[256] Polybius II. 45-53 and 64-69.
[257] Freeman, Federal Government, p. 498.
[258] Most of the communities in Achaia and some of those in Arcadia were rather cantons than cities: Plutarch (Aratus, ch. 9) calls the Achæans μικροπολῖται, citizens of petty towns. Corinth, Argos and Megalopolis were great cities.
[259] The component states were called πόλεις, and this fact alone, in the absence of indications tending the other way, is enough to show that they managed their internal affairs. For further evidence see Freeman, Federal Government, p. 256.
[260] Polybius II. 37.
[261] Polybius (II. 38) emphatically calls the Achæan system a democracy with free and equal speech.
[262] Polybius (V. 1) says that in 218 B.C. the assembly met in accordance with the law at Ægium: but king Philip afterwards persuaded the magistrates to transfer it to Sicyon. The important assembly which made the alliance with Rome in 198 B.C. was also held at Sicyon: Livy XXXII. 19.
[263] For example, in 224 B.C. Antigonus Dôsôn presented himself at an assembly at Ægium in the spring and at another at the same place in the autumn (Polybius II. 54). The meeting in the spring had to elect the officers for the coming year: and the strategus entered on his duties in May, at the rising of the Pleiades (Polybius V. 1).
[264] Livy (XXXII. 22) after recording the proceedings of two days in the special meeting of 198 B.C. says "Only one day was left in which the meeting could act: for the law ordered that on the third day its decision should be made."
[265] Livy (XXXII. 22) says that in 198 B.C. when the magistrates were just going to take a vote, most of the states openly showed which way they would vote (omnibus fere populis ... præ se ferentibus quid decreturi essent): then the citizens of Dymê and Megalopolis and some from the Argolid left the assembly: but (XXXII. 23) the rest of the states of the league, when asked in turn how they voted (ceteri populi Achæorum, cum sententias perrogarentur), decided in a certain way.