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.
Aetolian league.
With regard to the former our information is exceedingly 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