This they could do, up to a certain point, the more easily because each ethnos had lacked a city-state of outstanding political and economic power. Equality of city-states did not conflict flagrantly with realities in either Achæa or Ætolia. Hence the principle that each city-state, irrespective of strength in the Aristotelian sense, should have a single vote in the federal assembly, and an equal voice in the choosing of the federal cabinet (demiurgi; apocleti), and the federal executive (strategus, hipparch, secretary of state, treasurer or treasurers) appeared equitable. In Bœotia and Hellas in the earlier time the league had been created by the superior strength of Thebes and Macedon respectively; and these capital states had taken care that the initial leadership should be preserved by the institutions of the leagues. The Achæan and the Ætolian leagues, on the other hand, were partly, no doubt, the result of a compromise between the constituent units, but mainly the consequence of foreign pressure. The federal movement was not based primarily upon the activity of any one city, but upon a need generally felt. Hence the capital of the Achæan league was Ægium, and the capital of the Ætolian league Thermon—neutral meeting-places, like Washington, Ottawa, and Canberra. That was something new in the annals of the Greek leagues.
The creative force of foreign policy is manifest in still other characteristics of these Hellenistic leagues. It was almost inevitable that in those days of executive efficiency states should be monarchically organized. Hence, whereas there had been eleven Bœotarchs in the Bœotian league and seven generals in early third-century Acarnania, a single general stood at the head of the Ætolians from the founding of their league and at the head of the Achæans after 255 B.C. That gave a unity of action otherwise impossible, the lack of which, though negligible perhaps in domestic affairs, had been found disadvantageous in foreign affairs. It was a necessary concession to a monarchical age, one which, however, had been made reluctantly and with an important reservation which took from the serum its malignancy: the generalship could be held by the same individual only every alternate year. He might be the uncrowned king of the league one year; the next he must be a private citizen.
In still another respect distrust of monarchy and aversion to the "tyranny" on which Antigonus Gonatas had based his Greek empire, are betrayed in the institutions of the Achæans. The rule of a city by a tyrant and membership in the league were regarded as incompatible with one another. This was, doubtless, a requirement of the federal laws, which, consisting of treaties negotiated between the original cities in 275 B.C. and at the admission of new cities thereafter, of oaths by which these treaties were sanctioned, and of general enactments made from time to time by special legislative process, bound the citizens of the individual cities no less than did the local laws which they themselves passed. Otherwise the city-states were at liberty to adopt whatever form of government they chose. The league championed neither democracy nor oligarchy, though its working favored the well-to-do classes. At most it compelled a certain uniformity in local administration, its general attitude being admirably symbolized by its monetary arrangements, wherein the standard was determined by the federal authority while the coins were issued by the constituent cities.[133]
The very constitutions of the Achæan and the Ætolian leagues disclose the importance of the part which the Greek policy of Antigonus Gonatas played in the creation of these dangerous adversaries of himself and his country. It is true that his son, Demetrius II, fought them to a standstill, wrested from Ætolia a large part of its acquisitions, and might have dissolved both leagues by force, had not Epirus deserted him and gone over to their side; had not the Illyrian pirates whom he let loose on this new enemy provoked the Romans to cross the Adriatic; and had not the Dardanians moved down on Macedon and defeated and killed him in battle. Such "had nots" belonged, however, to the constant possibilities, and complications of this sort were ever occurring in the struggle of Macedon for the hegemony of Greece. On this occasion their issue was so disastrous for Macedon that the hour of the two leagues seemed come.
But what should have been their triumph proved to be their destruction. For the frustration of their hopes Polybius,[134] who voices the opinion of Aratus, held the Ætolians responsible, and it is likely that he was in the main right. For just at this critical moment, when the Achæans were face to face with the most serious problem which their federal system presented, namely, the reluctance of states, like Sparta and Athens, which were markedly stronger than the common run of the Achæan cities, to accept mere equality with them, the Ætolians not only left them in the lurch and made an advantageous peace for themselves with Antigonus Doson, the new king of Macedon, but, by ceding to Sparta their Arcadian cities (Tegea, Mantinea, Orchomenus, and Caphiæ), they made it possible for Cleomenes, the young Spartan monarch, to rally round himself all the Peloponnesian opposition to the Achæans, and to make a brilliant effort to establish once again the Spartan hegemony in the peninsula. Another view of the matter is that the downfall of the Achæan league—which, to escape Cleomenes, threw itself into the arms of Antigonus Doson—was due to the intervention of Ptolemy III, who backed up Sparta, Athens, and Ætolia by his friendship and his money,[135] and would have gladly seen Achæa eliminated in order that Greece might present a united front to Antigonus Doson. In any case it was Antigonus Doson who reaped the benefits, and it seems unlikely that they were wholly an unearned increment. What he was capable of he had already shown by joining heartily in the international guarantee of the neutrality of Athens which had robbed Aratus of that choice prize. He was clearly no common man, and had he not died an untimely death shortly after the great victory he gained over Cleomenes at Sellasia (222 B.C.), he would probably have been much better known in history. His energetic and tactful conduct in this crisis contrasts sharply with the nerveless backdown of Egypt, for which the only excuse was the imminent demise of Euergetes and the threatening attitude of Antiochus the Great. It cannot be denied that Antigonus Doson made a good use of all his opportunities.
