to plead the cause of the league,[133] employed the opportunity to support himself and his party by advising the Senate to give support to “the Romanisers” in every state. This Polybius regards as the beginning of the decline of the league. And the party of moderation, to which he and his father Lycortas belonged, and which wished to assert the dignity and legal rights of their country while offering no provocation to the Romans, were eventually included under the sweeping decree which caused them, to the number of a thousand, to be deported to Italy. We have already seen, in tracing the life of Polybius, how the poor remnants of these exiles returned in B.C. 151, embittered against Rome, and having learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. And how the old quarrels were renewed, until an armed interference of Rome was brought upon them; and how the victory of Mummius at Corinth (B.C. 146), and the consequent settlement of the commissioners, finally dissolved the league into separate cantons, nominally autonomous, but really entirely subject to Rome.[134]
The constitution of the league presents many points of interest to the student of politics, and has been elaborately discussed by more than one English scholar. I shall content myself here with pointing out some of the main features as they are mentioned by Polybius.[135]
The league was a federation of free towns, all retaining full local autonomy of some form or other of democracy, which for certain purposes were under federal laws and federal magistrates, elected in a federal assembly which all citizens of the league towns might if they chose attend. All towns of the league also used the same standards in coinage and weights and measures (2, [37]). The assembly of the league (σύνοδος) met for election of the chief magistrate in May of each year, at first always at Aegium, but later at the other towns of the league in turn (29, [23]); and a second time in the autumn.[136] And besides these annual meetings, the Strategus, acting with his council of magistrates, could summon a meeting at any time for three days (e.g. at Sicyon, 23, [17]); and on one occasion we find the assembly delegating its powers to the armed levy of league troops, who for the nonce were to act as an assembly (4, [7]). Side by side with this general assembly was a council (βουλή), the functions and powers of which we cannot clearly ascertain. It seems to have acted as representing the general assembly in foreign affairs (4, [26]; 22, [12]); and, being a working committee of the whole assembly, it sometimes happened that when an assembly was summoned on some subject which did not rouse popular interest, it practically was the assembly (29, [24]). Its numbers have been assumed to be one hundred and twenty, from the fact that Eumenes offered them a present of one hundred and twenty talents, the interest of which was to pay their expenses. But this, after all, is not a certain deduction (22, [10]).
The officers of the league were: First, a President or Strategus who kept the seal of the league (4, [7]), ordered the levy of federal troops, and commanded it in the field. He also summoned the assemblies, and brought the business to be done before them, which was in the form of a proposal to be accepted or rejected, not amended. He was not chairman of the assembly, but like an English minister or a Roman consul brought on the proposals. He was assisted by a kind of cabinet of ten magistrates from the several towns, who were called Demiurgi (δημιουργοὶ 23, [5]).[137] This was their technical name: but Polybius also speaks of them under the more general appellation of οἱ ἄρχοντες (5, [1]), οἱ συνάρχοντες (23, [16]), αἱ ἀρχαὶ (22, [13]), αἱ συναρχίαι (27, [2]). Whether the number ten had reference to the ten old towns of the league or not, it was not increased with the number of the towns; and, though we are not informed how they were elected, it seems reasonable to suppose that they were freely selected without reference to the towns from which they came, as the Strategus himself was. There was also a vice-president, or hypo-strategus, whose position was, I think, wholly military. He did not rule in absence of the Strategus, or succeed him in case of death, that being reserved for the Strategus of the previous year; but he took a certain command in war next the Strategus (5, [94]; 4, [59]). Besides these we hear of a Hipparch to command the league cavalry (5, [95]; 7, 10, [22]), an office which seems to have been regarded as stepping-stone to that of Strategus. This proved a bad arrangement, as its holder was tempted to seek popularity by winking at derelictions of duty among the cavalry who were voters.[138] There was also a Navarch to command the regular squadron of federal ships (5, [94]), who does not seem to have been so important a person. There are also mentioned certain judges (δίκασται) to administer the federal law. We hear of them, however, performing duties closely bordering on politics; for they decided whether certain honorary inscriptions, statues, or other marks of respect to king Eumenes should be allowed to remain in the Achaean cities (28, [7]).
The Strategus, on the order of the assembly, raised the federal army (4, [7]). The number of men raised differed according to circumstances. A fairly full levy seems to have been five thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry (4, [15]). But the league also used mercenaries to a great extent. And we hear of one army which was to consist of eight thousand mercenary infantry, with five hundred mercenary cavalry; and in this case the Achaean levy was only to be three thousand infantry, with three hundred cavalry (5, [91]).
The pay of the mercenaries and other league expenses were provided for by an εἰσφορά or contribution from all the states (5, [31], [91]). The contributing towns appear to have been able to recover their payments as an indemnification for damage which the federal forces had failed to avert (4, [60]).
The regular federal squadron of ships for guarding the sea-coasts appears to have consisted of ten triremes (2, [9]; δεκαναία μακρῶν πλοίων 22, [10]).
Such was the organisation of the Federal Government. It was in form purely democratic, all members of thirty years old being eligible for office, as well as possessing a vote in the assemblies. But a mass assembly where the members are widely scattered inevitably becomes oligarchic. Only the well-to-do and the energetic will be able or will care to come a long journey to attend. And as the votes in the assembly were given by towns, it must often have happened that the votes of many towns were decided by a very small number of their citizens who were there. No doubt, in times of great excitement, the attendance would be large and the vote a popular one. But the general policy of the league must have been directed by a small number of energetic men, who made politics their profession and could afford to do so.