In 243 BCE, the strategos of the Achaean League Aratus of Sicyon breached the citadel of Corinth and expelled the garrison of Macedonians. This effectively liberated the Peloponnesus from a Macedonian domination which had begun in 277 BCE with Antigonus II Gonatas.1 Contemporaneously, the Aetolian League emerged as a legitimate Greek power through its defense of Delphi from invading Gauls in 290 BCE.2 These were two entirely new political entities formed within the geopolitical atmosphere of Alexander’s successor states.
Since Alexander the Great’s death in 323 BCE, his generals had vied for control of his conquests, with Seleucus in the East, Ptolemy in Egypt, and the Antigonid dynasty ruling from Macedon in the North. Greece and her city states had been subject to competing propagandas of these great monarchies, with each offering a different sort to freedom to the subjugated Greeks.
Beginning with Antigonus II’s father, Demetrius King of Macedon, the successor states empowered tyrants in Greek city states and limited city-state autonomy to local decisions.3 Deciding succession to the Macedonian throne, a monarchy of which these city-states were a part, and maintaining judicial affairs were nominal powers of the people. Soldiers in both cases however elected their generals and managed the courts, and the monarch ultimately had the final say on justice.4
As a response to domination from these successor kingdoms, many Greek states began to coalesce, either willingly or by force, into leagues with a single standing army, common currency and measures, and shared laws.5 It was an attempt to balance the power of the successors with Greece’s own. The two most notable of these federations were the Achaean and Aetolian Leagues. These Leagues offered something different. Within the more prominent Achaean League, all free, military-age males were eligible for a say in the assemblies held four times a year. Polybius, a historian from the latter, claimed this federation to be the greatest freedom yet enjoyed by the Greeks.6
Decisions made within the Achaean League however would be its downfall. Cleomenes III of Sparta, which by now had began a programme of social and military reform, attempted to sway cities to him through land distribution and cancellation of debts. Many within the Achaean League were swayed by these ideals.7 As a response, Aratus called on the Macedonians to defeat this threat and restructure his subjugation to Pella. In 224 until 199, while the Achaean League had risen through its opposition to Makedonia, the two sides tightly coordinated their affairs, with the former operating under Antigonus and later his successor Philip V.8
The ultimate dissolution of the Leagues was a result of Roman destabilization in the region. The First Macedonian War (215 – 205 BCE), The Second Macedonian War (200 – 197 BCE), and the Roman-Seleucid War (192 – 188 BCE) each showed increasing Roman domination in Greece and Macedonia, and despite the Achaean League allying with Rome in 199 BCE, Achaean conflict with Sparta (149 – 146 BCE) led Rome to annex Greece.9
Ultimately, the rise of federalism in Greece was a natural and correct response to geopolitical pressure from Alexander’s Successor Kingdoms, but because the Achaean League could not fight its own wars, it tied itself to Macedon and later Rome, alliances which gave the latter a casus belli in its advance into Greece. Without geopolitical pressure, it is possible the federations could coalesce into the first true Greek state, but it is also these very pressures incentivized federation in the first place.
Sources:
Keywords are hyperlinked with Wikipedia articles for further reading
- F. W. Wallbank. The Hellenistic World. Harvard University Press, 1998. Online, PDF. 95
- Wallbank 153
- Wallbank 82
- Wallbank 83
- Wallbank 156,7
- Wallbank 157
- Wallbank 154
- Wallbank 154
- Wallbank 155, 158
Alexander to Caesar, The Rise of Rome 