His settlement of Hellenic affairs was characterized by the revival of the general synod established by the great Philip.[136] Representatives of the Hellenic states met in formal assembly at Corinth (224 B.C.), and chose the king of Macedon as their hegemon. Subsequently the synod was to meet at a time and place to be designated by its head. A mere enumeration of the states which took this action tells the story of the constitutional development of Hellas in the Macedonian age. They were Macedon, Thessaly, Epirus, Acarnania, Locris, Phocis, Bœotia, Eubœa, Achæa, and probably the Islanders. Of these the first was a kingdom,[137] but all the others were leagues. The city-states, which had been everything in Philip's synod, have disappeared, swallowed up in the federations. Whether each of the units had now an equal number of votes, or, as in the time of Philip, a number proportionate to its size, we do not know, though the second alternative is the more probable one. In both cases Macedonian deputies took part in the meetings of the synod and served as heads of the Macedonian interest. Together with the deputies from Thessaly and other subservient states they probably formed a majority in the synod. In both Philip II and Antigonus Doson, Macedon had, accordingly, at once hegemons and kings. We hear of nothing in the revived Hellenic league comparable with the Committee of Public Safety of the old one; but nothing similar was now required, since the generals of the constituent leagues were the natural representatives of these bodies when the synod was not in session. They had thus a place provided for them in the scheme of Antigonus Doson.
The republican reaction against the policy of Antigonus Gonatas had by no means spent its force. This is shown in the seriousness with which it was now reckoned with by Antigonus Doson. He could not ignore the well established practice of the league assemblies to decide all important questions of foreign policy. Hence his synod differs from that of Philip II particularly in this important respect, that its action in declaring war, concluding peace, and other like matters was taken subject to ratification by the league authorities, and was, seemingly, binding only on such of them as ratified it.[138] His synod, in other words, stood to the league assemblies as the Achæan synod stood to the Achæan syncletus. Naturally, the confederates could not withdraw from the hegemony at pleasure, much less join its enemies; so that the refusal of a league to accept a decision of the synod to declare war meant only that it assumed a position of neutrality. In Philip's time each city had had to pay per day a fine of thirty drachmæ for every horseman, twenty drachmæ for every hoplite, ten drachmæ for every light-armed soldier, and seven or eight drachmæ for every sailor who was absent from a duly authorized expedition.[139] Now the leagues could refuse to coöperate without suffering any penalty. They surrendered their liberty to fight one another, and their right to contract alliances with outside states; but they did not surrender their diplomacy entirely to the hegemon, though they agreed to enter into no negotiations with any outside king.[140] They gave their hegemon no right whatever to interfere in their local concerns.[141]
Such were the generous concessions to local sentiment by means of which Antigonus Doson sought to place the hegemony of the kings of Macedon in Hellas on a secure basis. Never before in the history of the people had a conqueror made so noble a use of his power. Antigonus Doson went in fact so far in conciliating the Greek states that had he withdrawn Macedonian troops from Demetrias, Chalcis, and Corinth,—the three shackles of Hellas,—added new conquests like Orchomenus, Sparta, and Messene to the constituent leagues instead of to the central organization, and possessed less personal prestige, it is difficult to imagine how the Hellenic league could ever have been brought into action. Probably all that he cared to be absolutely sure of was the neutrality of the confederates who did not support him in the field.
In any case that was all that his successor Philip V was able to accomplish, when, in 220 B.C., he had the Hellenic synod accept the repeated challenge of war offered to him by the Ætolians, who, taking advantage of the accession of a young and untried king to the throne of Macedon, assailed his hegemony in Greece while it was still precarious. Had Doson lived to wage the Social War (220-217 B.C.), he might have crushed the Ætolians by sheer weight of numbers, and have completed the unification of Hellas. Philip V fought bravely and skillfully and won the respect of both his friends and his foes; but before any definite issue of the struggle had arrived, the campaign between Hannibal and the Romans had reached such a point that the hegemon of Hellas dared not neglect it any longer.